HINES , IL — Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital has begun integrating a new patient monitoring system to improve Veteran health and assist medical staff.
The AvaSure® Continuous Video Monitoring System places portable cameras in patients’ rooms who may need closer monitoring. Staff can observe up to 15 patients simultaneously through a virtual interface to monitor for issues such as a patient out of bed or patient-caused medical device interference.
“It’s the hospital room of the future, today,” said James Doelling, Hines VA hospital director. “Military Veterans have unique medical needs that often require continuous monitoring. With this innovation, we continue to provide the latest medical technology and improve our patients’ overall health.”
The monitoring system will be used in Hines VA’s Community Living Center (CLC), which includes short- and long-term nursing home care and hospice.
The monitoring system is used in more than 1,100 hospitals, and AvaSure® reports an over 50 percent reduction in adverse effects, such as falls and self-harm.
“This is a proven, easy-to-implement safety solution for our staff and veterans,” said Binu Polakkattil, CLC’s chief nurse. “We know that in addition to a nurse and nursing assistant, we have someone else monitoring the patient, which greatly improves their health outcome.”
About Edward Hines, Jr. VA Hospital Edward Hines, Jr. VA Hospital, located 12 miles west of downtown Chicago on a 147-acre campus, offers primary, extended and specialty care to Veteran patients in the Chicago area. We are the largest VA in the state of Illinois, where more than a million Veterans reside. The hospital treats more than 50,000 Veterans from World War II through the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
St. Luke’s is a Duluth, Minnesota-based health system that serves the communities of northeastern Minnesota, northwestern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Like many health systems across the country, it has faced challenges with staffing: a tightening labor market, increasing competition for experienced healthcare workers and rising costs.
THE PROBLEM
“Many of these challenges were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting us to seek new ways to provide additional resources and support to our patient care staff,” said Cole Rogers, RN, nurse manager at St. Luke’s.
“We identified virtual sitting as one solution to achieve a quick ROI, enabling us to decrease the use of costly one-to-one sitters.”
PROPOSAL
Knowing it couldn’t simply keep hiring more one-to-one sitters, St. Luke’s decided to explore alternative means of preventing patient falls and keeping patients safe.
“One method proven through research to be effective is virtual sitting, which enables a single, trained employee to monitor multiple patients simultaneously via AI-enabled mobile video-and-audio connection,” said Kristin Townley, RN, clinical supervisor at St. Luke’s. “This method helps prevent falls, elopement, violence against caregivers and other adverse events.
“Virtual monitoring has allowed our patient care teams to become more efficient by reserving their time for skills, activities and clinical tasks appropriate to their experience, education and licensure.”
Cole Rogers, RN, St. Luke’s
“Implementing a virtual sitter program promised to optimize staff efficiencies by allocating our resources more effectively – thereby, reducing the burden on staff and allowing them to focus on other critical aspects of patient care, while the virtual sitter program handles routine observation tasks,” she continued.
After a competitive review of vendors, St. Luke’s decided to go with AvaSure. Staff had spoken with nursing leaders at peer institutions and learned of the vendor’s excellent customer service, quick implementation and continued program support post-launch, she added.
“In addition, we appreciated the two-way video and versatile configurations of room devices, which enable a wide range of virtual care advances,” she noted.
MEETING THE CHALLENGE
St. Luke’s nurse-driven elevated level of observation protocol allows the primary RN to initiate the virtual sitting program in their Meditech Expanse EHR. Once the order is placed, the monitor specialists receive a notification via their ASCOM phone system.
“We use a two-person model for our virtual sitting program: one staff member provides rounding services for patients and staff, while the other observes patients via video monitors,” Townley explained. “Nursing leaders have found this approach enhances patient and staff safety and helps support staff by providing adequate breaks to avoid monitor fatigue.
“Promoting a team approach to safety has helped build trust and goodwill among departments which, in turn, has increased program utilization.”
Kristin Townley, RN, St. Luke’s
“Promoting a team approach to safety has helped build trust and goodwill among departments which, in turn, has increased program utilization,” she continued.
