AvaSure and Apella partner to deliver purpose-built ambient intelligence across the enterprise – helping hospitals avoid the compromises of one-size-fits-all platforms.
Hospitals are under increasing pressure to improve throughput, support overstretched care teams, and deliver measurable operational and financial outcomes amid rising costs, reduced reimbursement, and staffing challenges.
That is why AvaSure and Apella have formed a strategic alliance to bring connected ambient intelligence across the hospital – from inpatient care environments to the operating room.
AvaSure delivers one of the most widely adopted virtual care, ambient AI, and smart room platforms designed to optimize inpatient workflows, reduce costs, and expand access to care, while Apella provides real-time perioperative intelligence that helps surgical teams improve OR utilization, reduce delays, and optimize procedural flow with measurable operational and financial impact.
Together, the partnership helps hospitals improve throughput, coordination, and operational performance across the enterprise.
“Health systems are looking for technology investments that deliver measurable operational and financial value. By bringing together AvaSure’s virtual care platform and Apella’s perioperative intelligence capabilities, we are helping hospitals improve efficiency across critical care environments while driving verifiable financial and clinical outcomes – creating a stronger foundation for enterprise-wide operational transformation.” — Adam McMullin
Helping Hospitals Improve Operational and Financial Performance
Operational inefficiencies across inpatient and perioperative environments can have a significant impact on hospital capacity, staffing, and financial performance. Delays in patient progression, underutilized OR time, fragmented workflows, and administrative burden all contribute to rising costs and operational friction.
“Together, Apella and AvaSure deliver what most hospitals prioritize when it comes to their investments in modern AI: real operational ROI. Novel, trustworthy data is the starting point to delivering better outcomes for patients and care teams alike. Apella and AvaSure have collectively built the specialized expertise needed to optimize workflows across the entire surgical, pre-op, and post-op lifecycle.” — Jordan Tuttle, Apella Co-Founder and COO
Together, AvaSure and Apella help hospitals create greater operational visibility and workflow intelligence across the enterprise — enabling teams to improve throughput, optimize existing resources, and contribute to their bottom line.
Driving Operational Performance Across the Hospital
Through virtual care workflows, AvaSure helps health systems accelerate patient progression, streamline care coordination, and improve inpatient throughput. Apella extends real-time operational intelligence into the perioperative environment, helping surgical teams improve scheduling accuracy, reduce delays, and optimize OR utilization.
Organizations using AvaSure have achieved:
11.6% reduction in length of stay
16% reduction in ED holding time
31% reduction in discharge turnaround time
Organizations leveraging Apella have achieved:
24% improvement in scheduling accuracy
69-minute average reduction in surgical delays
56 additional block hours per OR, per month
Delivering Measurable Financial Impact
By helping hospitals optimize workflows and make better use of existing staff and capacity, both organizations are driving measurable financial outcomes.
At Houston Methodist, Apella helped generate approximately $2.2 million in additional revenue during a pilot focused on improving surgical block utilization and OR efficiency.
Meanwhile, Hackensack Meridian Health achieved approximately $1.6 million in cost savings through AvaSure virtual care initiatives driven by nurse retention improvements, reduced agency spend, length of stay improvements, readmission reductions, falls prevention, and reductions in CLABSI and CAUTI events.
In addition, AvaSure virtual sitter programs have helped health systems save more than $826 million in labor costs. And hospitals using Apella increase capacity for two more surgical cases per OR per month without the cost of additional facilities, staff, or overtime.
Purpose-Built Intelligence for High-Impact Care Environments
As health systems evaluate AI strategies, many are recognizing that different care environments require different operational workflows, data models, and intelligence capabilities.
Rather than forcing hospitals into generalized platforms designed to approach every environment the same way, AvaSure and Apella bring specialized intelligence to the areas where operational coordination, workflow efficiency, and resource optimization matter most.
By combining intelligent virtual care with AI-driven perioperative workflow intelligence, the partnership helps hospitals extend ambient intelligence across the enterprise while supporting the unique operational needs of both inpatient and surgical environments.
More than half of U.S. nurses report burnout and ongoing mental health challenges — impacting both caregiver wellbeing and patient outcomes.
