The impact of an acute respiratory illness virtual ward (ARIVW) on a community respiratory service

<bold>Introduction:</bold> ARIVW's have been expanded across the UK in response to increased clinical demand, following the success of COVID virtual wards. Funding has been made available to support this roll-out, however integration with existing clinical teams _{<italic>[1]</italic>}. Within the local service, daily senior decision making is provided with a consultant, GP or advanced practitioner, and face to face patient review is mostly provided by the community teams Nurses & AHP's, with telehealth monitoring provided by a partner organisation, daily for 12 hours. <bold>Aim:</bold> To explore the added benefitsof an existing community respiratory team to the virtual ward. <bold>Methods:</bold> A retrospective review of electronic patient records of patients onboarded to the ward in January 2024. <bold>Results:</bold> 71 Patients were onboarded onto the ARIVW in January 2024. 50.7% had a primary diagnosis of community acquired pneumonia, 31.0% with COPD exacerbations, 9.9% with a lower respiratory tract infection, 4.2% with bronchiectasis exacerbation sand 4.2% with a viral illness (Including COVID). 15.5% required further medication prescription to support standard care. 22.5% required further clinical review at home due to clinical changes, of which 56.3% of these (12.7%) in total required physiotherapy review for urgent chest clearance support. 5.55 patients per day were escalated by telehealth alerts, with 3.16 patients per day requiring direct interventions by a senior clinician, in addition to the dedicated ward round time. <bold>Conclusion:</bold> Additional interventions are frequently required by the community team to support patient home care on the virtual ward. These additional requisites should be accounted for in the future design of virtual wards. <italic>[1] NHSE 2023</italic>