By adding a rounding specialist, the hospital has provided nursing staff with a valuable resource for patient safety, which allows them to concentrate on direct patient care needs. Here’s how the process works.
Once an order is received, one specialist transports the camera to the patient room, completes audio and visual checks, and introduces the monitor observer to the patient. During rounds, the rounding specialist obtains face-to-face reports from nursing staff, provides patient updates, and rounds on one-to-one patients and staff while ensuring their welfare and conducting room safety checks.
Additionally, the specialist facilitates the triage process, attends staffing huddles, and cleans and transports camera and audio devices to storage. Finally, the monitor observer and rounding specialist switch places at least every four hours, depending on patient acuity, to avoid monitor fatigue.
“In addition to using virtual sitting for patients at risk of falls and elopement, St. Luke’s Hospital has expanded to virtual sitting for monitoring vital signs, monitoring seizure patients, communicating with patients requiring frequent interactions, and connecting with patients who have high call light usage,” Townley said.
“Our monitor specialists are currently being trained in empathetic communication, by our mental health department, in order to provide additional support to patients experiencing anxiety, depression and other mental health issues,” she added.
RESULTS
Since initiating the virtual sitting program at St. Luke’s Hospital in November 2021, the organization has had more than 164,842 hours of patient observation. The program uses 16 devices throughout the hospital. Virtual monitoring of patients has improved patient safety through fall reduction and prevention, boosted staff efficiency, and decreased staffing costs by reducing one-to-one sitters.
“Our primary use of virtual sitting is for fall reduction and prevention,” explained Cole Rogers, RN, nurse manager at St. Luke’s. “Fifty-four percent of our patients are admitted to the program for heightened fall risk. We estimate our program prevents 529 falls per month at St. Luke’s. We believe our virtual monitoring program helped us achieve the lowest fall rate in the State of Minnesota for the 3rd quarter of 2023.
“Without the presence of video and audio, the story could have ended differently and perhaps tragically.”
Christine Glover, St. Luke’s
“Virtual monitoring has allowed our patient care teams to become more efficient by reserving their time for skills, activities and clinical tasks appropriate to their experience, education and licensure, thus relieving them of duties that could be safely done by someone else with an alternative skill set,” she continued. “To optimize nursing licensure, we have implemented innovative methods of deploying our virtual sitter technology.”
One example is using monitor staff to check in with patients receiving continuous bladder irrigation, instead of the nurse being required to check in with the patient every 15-20 minutes. Another example is using the virtual monitor assistant to encourage patients to drink their bowel prep solution every 15 minutes, again preventing a nurse from having to do this task.
“The cost-effectiveness of our virtual sitter technology compared to traditional methods of one-to-one sitters has been incredibly impactful to St. Luke’s Hospital,” Rogers said. “In 2023, virtual sitter hours accounted for 39.7 FTEs hospital wide, while staffed one-to-one sitters amounted to 8.8 FTEs. For 2023, the annual cost savings from our virtual sitting program is more than $1.5 million dollars.
“From 2022-2023, some units in St. Luke’s Hospital saw a decrease in the number of one-to-one sitters by 73% due to the utilization of the virtual sitter program,” she continued. “Looking back to 2018, prior to implementing the virtual sitter program, St. Luke’s Hospital averaged 15.9 FTEs of one-to-one sitters.”
Since 2018, the organization has decreased one-to-one sitter FTE by about half, which allows those staff members to return to providing bedside care on the unit in addition to adding the support of the virtual sitter program. Virtual sitting has improved staffing ratios from one-to-one to one-to-12, sometimes even as high as one-to-16, depending on patient acuity.
“We believe communicating the positive impact of a virtual sitter program to patients and their families gives us greater engagement,” she noted. “A successful virtual sitter program fosters transparent communication between healthcare providers, patients and their families. It reassures them their well-being is a top priority, promoting a sense of trust in the health system.”
