NEW

A policy analysis of Saudi Arabia's Seha Virtual Hospital, set against international evidence from tele-ICU, hospital-at-home, virtual-ward and telestroke programmes, finds the national model succeeds as governance and workforce integration, while independent evidence of its effect on outcomes remains limited years after launch.

A UK-wide mixed-methods survey of 256 palliative and end-of-life care researchers finds funding, workload and job insecurity are the principal threats to the research capacity the field depends on.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of five randomised trials finds methylphenidate-based interventions improve depressive symptoms more than placebo, usual care or background antidepressants in adults receiving palliative care, though evidence certainty is very low to low.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of 16 studies finds frailty-targeted cardiovascular rehabilitation improves physical performance and walking distance in frail older adults with cardiovascular disease, but shows no clear benefit on mortality, hospitalisation or activities of daily living.

A UK Delphi-consensus statement embeds frailty, obesity and obstructive sleep apnoea explicitly into peri-operative patient selection for day surgery.

A cross-border scoping review of rural telehealth in Western Canada and the Western United States finds only low confidence that it durably reduces emergency department use, recommending a hybrid, locally anchored model instead.

A national insurance-backed pilot across seven Taiwanese nursing homes finds hospital-at-home care for acute infections cut costs by up to 65% with safety preserved against hospitalised matched controls.

A national Canadian workshop series with providers, patients, carers and administrators names rural access, carer workload and staff technology support as the standing unresolved issues in hospital-at-home care, despite high satisfaction.

A UK scoping review of 72 studies finds co-located psychology in primary care improves access and reduces workload, against a standing national recommendation that remains unimplemented.

A national matched cohort of 3,335 hospital-at-home patients in Israel reports lower 30-day mortality and readmission than hospital-ward admission, at a scale the NHS's own virtual ward evidence has not yet matched.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of 3,497 adults finds outpatient parenteral antibiotic therapy for infective endocarditis associated with lower mortality and less kidney injury than hospital-based treatment.

A review of 41 trials finds interventions that improve goals-of-care documentation and conversation quality do not consistently improve healthcare utilisation or quality of life.

An integrative review appraises thirteen high-quality sources into thirty-four evidence-based insights, giving emergency departments a ready-made benchmark for frailty management.

A US multicentre cohort of over 6,600 older surgical patients finds a formal accreditation-style verification programme, not guidance alone, associated with a rise in geriatric vulnerability assessment.

A National Audit Office report finds hospital patient flow in England 'is not working properly', quantifying corridor waits, 24-hour A&E waits and the cost of delayed discharge — and the British Geriatrics Society's same-day response locates the fix in community capacity and front-door frailty diversion rather than acute expansion.

A multi-method study of 3,282 patient experience surveys and 52 interviews in an Australian acute respiratory virtual hospital finds patients and carers took on new technical and digital support roles, with carers acting as extensions or substitutes for patients who could not perform them.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of 57 cohort studies finds frailty independently predicts worse functional outcomes, higher mortality and increased readmission risk in hospitalised older adults.

A Taiwanese retrospective cohort study, matched against both an inpatient and an outpatient comparator, finds emergency-department-initiated outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy saves hospital bed-days but carries a transient early return-visit risk.

A systematic review of 23 studies finds no consistent patient or service-level predictor of engagement with, or response to, cognitive behavioural therapy for psychosis.

A Bayesian component-network meta-analysis of individual participant data from 34 randomised trials identifies which specific components of task-shared psychosocial interventions, delivered by non-specialist workers, most improve outcomes for depression and anxiety.

A grey-literature review of 36 candidate resources for outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy finds only 9 met basic quality criteria, and just 2 patient-directed resources exist at all, neither formally accredited.

This week's evidence across five domains converges on one caution: extending care into the community succeeds only when someone designs for who absorbs the extra workload, not only for whether the underlying model works.

A prospective multicentre cohort study of 1,730 patients across eight Spanish hospitals finds 19.7% reattempted suicide within 12 months, with medication burden, suicidal ideation frequency, prior attempts, childhood emotional neglect and non-suicidal self-injury as independent predictors.

The first UK-wide survey of palliative virtual wards finds only 15% of 22 responding services use remote-monitoring technology, and three-quarters rely on charitable funding, with two services already closed for lack of it.