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image captionPatients on the virtual ward are given a blood oxygen monitor to take home
A hospital is using so-called virtual wards to treat coronavirus patients and ease pressure on beds.
University Hospitals of Leicester Trust said a small blood oxygen monitor meant it had treated 130 people at home.
Patients take their own readings and are checked daily over the phone by a specially-trained nursing team.
Andy Darcy, who fell ill in December and spent a night in hospital before moving on to the virtual system, said it was really beneficial .
Patients are initially assessed by Glenfield Hospital s clinical decisions unit to see if their symptoms meet the criteria for virtual treatment.
Hero NHS doctors, nurses and staff that have died on the frontline of the coronavirus battle
Yet this list is still likely to be missing many of the true number of workers who have died
04:00, 6 FEB 2021
Ann Shepherd who died after contracting the Covid-19 virus (Image: Derbyshire Healthcare NHS)
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NHS England’s plans to abolish clinical commissioning groups has come under fire from one CCG, which has branded them “unnecessary” and showing a “significant lack of insight”.
Leeds CCG’s comments were prompted by NHSE’s consultation on its proposals for developing integrated care, which include legislation it is asking government to put to Parliament.
It said the plans were “unnecessary” and that NHSE had not recognised the levels of “disruption and distraction” they would cause staff. It said it was concerned the proposals “may undermine the progress we have made in Leeds and across West Yorkshire”.
NHSE’s apparently favoured option would make integrated care systems into statutory NHS bodies, taking on the current functions of CCGs, by April 2022. Its second choice would see CCGs merged to the size of ICS and their functions “absorbed to become core ICS business”. West Yorkshire and Harrogate ICS is currently covered by multiple CCGs, of whic