ADVICE FOR OTHERS
Christine Glover, telemonitor specialist program coordinator at St. Luke’s, advises her peers at other hospitals and health systems starting a virtual sitter program to consider prioritizing three steps: systematic training, patient-centered approach and continuous evaluation.
“Comprehensive training and education for healthcare staff and virtual sitters is integral to a successful program,” she said. “Thorough orientation ensures virtual sitters receive training in both technological aspects and healthcare protocols to guarantee competent and compassionate care.
“A patient-centered approach enables virtual sitters to prioritize patients’ well-being: providing emotional support, and maintaining a compassionate connection despite the virtual nature of the services we provide,” she continued. “Regularly assessing and appropriately triaging patients under observation allows the acute patients to remain monitored and the stable patients to discharge from the program, optimizing the technologic-assisted care.”
This ensures feedback from both virtual sitters and healthcare staff to identify areas for determining appropriate interventions and implementing necessary adjustments, she added. Providing training to St. Luke’s bedside care staff led to better patient outcomes and overall staff satisfaction, she reported.
From a technological viewpoint, Glover outlined, these are the pieces that flow together to enhance communication electronically:
Order entry for virtual monitoring in the patient’s electronic healthcare record transmits to the ASCOM phone in the monitor department.
A monitor specialist enters patient information into program software.
The camera video/audio monitoring is initiated and tested. The mobile cameras are equipped with infrared technology for night vision.
Frequent communication from the monitor specialist to primary care staff occurs via ASCOM phones.
Communication with patients happens via verbal interventions, prerecorded announcements and stat alarms.
To ensure monitor staff attentiveness, observer alert notifications are transmitted to leadership over ASCOM phones to check staff and patients for safety.
Data on the number of safety events, device and unit utilization, alarm response times, and the number of interventions are collected by a software informatics program. This information is globally distributed throughout St. Luke’s Hospital.
Open shifts within the department are texted out via computer software.
“Feedback we’ve received about our virtual monitoring program includes mention of the ease of implementation for nursing staff,” Glover noted. “It’s been said the two-person virtual monitoring model we use for our program produces less stressful ordering and higher utilization, which results in increased patient safety.
“A nurse can enter an order for virtual monitoring at any workstation, removing the need for paper forms and faxing,” she continued. “The delivery of the camera to the unit by the rounding staff allows the nurse to remain on the unit to provide patient care.”
One patient story illustrates the benefit the virtual sitting program has created for patient safety.
“While observing a patient in the neurology unit for fall prevention, the virtual sitter noticed the patient begin to cough while the patient was eating lunch,” she recalled. “The virtual safety attendant activated the audio on the patient’s camera and heard coughing and gasping. He then called the on-duty nurse to intervene and called a rapid response code.
“The nurse stopped the patient from choking, and the patient was later moved to an area of the hospital that delivered a higher level of care,” she continued. “Without the presence of video and audio, the story could have ended differently and perhaps tragically.”
The integration of virtual sitter technology represents a significant step toward enhancing patient care and streamlining healthcare operations, she added.
“By considering these key factors, healthcare providers can make informed decisions that contribute to a safer, more efficient and patient-centric healthcare environment,” she concluded.
In a time where staffing shortages are impacting patient safety, virtual sitting continues to be a proven alternative to 1:1 sitters.
It’s no secret that staffing shortages are having a significant impact on patient safety, particularly when it comes to preventing falls.
Hospitals across the nation have experienced dramatic improvements in fall and 1:1 sitter reduction by adopting the TeleSitter® solution. For example, Community Health Systems (CHS) achieved a remarkable 76% decrease in falls. Similarly, the VA North Texas reduced sitting costs by nearly 90%. These success stories are just a few bright lights among AvaSure’s successful customers.
Over the past decade, nursing research has not only established the feasibility and safety of virtual sitting but has also illuminated its superiority in achieving patient safety outcomes when compared to traditional one-to-one sitting.
Download the latest use case spotlight to take the first step towards patient safety.
Explore their journey of virtual patient monitoring from evaluation to implementation to outcomes, including a significant reduction in falls, zero patient falls with injuries in 2022, and improved staffing efficiencies.
