Virtual Care Project of the Year

HSJ Partnership Awards 2024 - Virtual Care Project of the Year
Virtual Care Project of the Year
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How to apply

Entries are now closed

Virtual care, including remote monitoring and virtual ward models has shown to reduce hospital admissions, and encourages patient self-management and autonomy. The need for and availability of these services was accelerated by the pandemic, with NHS England now targeting 50 virtual ward ‘beds’ per 100,000 patients by December 2023. To effectively deliver these hospital-at-home services, NHS trusts and systems are looking to the private sector organisations for support. 

This category recognises organisations who have worked in genuine partnership to set up and deliver services that enable safe, effective virtual care. Winners will be projects that involve the patient in their care plan, equipping them to contribute to their own recovery, and have potential to scale up to meet future care demands.  

Eligibility

  • This award is open to any private or third sector organisation which works in partnership with an NHS organisation or system on the specific development or implementation of a virtual care service 
  • These can be single partnerships or joint working projects, but must demonstrate evidence from the past two years up until the awards deadline date 

Ambition

  • Describe the context of the virtual care service and the reason why this was commissioned rather than built in-house by the NHS 
  • Provide clear evidence that the co-developed solution served patients better than the NHS was able to deliver alone. 
  • Outline the targets set to measure the effectiveness of the service and the steps put in place to achieve them. 

Outcome

  • Describe how the service was introduced, and how staff were trained to ensure effective uptake.  
  • Clearly demonstrate the benefits of the partnership on patient outcomes, which could include improved patient experience, waiting time reduction, capacity increase or optimised treatment pathways. 
  • Discuss how the NHS organisation has benefited from the partnership in terms of staffing, cost, reducing inefficiencies or ability to provide services. 
  • Describe any other innovative practices generated by the partnership which have created beneficial outcomes. 

Spread

  • Describe how the business has worked with the NHS to ensure best practice learning has been disseminated. 
  • Discuss to what extent the best practice elements or innovations generated by the partnership have been adopted by other trusts or systems. 
  • Evidence how the service could scale within the existing NHS organisation, or has potential for further application elsewhere in the health service 

Involvement

  • Describe how the different partners worked together, and the level of interaction in terms of concept, development, realisation and application 
  • Show how patients and staff contributed towards and added value to the goals and outcomes of the service 
  • Evidence the consultative measures taken to inform, involve and enable participation in the design of the service 

Value

  • What financial benefits have been realised by the partnership, or if partnering has cost the NHS more money than delivering the project alone, how have the non-monetary benefits outweighed the costs? 
  • How has the partnership led to material and measurable non-monetary improvements within the NHS organisation? 
  • Provide testimonial evidence of the effectiveness of the partnership from both NHS staff and patients. 

To find out more

For entry enquiries, contact James Elliot on james.elliott@wilmingtonplc.com