National Nurses Week and Mental Health Awareness Month share the same calendar for good reason. The people we trust most with our lives are facing a crisis of their own. More than half of U.S. nurses report burnout and mental health challenges, impacting both caregiver wellbeing and patient outcomes. Burnout affects up to 56% of the nursing workforce, driven by high stress, chronic understaffing, and administrative burden. In recent years, there has been an influx of nurse walkouts and strikes. In January 2026, roughly 15,000 nurses in New York walked off the job in what became the largest nurse strike in the state’s history—a breaking point fueled by dangerous understaffing, rising workplace violence, and unsustainable workloads.” This moment presents an important opportunity to better support nurses and strengthen the care they provide every day.
When nurses are overwhelmed, everyone feels it. Patient safety suffers. Staff turnover climbs. And the cycle only deepens. Our nurses give 12+ hours a day to caring for others — but who is caring for them? They are some of the most resilient people in any room, but resilience has its limits. Protecting the people who protect us is essential to the wellbeing of patients and staff alike. Among the many steps that can be taken, the most direct path forward is creating safer, more supportive care environments to support nurse wellbeing.
The American Nurses Association (ANA) is leading that charge, advocating for mental health resources, workforce sustainability, and the recognition nurses have long deserved. This Nurses Week, join the movement: download the ANA Nurses Week social toolkit to celebrate and honor the nurses who show up for all of us, every single day.
Technology That Supports Nurses — Not Adds to Their Burden
One way to create safer and more supportive environments for nurses is through virtual care, which plays a key role in reducing cognitive load and administrative tasks, improving staffing flexibility, and creating safer, calmer environments that support mental wellbeing. Improving nurse satisfaction and retention is the #1 reason health systems implement virtual nursing.
Virtual nursing is reshaping how care teams work, both at the bedside and beyond. Through virtual platforms, nurses and care managers can support bedside teams in real time, helping to educate patients, streamline admissions and discharge paperwork, and automate documentation. This direct, uninterrupted access to patients reduces errors and gaps in the medical record, while freeing floor nurses to focus on what matters most: hands-on patient care. The result is a smarter, more intentional care model — one where RNs, CNAs, and virtual nurses each contribute based on their unique skills and experience, ensuring every patient interaction is handled by the right person at the right time. Beyond the bedside, virtual nursing tools also bridge the gap between hospital staff and external care providers, enabling real-time collaboration that streamlines care transitions and prevents delays in securing post-discharge services.
Caring Out Loud: A Chief Clinical Officer’s Vision for Supporting Nurses
AvaSure’s Chief Clinical Officer, Lisbeth Votruba, MSN, RN, FAONL, CAVRN, joined This Week Health’s Nurses Week podcast to talk about what nursing needs most right now and how technology makes it possible.
A trained nurse practitioner and third generation nurse whose entrepreneurial spirit led her to AvaSure 14 years ago, Lisbeth champions the idea of getting back to old-fashioned, hands-on nursing care and sees ambient listening as one of the most direct paths to get there. Ambient listening is an AI-driven tool that works quietly in the background and can act as a workplace safety tool. If a nurse is feeling in danger, they can simply speak a wake word to trigger an alarm and get help.
Additionally, ambient listening allows nurses to go hands-free while documenting and give their full attention to the patient — no big computer monitor in the way. Lisbeth introduced this concept as “caring out loud”: verbalizing documentation in real time to keep patients connected to their care while shining a light on everything nurses do. It is important to note that when it comes to documentation, nursing workflows can be more complex than physician workflows as they have less of a natural narrative structure. This is why Lisbeth emphasizes that this technology must be built around the nurse so that they do not have to change the way they interact with patients in order for the AI to document the correct takeaways:
“We want to make sure that the tools are trained to serve the nurses, not the nurses having to be trained to serve the tool.”
As Chief Clinical Officer at AvaSure, Lisbeth ensures nurses have a seat at the table, bringing the clinical lens necessary to redefine workflows and shape the future of care delivery.