Challenge: Reducing patient falls
CHS, one of the largest provider organizations in the United States, operates across 43 distinct markets in 15 states. Their decade-long commitment to high reliability, safety, and harm reduction aligned perfectly with the need to reduce falls during the pandemic in 2021. Hospitals across the nation have been grappling with staffing shortages, leading to nurse burnout and a rise in adverse patient events. As the personnel issue worsened, many healthcare systems asked: How can hospitals create a care system that reduces the need for 1:1 patient sitters while allowing nurses to focus on critical patient care?
Evaluating solutions: Evidence and scalability
In their quest for the right solution, CHS employs a rigorous evaluation process. Their primary criteria encompass two crucial elements: evidence-based effectiveness and scalability. First and foremost, CHS seeks evidence-backed solutions, emphasizing clinical outcomes and operational impacts. This commitment to data-driven decision-making ensures that any chosen solution delivers tangible benefits across both patient care and operational efficiency.
The second key criterion is scalability. Given CHS’s size, the ability to initially implement a solution at a few select hospitals and then scale it elsewhere across the organization is paramount. In this regard, AvaSure’s TeleSitter solution met these criteria for virtual patient monitoring, making it a natural choice to address their needs.
Phase 1 deployment: Keys to success
CHS’s journey with the AvaSure TeleSitter solution commenced with a pilot deployment at three hospitals and then scaled to 17. This pivotal phase yielded notable success, attributed to several critical factors:
Intentionality: The deployment of virtual patient monitoring was marked by a deliberate and well-thought-out strategy. Every step was carefully considered, from initial planning to execution, ensuring a seamless integration of the TeleSitter solution into their healthcare ecosystem.
Metrics that matter: A key driver of success was CHS’s dedication to data-driven decision-making. They recognized the importance of collecting precise and relevant data to assess the impact of the TeleSitter solution accurately. This commitment to meaningful metrics allowed them to track progress, identify areas for improvement, and ultimately optimize patient care outcomes.
Leadership and oversight: Strong leadership and dedicated oversight were pivotal throughout the deployment process. Key leaders within CHS played a central role in driving the virtual patient monitoring initiative forward. Their unwavering commitment and guidance ensured that the program remained aligned with the organization’s broader goals and objectives.
Buy-in and Teamwork: CHS understood that achieving the desired results required a collaborative effort. Encouraging buy-in and utilization among staff was essential. Through effective communication, collaboration, and trust, the healthcare team worked together to maximize the benefits of the TeleSitter solution. It became a team effort, with everyone playing a crucial role in its success.
Strategic Patient Selection: CHS recognized the importance of strategic patient selection in applying the technology where it would be most effective. Careful consideration was given to identifying patients who would benefit most from the TeleSitter solution, further optimizing its impact on patient safety and care quality.
This comprehensive approach to the Phase 1 deployment set the stage for CHS’s journey implementing virtual patient monitoring, paving the way for positive clinical and operational results.
Outcomes: Reduction in falls and positive operational and financial impact
Following the completion of the pilot program, CHS embarked on a thorough analysis, which unveiled some significant outcomes.
A Meaningful decrease in falls: While CHS has worked effectively to reduce falls for years, implementation of the TeleSitter solution led to an even greater reduction in falls, including a 76% reduction in one hospital.
Zero patient falls with injuries in 2022: In 2022, CHS reported zero patient falls with injuries at facilities using virtual patient monitoring. This milestone reflects a profound commitment to patient safety.
Savings through injury avoidance: The solution translated into meaningful savings through the avoidance of costs related to patient injuries. In an environment where litigation looms, AvaSure can help mitigate potential liability claims when it comes to falls with injury.
Staffing dfficiencies of 16 to 1: The introduction of virtual sitters had a strong effect on staffing efficiency. With each virtual sitter capable of monitoring up to 16 patients simultaneously, CHS achieved staffing efficiencies of 16 to 1. This efficiency not only optimized staffing allocation but also enabled caregivers in CHS hospitals to work at the top of their licenses and provide more attentive care to a broader patient population.
