Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the potential for virtual wards to improve health care delivery.

We recognise the importance of care at home and have identified 800,000 of the most vulnerable patients as part of the Proactive Care Programme.

Virtual wards could provide one way of reducing unplanned admissions by providing the staffing, systems and routines of hospital care in the patient’s own home.