Virtual Care’s Real-World Effect on Nurses
Virtual Care has been supporting nurses across the US, and there are results to prove it. Through scaling their virtual nursing program, Hackensack Meridian Health (HMH) saw outstanding results that directly benefitted their RNs:
26% reduction in RN overtime
65% reduction in RN traveler hours
9% decrease in documentation time for bedside staff
12% reduction in length of stay
As their virtual care journey continues, HMH continues to create an improved environment for nurses, and saw a 28% decrease in RN turnover in the first seven months of their recent care units to go live with virtual nursing.
Results like these prove how virtual care eases the workload on nurses, creating a healthier work environment for clinical staff, a better experience for patients, and a more efficient health system overall.
Empowering the Next Generation of Nurses
Virtual nursing isn’t just transforming how we care for patients today; it’s helping to build the nursing workforce of tomorrow. New nurses entering the workforce are already under strain. Virtual nurses serve as an always-available resource for recent graduates and novice nurses — offering real-time mentorship, immediate feedback, and helping new clinicians grow. As virtual care becomes more integrated into hospital workflows and standard care delivery models, it is essential to prepare the next generation of nurses to thrive in this environment. This can include embedding virtual care training into new nurse onboarding and strengthening collaboration between academia and healthcare organizations to support smoother transitions from education to practice.
How AvaSure Cares for Nurses
Nurses are the backbone of healthcare, and for over 18 years, AvaSure has provided them with tools to protect, support, and empower their work. Our intelligent virtual care platform enables virtual care in a diverse range of settings and use cases, with advanced AI, flexible devices, a vast partner ecosystem, real-time insights, and world-class service and support team to guide you every step of your virtual care journey.
AvaSure is committed to clinical partnership, not just technology delivery. Our clinical team is built by nurses, for nurses — and that foundation shapes everything from how the platform is designed to how it is deployed and supported. Our Clinical Implementation team is 100% nurses who maintain active RN licenses, and along with Chief Clinical Officer Lisbeth Votruba, MSN, RN, FAONL, CAVRN, and AvaSure’s Chief Nursing Executive Advisory Board, they lead the clinical vision behind AvaSure. Because AvaSure’s clinical experts have lived the realities of nursing, they are uniquely positioned to design virtual care solutions that reduce burnout rather than add to it. The result is a platform that nurses can embrace and trust.
How to Support Nurses Every Day
National Nurses Week is once a year, but nurses deserve recognition every day. There is nothing more important than protecting those that care for us and consistently showing them our appreciation. AvaSure knows that building safer, healthier environments for nurses is an ongoing collaborative effort, and we are dedicated to making that commitment. From innovative monitoring solutions that reduce the physical and emotional burden on nursing staff, to fostering a culture where nurses feel seen, supported, and valued, AvaSure stands alongside the nursing community not just during National Nurses Week, but through every long shift, every difficult moment, and every triumph in between.
Contact usto see how AvaSure can start supporting your nursing team today.
Virtual nursing is the use of virtual care and advanced AI to assist bedside nurses and hospital staff by automating daily clinical workflows like administrative tasks, intake, rounding, admission & discharge, and more. The American Nursing Association describes virtual nursing as a resource that “support(s) the team at the bedside to alleviate the workload and provide greater satisfaction for both the patients and the nursing staff.”
Nurse burnouts are caused by a number of factors, mainly including chronic understaffing, time-consuming administrative tasks, heavy workloads, workplace violence, long hours, and emotional fatigue. Burnout affects up to 56% of the nursing workforce.
Creating safer and more supportive environments and listening to nurses’ needs is one of the best ways to prevent nurse burnout. Virtual care helps to prevent nurse burnout by reducing cognitive load and administrative tasks, improving staffing flexibility, and creating safer, calmer environments that support mental wellbeing.
Through virtual nursing, nurses and care managers can support teams at the bedside to educate patients, complete admissions and discharge paperwork, automate documentation, and mentor more novice nurses. This allows virtual nurses to have direct, uninterrupted time with patients, leading to less errors or gaps in documentation and freeing up floor nurses to care for their patients at the bedside. This also ensures smoother transitions and shorter delays of care for patients.
Virtual nursing helps with staffing shortages because it allows nurses to return to the bedside and focus on direct patient care, which reduces burnout, increases efficiency in managing workloads, and helps patients receive care more quickly.