These outcomes are a testament to CHS’s commitment to excellence, safety, and innovation. AvaSure delivered quantifiable operational benefit and helped reinforce the high standard of patient care and safety across CHS.
Quality and patient care lead to next steps
Today, CHS is poised to expand virtual patient monitoring services. With 87 devices currently in place, CHS plans to add78 more across 12 more hospitals by the end of 2023.
CHS’s innovative approach helps ensure that more patients are kept safe, more healthcare professionals are supported, and the future of healthcare is brighter than ever.
Watch the webinar replay to hear firsthand from CHS about how they expanded their virtual patient monitoring program to enhance patient safety and optimize resource utilization.
Today, CHS is poised to expand virtual patient monitoring services. With 87 devices currently in place, CHS plans to add 78 more across 12 more hospitals by the end of 2023.
Cutting-edge technology is revolutionizing patient care, preventing falls, amidst unprecedented turnover rates and rising acuity
By Lisbeth Votruba, MSN, RN
Everyone is talking about the shortage of registered nurses, but there’s less discussion about the shortage of unlicensed bedside caregivers in hospitals.
When it comes to patient care technicians (PCTs) and certified nursing assistants (CNAs), health systems are seeing turnover rates exceeding 30 percent. These caregivers are crucial for supporting sustainable care delivery models in hospitals. RNs cannot work at the top of their license if there are not enough unlicensed caregivers to delegate tasks to.
Because of this, it is not surprising that patient safety has been compromised in many ways. Patient falls are the most costly and frequent inpatient adverse event and can serve as a proxy for many other safety events that plague patient care. From 2020 to 2022, sentinel event falls have increased by 253 percent, according to The Joint Commission’s Sentinel Event Data 2022 Annual Review.
Because of this, hospitals are under pressure to develop care systems that address the shortage of PCTs and CNAs and can no longer afford the unsustainable practice of utilizing one-to-one sitters for patient safety.
Virtual sitting
Bedside sitters have been historically used to provide one-to-one observation for patients at high-risk for falls and other safety events, but there is scant evidence to support the practice, and this one-on-one care is extremely costly to hospitals.
Because of the costs and general unfeasibility of employing one-to-one sitters, virtual sitting has become mainstream in acute care. The practice enables a single trained employee to monitor multiple patients simultaneously, preventing falls, elopement, violence against caregivers and many other adverse events. Today, two-way video and more versatile configurations of room devices are enabling a wide range of virtual monitoring advances, resulting in a dramatic decrease in sitter use.
Here are the most recent publications from four hospitals that have successfully implemented virtual sitting programs.
Gaylord Specialty Healthcare. As a long-term acute-care hospital, Gaylord placed a particularly high emphasis on promoting patient independence and rehabilitation, but this increases patients’ risk for falling. The hospital’s demand for sitters started to outpace supply and the program grew more costly.
To respond to the more challenging macroeconomic environment, Gaylord implemented a monitoring program in which mobile telemonitors were deployed to patient rooms for continuous visual monitoring by virtual safety attendants. The goal was to decrease dependence on one-on-one sitters without compromising patient safety.
Gaylord assessed the effectiveness of the program by conducting a three-year study comparing 20 months of baseline data with 20 months of intervention data. At the end of the period, the data showed with statistical significance that the virtual sitting program had driven a 90 percent decrease in sitter hours and a 25 percent reduction in falls.
Houston Methodist Baytown Hospital. A community hospital within a greater health system in Southeast Texas, Houston Methodist Baytown Hospital implemented a virtual sitter program to increase resources for bedside staff, meeting the changes to the healthcare system following the COVID-19 pandemic.
To guide implementation, an interdisciplinary team headed by a nurse leader collaborated with other hospitals within the system to adopt best practices tailored to the hospital’s specific needs.
The hospital’s fall rate in 2022 dropped from an average of 1.43 to 0.98 per 1000 patient days post implementation, which is a 30 percent decrease. There were no falls by monitored patients. The hospital estimated that the program helped to save $295,000 in staff costs. Because of the success of the virtual sitting program, Houston Methodist Baytown Hospital plans to expand from virtual sitting into virtual nursing.
