Join AvaSure Chief Clinical Officer, Lisbeth Votruba, MSN, RN, as we kick off a six-part classroom series: Virtual Nursing 101. Lisbeth had a special guest Terri Hinkley, CEO of the Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses on this first webinar to discuss the important role of the virtual nurse and the creation of the MSNCB Role Certification. The two task force members of the certification dived into key competencies to look for when hiring a virtual nurse and how to recruit for this role without taking away from bedside staff or further exacerbating staffing challenges.
U.S. nurses have relied on the same technology, the nurse call light, to care for a growing, aging, more demanding patient population
It’s time for a more interactive patient room
The truth is that the call light technology used in thousands of patient rooms is rarely updated and increasingly deficient in detecting and alerting staff to life-threatening scenarios.
Amazing advancements like virtual visits, patient portals and remote patient monitoring for disease management are improving communication and quality of care. But how about technology that optimizes inpatient and caregiver safety against violence and “sentinel”[1] or patient safety events?
It’s time to overhaul the call light.
As AI, virtual care, and telehealth take center stage in healthcare delivery, there is an opportunity to embrace a more interactive patient room where:
Patients are protected from self-harm and adverse events in real time
Clinicians and caregivers can safely and effectively interact with patients before events escalate
The spread of viruses like COVID-19 is mitigated
The care team is reserved for the highest, most effective level of bedside care
Call lights, unsecured mobile devices (think baby monitors), and the questionable practice of using 1:1 sitters placed with patients presenting infectious disease or violent tendencies are neither safe nor sustainable ways to improve patient safety, experience or outcomes. As healthcare workers sometimes feel compelled to adapt unsecure workarounds to monitor potentially dangerous scenarios, it is imperative that health systems consider secure technology for optimal care and safety for every patient and every caregiver.
Thankfully, this is not a futurist mindset. A solution – remote inpatient video monitoring – does exist in most major hospitals around the country. Has it made its way into your holistic telehealth strategy?
What exactly is remote safety monitoring?
Remote safety monitoring technology provides a continuous live feed from a patient’s room, allowing hospital staff to monitor a patient while reducing exposure risks to infectious disease or violence. It improves communication, provides peace of mind and reduces stress among caregivers, patients and families. It allows healthcare workers to keep an eye on patients who are at risk or in isolation and enables clinicians to communicate with their patients any time, remotely, from a monitor at the nursing station.
Remote video monitoring, in conjunction with other safety measures, can:
Help monitoring staff prevent falls, self-harm attempts, and manage other adverse events, such as elopement or wandering and interfering with medical devices.
Alert nursing staff to potentially abusive visitors
Help staff immediately identify clinical deterioration and notify nurses
Protect bedside staff from potentially violent patients
Enable remote monitoring staff to calm the most vulnerable patients
In addition, a paper[2] published in the Journal of Nursing Measurement shared a more personal benefit of the technology, in which a dying, nonverbal patient began humming along with a TeleSitter monitor who initiated humming the song the patient’s daughter hummed every time she visited, pre-COVID. This touching gesture created calm and familiarity in this patient’s final days.
A Holistic Telehealth Strategy Can Address Staffing Shortages, Hospital Falls, and Isolation
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, nursing shortages, patient falls and patient violence were trending concerns in healthcare. Healthcare workers are four times more likely to suffer violence than workers in other industries.[3] These issues have been exacerbated in healthcare environments where staffing is limited, infectious disease management is critical, and at-risk inpatients continue to be isolated due to tighter visitor restrictions. AvaSure’s TeleSitter® Solution has been deployed in 75 percent of major health systems in 48 states. The secured audiovisual monitoring technology allows one tech to monitor up to 16 patients at a time. In an over-burdened health system – the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic notwithstanding – we must consider telehealth technology that protects the patient and the caregiver in today’s precarious healthcare environment. And technology that allows a nurse to serve at their highest calling can only elevate the nursing profession, improve staff engagement and, ultimately, optimize each patient’s recovery.