Virtual care tools can reduce workload, improve communication, and enhance patient monitoring—helping nurses focus on high-value care while minimizing stress and burnout.
Organizations can invest in supportive technologies, prioritize safe staffing levels, provide mental health resources, and create environments where nurses feel heard and supported.
National Nurses Week, observed each year from May 6–12, recognizes the vital contributions of nurses across the country. It’s also an important moment to spotlight the challenges they face and the need for meaningful support.
Posted on February 18, 2026 by Maura Kretzer - Uncategorized
How Providence St. Peter Hospital and Providence Oregon Improved Caregiver Safety Through Remote Visual Monitoring
Overview
Workplace violence has become a critical challenge across health systems, affecting caregiver morale, patient safety, and the overall care environment. Providence St. Peter Hospital in Washington and the Providence Oregon region implemented a virtual care monitoring program using AvaSure technology to proactively reduce violent incidents and protect staff and patients. Their experiences demonstrate how virtual engagement, predictive monitoring, and strong interdepartmental collaboration can dramatically improve safety outcomes. [Eyes on Sa…Transcript | Word]
Challenge
Both regions were seeing increases in:
Physical and verbal aggression toward nurses and CNAs
Visitors introducing illicit substances or behaving violently
Patients harming themselves or attempting to harm caregivers
False allegations against staff, creating legal and safety risks
Traditional approaches—such as staff rounding and signage—offered awareness but not reliable prevention. Violent events were still leading to caregiver injuries and unsafe environments. [Eyes on Sa…Transcript | Word]
Solution: Remote Visual Monitoring (RVM) with AvaSure
Protecting staff during a bathroom attack, when techs saw nurses running out of the room and immediately called security. [Eyes on Sa…Transcript | Word]
These cases highlight how remote monitoring enables fast intervention, even when staff cannot directly see risk evolving.
Culture & Governance Enhancements
Both regions emphasized:
Violence Prevention Committees with nurses, security, and leaders to review events and coordinate improvements. [Eyes on Sa…Transcript | Word]
Regular communication via huddles, newsletters, SharePoint, and site visits to build trust between bedside staff and monitoring techs. [Eyes on Sa…Transcript | Word]
Empower virtual safety attendants: instruct them to call security even if bedside staff says, “We’re okay.” Better to over-respond than underrespond. [Eyes on Sa…Transcript | Word]
Providence St. Peter Hospital and Providence Oregon successfully transformed their approach to workplace violence by integrating virtual care monitoring into daily operations. Their experiences show that proactive surveillance, empowered staff, and clear escalation pathways can significantly reduce risk and create safer environments for caregivers and patients alike.
This case study demonstrates how modern virtual care infrastructure—used thoughtfully—serves as both a protective shield and a tool for continuous care improvement.
Posted on February 18, 2026 by Maura Kretzer - Uncategorized
Reducing Nurse Burnout Through Virtual Sitting
Challenge
Virtual sitting is widely recognized for its ability to reduce patient falls and lower costs. However, Providence Health wanted to better understand an equally critical question:
Does virtual sitting reduce emotional exhaustion and burnout among nurses?
How do bedside nurses perceive virtual sitters compared to in-person sitters?
With rising concerns around workforce sustainability, emotional labor, and workplace violence, Providence sought clinical evidence to evaluate how different monitoring models impact nurse well-being.
Study Overview
Providence conducted a rigorous, real-world study across two Magnet-designated hospitals:
Providence Medical Center (Anchorage, AK)
Providence St. Peter Hospital (Olympia, WA)
Study Design
524 experience-sampling surveys
74 bedside nurses
Conducted over a 3-week period
Published in the Western Journal of Nursing Research (August 2023)
The study examined emotional exhaustion, perceived workload, and the impact of both virtual and in-person sitters on daily nursing practice.
Key Findings
Virtual sitting reduces nurse burnout
Virtual sitting significantly lowered emotional exhaustion—especially among nurses with lower organizational commitment, a group often at higher risk for burnout and turnover.
In-person sitters increase emotional labor
In-person sitters were frequently perceived as a drain on nursing resources and contributors to emotional fatigue rather than a source of support.