TidalHealth. For at-risk patients, TidalHealth had been running a patient companion program with one-on-one companions, but the $1.1 million initiative had proven to be expensive and unsuccessful. To reverse the trend, the health system implemented virtual sitting in two hospitals after modifying workflows and training staff.
The program dramatically reduced in-person sitter hours in both hospitals by 58 percent and 70 percent resulting in a cost savings of $425,000 in the first six months alone.
Upstate University Hospital SUNY. Although Upstate University Hospital had a virtual sitting program in place, the hospital was under-utilizing the technology they had purchased and falling short of its one-on-one sitter reduction targets. To increase utilization of virtual sitting and decrease sitter usage, nursing leaders developed and implemented a pilot program in four inpatient units that included a mandatory two-hour trial of virtual sitting before deploying a one-on-one sitter when the bedside RN was unsure how the patient would respond to virtual sitting. Most of the mandatory trials were successful in enabling the patient to continue with a virtual sitter and negating the need for a one-on-one sitter.
After completing a successful pilot, Upstate University rolled out the mandatory two-hour trial policy for hospital-wide implementation. After four months of trending data, the team found that the program reduced sitter usage by an average of 7.1 full-time equivalents, which translates to an additional 33 percent decrease of one-to-one sitter utilization just by optimizing the use of the technology they had already purchased.
The experiences of these four hospitals demonstrate the value of virtual sitting in decreasing labor costs while improving patient safety. As financial headwinds increasingly force health systems to explore alternative ways of delivering care, we will see more and more examples of how virtual sitting can help hospitals solve some of their most persistent problems.
Virtual sitting solutions offer a proven approach to alleviating staffing shortages in addition to supporting the bedside care team so everyone is working at the top of their license.
Lisbeth Votruba, MSN, RN is chief clinical officer of AvaSure.
Hear from nurse leaders at a children’s hospital and an acute-care hospital on how remote safety monitoring has succeeded in reducing adverse events for pediatric and adolescent patients.
Caring for children in the inpatient setting presents unique challenges. Like adults, kids can misuse medication devices, elope from the hospital and sustain injuries from falls, but their needs are different and require additional attention from nurses. More than ever, young patients have behavioral health problems ranging from eating disorders to major depressive episodes, a situation made worse by the pandemic. Providing one-to-one care for this patient cohort is costly, ineffective, and resource intensive.
Hear from nurse leaders at a children’s hospital and an acute-care hospital on how remote safety monitoring has succeeded in reducing adverse events for pediatric and adolescent patients while reducing stress on families and caregivers.
Presenters:
Jamie Clendenin, BSN, RN-BC, Supervisor, Nursing Operations, Anne Arundel
Melanie Lee, MSN, RN, CPN, Clinical Director, Pediatric Emergency and Inpatient Unit. Anne Arundel
Customers commend AvaSure’s proven ability to drive outcomes, ROI, scalability and value continued investments, such as AI
BELMONT, Mich., Sept. 21, 2023 —A new Segment Insights report from KLAS revealed that AvaSure customers have recognized the virtual care platform’s ability to improve staff and patient outcomes while driving better financial performance and significant return on investment.
The report, the first-ever by KLAS on virtual sitting and virtual nursing solutions, is based on structured interviews of vendors’ customers. The report designated AvaSure as the top performer in the market, noting that AvaSure is an established, recognizable name, and that customers recognize the platform’s ability to drive outcomes, saying that in addition to reducing patient falls, the solution reduces tube/line interferences, prevents patients from taking outside drugs, and ensures staff safety by preventing patient aggression.
The KLAS report also found that customers have experienced positive financial outcomes from being able to scale sitters’ capacity to observe patients and prevent adverse events. In addition to driving significant ROI, the AvaSure platform was rated at 8.2 out of 9 by customers in terms of getting their money’s worth from the investment. Additionally, the 2022 KLAS Emerging Solutions Top 20 Report ranked AvaSure first for the greatest impact on reducing the cost of care.
