Virtual services are ways of providing hospital standard care to patients closer to where they live and often in their own home. They are designed to improve the care experience for patients and their families.
Virtual services can be as simple as having your follow up outpatient appointment by video or phone call. Or it may be that hospitals can use technology to monitor people at home rather than admit them to hospital for an overnight stay. They can also use the same monitoring to allow people to go home from hospital sooner.
Hospitals have been using virtual services for a long time but during the COVID-19 pandemic they started to use them much more. Hospitals say they worked well, so they have decided to develop them and use them more widely. It is vital that these services work well for patients and their families, giving them an improved care experience.
So we’d like you to be involved in designing these services so that those responsible for delivering local services can ensure that they meet your needs.
Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has have been working with Healthwatch Bradford and District to develop a short survey which we would like you to complete.