Virtual sitters are viewed as a valued resource
Nurses described virtual sitting as safer, more reliable, and less disruptive to care delivery.
These findings build on earlier Providence research (2020) showing bedside nurses prefer virtual sitting over in-person models.
Impact
For Providence, virtual sitting delivers more than patient safety—it supports the resilience and sustainability of the nursing workforce.
By reducing emotional exhaustion, minimizing unnecessary emotional labor, and keeping nurses focused on direct patient care, virtual sitting helps:
Maintain safety while keeping clinicians at the bedside
Virtual sitting has also played a key role in addressing workplace violence risk.
“Twenty percent of our monitored patients are related to workplace violence. Lowering the threshold for reporting and monitoring these patients has helped us better protect our team.”
As hospitals and healthcare providers face increasing pressures to do more with less, nurses are feeling burnt out. A more novice nurse workforce, in addition to inadequate education and training, higher patient acuity, and rising nurse-to-patient ratios are amplifying this, ultimately leading to nurse staffing shortages. These problems not only affect the well-being of nurses but also impact the quality of patient care.
To address these ongoing issues, hospital systems are reevaluating their workflows and looking at technology solutions to help support their staff. For example, many hospitals are adopting virtual care platforms and AI-enabled tools to help relieve administrative burden. However, before making decisions on solutions, it’s important to really understand the root causes of nurse staffing issues.
Top Reasons for Nursing Shortages:
Nurse Burnout
Nurse burnout is a common consequence of the overwhelming responsibility and pressure placed on nursing staff in hospital systems. Reduced resources and support lead to some nurses deciding to leave the healthcare industry all together. Nurses play a vital role in ensuring that patients’ well-being remains a priority. RNs aren’t the only ones affected; when it comes to Patient Care Technicians (PCTs) and Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs), health systems are seeing turnover rates in excess of 30%. So, what happens when nurses experience burnout and leave the profession? The remaining nurses within the hospital are stretched too thin with the number of patients they must care for. Job satisfaction begins to decrease, and turnover rates rise, leading to more resources and funds spent to replace and train new staff. As a result, trust in the hospital system starts to fade.
Higher Patient Acuity and Reduced Resources
Another key contributor to the nurse shortage is higher patient acuity and limited training and resources. Patient acuity refers to the level of care or monitoring a patient requires from hospital staff, particularly nurses. The higher the patient’s acuity, the more attention the patient needs. As the patient-to-nurse ratio increases, less attention is given to patients with less demanding issues and health concerns. This leads to diminished patient care, as nurses are unable to provide the attention each patient deserves. Inadequate resources and training leave nurses feeling overwhelmed, making it challenging to provide proper care for all their patients. More experienced nurses are retiring early, leaving junior nurses with a larger workload and less mentorship. This results in stressful situations and higher risk of incidents under the care of the hospital.
Solutions to the Nurse Staffing Shortage
One solution to this issue is to hire additional staff and nurses at the bedside. However, the high cost of hiring travel nurses makes it challenging for hospitals to support their existing nursing staff while meeting the demand for additional help. This is where virtual care can play a key role in providing support, helping optimize the staffing they have. It is crucial for hospital systems to address nurse staffing problems. By providing a better work environment for nurses and offering education and support to nurses’ journeys, hospitals can help the 52% of the nursing workforce who have considered leaving the bedside.
Virtual Care: a Solution to Help the Staffing Crisis
Virtual care is a resource used by healthcare providers and hospital systems to connect patients with doctors, nurses, specialists, and virtual sitting staff remotely. This includes use-cases such as virtual sitting, virtual nursing, and virtual visits. This approach increases efficiency in managing workloads and can help patients receive care more quickly. Virtual care is becoming a prominent resource to help solve staffing issues. It allows nurses to return to the bedside and focus on direct patient care, working at the top of their license. Studies have proven that virtual care, specifically virtual sitting, reduces burnout and improves nurse well-being. A recent survey of 74 nurses from Renton, Washington-based Providence found virtual sitting improved their “emotional labor” and “emotional exhaustion” over in-person sitting. The survey illustrated that virtual sitting improves the well-being of nurses and helps maintain patient safety. Emily Anderson, MSN, RN, PCCN-K, nurse manager at Providence Medical Center in Anchorage, AK said, “Having insightful research into virtual sitting helps us alleviate burnout among our nursing staff and optimize the usage of all our resources to get the right care to the right patient at the right time.” As healthcare systems are evaluating ways to reduce nursing shortages, aid their teams, and deliver the best care possible, solutions like virtual sitting, virtual nursing, and AI need to be considered to support staff and ease the workload and pressure that has been causing the drop in workforce.