“AvaSure’s use cases for telesitting provide a huge return on investment,” said one director, July 2023. “Instead of having multiple in-person sitters, we are using one person. We have economies of scale, and those give us that financial return. Even if we wanted to pay for in-person sitters, there is a scarcity of resources to get them. AvaSure has improved our patient outcomes for falls, fall prevention, and staff retention. It is frustrating when nurses don’t have the resources they need. AvaSure has been an avenue for our nurses to get those resources through different means.”
Separately, the report revealed that respondents overwhelmingly agree that virtual sitting and nursing solutions have been helpful in addressing staffing shortages. These solutions have helped organizations to increase their observation capacity from a 1:1 sitter-to-patient ratio, enabling one sitter to now observe several patients, freeing up skilled clinical staff previously assigned to sitting roles, and allowing them to apply their skills and expertise more meaningfully where needed the most.
“This KLAS report validates that AvaSure’s virtual care platform is helping customers achieve genuine improvements to patient outcomes while alleviating staffing shortages and reducing costs,” said Adam McMullin, CEO, AvaSure. “Customers continue to choose AvaSure because our solution is unmatched in its ability to combine intelligent workflow designs and thoughtful enhancements such as AI, integrations, cloud-based offerings, and flexible devices at scale. Our team is committed to supporting our customers at every stage of their virtual care journey, ensuring they have the tools and guidance they need to succeed.”
The latest report is not the first time AvaSure has been recognized by KLAS. For example, earlier this year, AvaSure earned top marks from KLAS in a Second Look Performance report, which found that all interviewed customers were satisfied to highly satisfied with AvaSure’s solution, noting AvaSure has continued to improve and deliver on its product, and that 100% of respondents would buy again.
KLAS is a research organization that helps healthcare providers make informed technology decisions by offering impartial vendor performance information.
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.
Learn tips, best practices, and protocols from VSAs of some of our most successful program leaders.
Many conversations surrounding AvaSure TeleSitter® or TeleNurse® programs focus on the burden removed from the bedside care team and the benefits to patient outcomes, but the forgotten superstar is often the care provider on the other side of the device. Since launching the pioneering TeleSitter solution in 2008, AvaSure has deployed virtual care at over 1,100 facilities and has learned from phenomenal Virtual Safety Attendant managers who lead effective teams that work tirelessly to keep patients and staff safe.
As one Virtual Safety Attendant (VSA) said, “it’s not just about the patient alone – it’s also about protecting staff while they work tirelessly to provide care.”
Download our latest use case spotlight to learn tips, best practices and protocols from VSAs of some of our most successful program leaders.
Learn why virtual sitting is a solution to address the top patient concern for 2023 – the pediatric mental health crisis.
Caring for children in the inpatient setting presents unique challenges for hospitals across the nation. Similar to adults, kids can interfere with medical devices, elope from the hospital, and sustain injuries from falls, but their primary needs tend to differ and nurses caring for these patients need different support. Pediatric patients have always required a different touch, but the situation is being exacerbated by persistent staffing shortages and the concurrent mental health crisis amongst young Americans. Youth patients in need of behavioral health services are being kept in the ED due to a lack of mental health facilities and appropriate staffing. This makes providing safe and effective care to this important patient cohort costly, ineffective and resource intensive.
Advances in technology, like virtual sitting, have proven to support adequate staffing and allow children to be safe and well cared for. Hear how nurse leaders at a children’s hospital and an acute-care hospital are using virtual sitting for pediatric and adolescent patients and have succeeded in reducing adverse events while also reducing stress on families and caregivers. In addition, they will discuss the policies and procedures to consider and how to get buy-in from your team for this specific patient population.
Learning objectives
Policies and procedures needed for video-monitoring pediatric patients.
How to get buy-in from your frontline team to use technology for this sensitive patient cohort.
Why virtual sitting is a solution to address the top patient concern for 2023 – the pediatric mental health crisis.