What is Virtual Sitting?
Virtual sitting, also referred to as virtual monitoring, is a resource for nurses at the bedside, reducing the need for one-to-one in-person sitting and helping to prevent adverse events for patients. Virtual sitting equips trained safety attendants to use video and audio connections to watch over multiple patients and improve overall safety. Virtual sitting has been used for preventing a variety of adverse events, such as falls, elopement, possible self-harm, suicide ideation, and staff abuse. By using this technology, events that once required 1:1 sitting can now be monitored by a virtual safety attendant, who can safely observe up to 36 patients at a time. This helps reduce the workload of nurses, allowing them to work at the top of their license and focus on higher-acuity patients.
One hospital that successfully implemented virtual sitting amid nurse staffing shortages is St. Luke’s Duluth, a Minnesota-based health system. Like many health systems, St. Luke’s faced challenges such as a tightening labor market, increasing competition for experienced healthcare workers, and rising costs. To provide additional resources and support to their current patient care staff, St. Luke’s implemented a virtual sitting program. They utilize a two-person model: one staff member provides rounding services for patients and staff, while the other staff member observes patients via video monitors. Nursing leaders have found that this approach enhances patient and staff safety and helps support monitoring staff by providing adequate breaks to avoid monitor fatigue.
Another way virtual care has emerged as a solution to nurse staffing problems is through virtual nursing. The American Nursing Association describes virtual nursing as a resource that “support(s) the team at the bedside to alleviate the workload and provide greater satisfaction for both the patients and the nursing staff.”1 Through virtual platforms, nurses and care managers can support teams at the bedside to educate patients, complete admissions and discharge paperwork, automate documentation, and mentor more novice nurses. This allows virtual nurses to have direct, uninterrupted time with patients, leading to less errors or gaps in documentation and freeing up floor nurses to care for their patients at the bedside. It enables a care model where RNs, CNAs, and VRNs (virtual nurses) perform the most appropriate patient care activities based on their skills and experience.
Virtual nursing tools also connect hospital staff with external care providers in real time, ensuring smooth transitions and avoiding delays in securing post-discharge services. Holzer Health System is a recent example of this use case. Using the AvaSure virtual care platform, scarce specialists in neurology, nephrology, diabetes education, and wound care were able to serve patients in two facilities, located 30 miles apart. Natalie Gardner, BSN, RN, CWON, CFCS, describes the benefits: “This has provided a way for me to do video consults with the Jackson facility which saves precious time as well as mileage. The staff take the device to the patient’s room, remove their dressings, and position the patient so that I can see the wound. This leaves me more time to spend with all patients by eliminating the time it would take to drive to Jackson and back.”
Additionally, virtual nurses can provide real-time mentorship, feedback, and confidence to recent graduates and novice bedside nurses, nurturing a nursing workforce for the future.
What is Computer Vision and AI?
While AI is advancing and gaining attention in the healthcare industry, hospital leaders must remember to use applications that can be easily used by their staff, enhance patient safety, and improve the overall hospital experience, all while ensuring that workflow is not disrupted.
There are multiple types of AI currently being used in healthcare settings. Computer vision is a subset of AI that can vastly improve the way hospitals provide care without requiring care providers to compromise on safety and control. One application of computer vision is to help to prevent falls, elopement, and workplace violence by being able to detect factors that are potential warning signs. Following the detection, computer vision alerts a worker to address the issue that may be at hand. The technology is used to augment virtual sitting, helping care team members monitor patients more efficiently, identify patients in need, and make fast, informed decisions that keep them safe.
To know you are using computer vision and AI correctly, keep an eye out for three positive indicators:
Data is used both to prevent immediate incidents and to drive proactive interventions based on insights over time
Real-time alerts are targeted enough to inform the right staff of risk without contributing to alarm fatigue
The program is scalable; AI isn’t just another expense but a way to reduce operational costs and drive savings that fund additional technology investments.
AI in healthcare systems can be a tool but be sure to use the correct collaborative platforms, and track ROI from the start of the AI journey.
A new example of AI in the healthcare space is AvaSure’s virtual care assistant, designed to bridge gaps in communication, prioritize urgent patient needs, and support healthcare teams in delivering timely, high-quality care. The Virtual Care Assistant appears as an avatar, helping triage requests, questions, or needs and assist within the nursing workflow. Requests are categorized into clinical and operational groups, and the assistant, named Vicky, ensures they are directed to the appropriate human personnel or team, helping healthcare systems integrate a reliable, trustworthy, and supportive system for healthcare workers.
Implementing Virtual Care
While there are many virtual care tools and technologies to help reduce the burden on nurses, what does implementation look like in practice? There are multiple phases of the virtual care journey; while it may feel like other hospitals are ahead of the curve, 29% of healthcare leaders established that they have no virtual care solutions, and 39% of hospitals are still in early exploration with virtual nursing. The 5-stage maturity model, developed with the input of 1,100 hospitals and 15+ clinical and hospital IT executives, represents a blueprint for care model redesign led by change-management oriented, outcome-focused leaders. By making virtual care workflows a standard part of care delivery, facilities can meet the evolving needs of both patients and healthcare providers. It can help by expanding access to care, improving patient experience, reducing caregiver workload, and increasing the efficiency and scalability of staffing.
Nurse staffing shortages are a real challenge in hospitals and create a chain reaction that impacts everything, from quality of patient care to the health and well-being of nurses. This issue contributes to burnout and stress, ultimately affecting the care that patients receive. It’s crucial that hospitals find solutions that support nurses and improve the entire healthcare system.
AvaSure’s virtual care platform deploys AI-powered virtual sitting and virtual nursing solutions, meets the highest enterprise IT standards, and drives measurable outcomes with support from care experts. By offering our virtual care platform to monitor and support staff and patients, AvaSure can help reduce the burden on nurses, improve patient outcomes, and assist healthcare systems to better improve staff workflow and patient care.
Resources
1Ball, J. (2022, July 1). Virtual nursing: What is it?. Innovation Site. https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/innovation/blog/virtual-nursing-what-is-it/
Adam McMullin, AvaSure CEO, talks about health systems that have reduced patient falls and increased sepsis recovery rate by using his company’s AI-driven virtual platform to assist on-site nurses.
In the face of nursing shortages and escalating patient acuity, healthcare is in a perfect storm. Nurses are burdened with increasing demands and 52% are contemplating leaving the bedside. This environment is forcing hospital leadership to think differently about how technology can help create a new model of care delivery.
Virtual Nursing offers an augmented care environment where a virtual team supports bedside nurses and elevates hands-on patient care. AvaSure’s virtual care platform can assist staff with:
Assistance with documentation
Specialty consults
Sepsis and deterioration detection/prevention
Novice nurse mentoring
Download the use case study to learn how this model of care can help your health system reduce labor costs and support bedside nurses.
Posted on February 5, 2024 by Olivia Phillips - Uncategorized
Healthcare workers are 5x more likely to experience workplace violence; new strategies are necessary to keep staff safe.
Workplace violence in hospitals is not an isolated incident, and the impact reverberates throughout the organization, affecting morale, job satisfaction, and ultimately, patient outcomes. Forty-eight percent of nurses reported an increase in workplace violence in 2022 and 80% of sitters report experiencing violence. It’s time to invest in new ways to protect healthcare’s greatest resource.
Hospitals using the TeleSitter® solution to prevent workplace violence have increased by 107% since 2019. With 24/7 monitoring to keep 1:1 sitters out of harms way and immediate intervention alarms, virtual sitting has emerged as a proven method to reduce workplace violence.
Download the use case spotlight to learn new strategies and methods to keep your staff safe.
Study in Western Journal of Nursing Research reveals virtual sitting is a valued resource with positive effects on nurse burnout
BELMONT, Mich., Nov. 15, 2023 — Virtual care adoption is increasing quickly in hospital settings, but do bedside clinicians view it as a positive change? Recent studies show that virtual sitting is a technological advancement that is viewed as a resource gain, not a resource drain. AvaSure, the market leader in acute virtual sitting and virtual nursing solutions, today announced the results of a new study published in the Western Journal of Nursing Research in August 2023. The study, An Experience Sampling Analysis of the Impact of Video Monitoring Technology and In-Person Sitters on Nurse Burnout: The Moderating Effect of Nurse Commitment and Mediating Effect of Emotional Labor (Kluemper, et al), supported by Providence and AvaSure, revealed that the use of virtual sitting technology, as opposed to one-to-one sitters, can be tied to reduction in nurse burnout especially for nurses who already feel less committed. Additionally, the study showed in-person sitting was viewed as a resource drain with negative effects on these nurses’ emotional labor and emotional exhaustion.
“Having insightful research into virtual sitting helps us alleviate burnout among our nursing staff and optimize the usage of all our resources to get the right care to the right patient at the right time,” said study co-author Emily Anderson, MSN, RN, PCCN-K, nurse manager at Providence Medical Center in Anchorage, AK. “This study supports our experience that virtual sitting improves the well-being of our nurses and helps maintain patient safety.”
While it is well-established in clinical literature that virtual sitting technology, compared with the use of in-person sitters, improves safety and reduces costs for hospitals, this study sheds light on the technology’s impact on nurses’ stress and well-being. The new study builds on previous research published in the Journal of Nursing Measurement in 2020, which surveyed 412 nurses on their attitudes toward virtual sitting. It demonstrated bedside nurses view virtual sitting as an increased resource to maintain patient safety and did not view one-to-one sitters as a safer alternative.
“This research represents a valuable contribution to the knowledge base on virtual sitting by being the first to demonstrate a reduction in nurse burnout associated with the use of virtual sitting technology,” said Lisbeth Votruba, MSN, RN, chief clinical officer of AvaSure. “As more and more peer-reviewed research on virtual sitting is published, it becomes clearer that nurses view the unproven practice of using one-to-one sitters as a resource drain and virtual sitters are a benefit. Nurses know that pulling valuable nursing assistants to sit with one patient around the clock is wasteful and leaves everyone else shorthanded.”
“While we already know from the existing literature that virtual sitting improves patient safety and saves hospitals critical financial resources, it is important to better understand how virtual sitting impacts nurse well-being,” said Don Kluemper, Ph.D., the study’s lead author and Professor of Management at Texas Tech University. “This new study supports the notion that virtual sitting reduces while one-to-one sitters worsen nurse burnout.”
The study used an experience sampling method and was conducted by surveying nurses twice a day for three weeks, resulting in 524 survey administrations provided by 74 nurses. The surveys included measures of daily video monitoring technology and in-person sitter use, emotional labor, emotional exhaustion, and nurse career commitment. Nurses participated from Providence Medical Center in Anchorage, AK and Providence St. Peter in Olympia, WA.
AvaSure was not involved in the study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, writing of the manuscript nor the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.
To learn more about the AvaSure TeleSitter® solution, click here.
About AvaSure
AvaSure provides the leading virtual sitting and virtual nursing solutions to systems with nursing and staffing shortages that are challenged to significantly reduce labor costs without sacrificing patient health outcomes. Recognized by KLAS Research as the leader in reducing the cost of patient care, AvaSure is the pioneer in providing best-in-class, video-based AvaSure TeleSitter® and TeleNurse™ solutions. As a trusted partner of more than 1,100 hospitals, AvaSure combines virtual safety attendants, virtual nurses and other providers on a single platform to enhance clinical care without placing any additional burdens on existing staff. To learn more about AvaSure visit www.avasure.com.
About Providence
Providence is a national, not-for-profit Catholic health system comprising a diverse family of organizations and driven by a belief that health is a human right. With 51 hospitals, over 1,000 physician clinics, senior services, supportive housing, and many other health and educational services, the health system and its partners employ more than 120,000 caregivers serving communities across seven states – Alaska, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, and Washington, with system offices in Renton, Wash., and Irvine, Calif. Learn about our vision of health for a better world at www.Providence.org.