As chief clinical innovation officer of AvaSure, Lisbeth Votruba, MSN, RN, demonstrates her vision for innovative inpatient telehealth care delivery through her compassionate leadership, activism for the nursing profession, and advocacy for the dignity, safety and quality of care for patients, families and healthcare professionals. As a third-generation nurse, she understands how important it is to keep patients and frontline medical workers safe in clinical environments.
A few years ago, it was estimated that by 2030 the U.S. would experience a shortfall of more than half a million nurses, with a huge loss in quality and availability of care.
The pandemic sped up the timeline.
The greatest concern was the potential loss of specialized expertise; two-thirds of 6,000 critical care nurses surveyed in August 2021 said they were considering leaving the field from burnout.
Solutions have been hard to find, but Houston’s Memorial Hermann Health System has tried something new:
As the COVID-19 delta variant spread, critical care nurses were detailed to an existing central video monitoring facility. There, these “virtual nurses” can care for COVID-19 patients across the system, supporting less experienced bedside nurses and improving patient quality and safety.
Key learning objectives of this on-demand webinar:
Discover the basics of virtual care, including the technology and the art of video and audio interactions with patients and bedside staff
Learn about policies and workflows Memorial Hermann established for virtual nursing
Find out how virtual nurses can make the highest use of specialized care resources
Presenters:
Scott Shaver, MSN, LP, RN, CPHIMS, Director of Hospital Information Systems, Memorial Hermann
Mary Ellen Carrillo, MSN, MBA, RN, CVRN, FABC, Chief Nursing Officer, Vice President of Nursing, Memorial Hermann
Jennifer McGuire, Manager, Staffing, Memorial Hermann
“With staffing being one of the biggest issues for operations today, AvaSure makes a lot of sense because it is a force multiplier. Rather than having one sitter watch one patient, a unit can have one sitter watch twelve patients with remote monitoring.” —Non-customer C-level/executive
This report includes the top 20 emerging solutions that have the greatest potential to disrupt the healthcare market ranked by healthcare leaders across the country
Healthcare executives are overwhelmed by the flood of new technologies in healthcare and can miss an amazing new technology partner because they are lost in the crowd. To solve this problem, KLAS has pulled together a group of provider thought leaders from around the country to help KLAS select the Top 20 Emerging Solutions that are disrupting the healthcare market.
In addition to rating the emerging solutions, our provider thought leaders also gave their input on technology innovation that address the quadruple aim of healthcare; Improve Care and Outcomes, Reduce the Cost of Care, Improve Patient Experience, and Improve Provider Satisfaction.
AvaSure’s latest software release (Version 1.1.12.X) provides significant new features that improve communication of adverse events and allow key stakeholders to determine which events should be included in ORNA® data and reporting.
Details of suspected adverse events can be reported by monitor staff via the AvaSure TeleSitter® software, which generates emails to assigned administrators, who review the reports to determine whether events jeopardized the safety of patients/staff. Validating adverse events provides more actionable and accurate data for ORNA reports, which lead to improved processes to avert future such events.
Hospital IT is needed to configure the outgoing email server’s Notifications settings. Designated event validator(s) need to be added to the export user group through the AvaSure administrator panel. AvaSure recommends assigning this role to a minimum of two users, which allows more efficient validation in the case of time off or a user changing roles in the organization.
You must also define the adverse events you would like to track and establish them in the notifications setting. By default, assisted and unassisted falls are selected; however, a range of other adverse events can be added.
For more information on this software feature, contact info@avasure.com.
2-Way TeleSitter®
With the advent of two-way video on our 2-way Guardian® devices, AvaSure has been used for a variety of telehealth purposes. Now, new capabilities in our latest software allow monitoring staff and frontline staff to establish instant video communication. Use of this functionality has a number of implications for care delivery:
By being able to see the monitor staff, nurses are reminded that another set of eyes is always on their patient, which increases staff buy-in for remote safety monitoring, driving up utilization.
Family members are encouraged seeing there is a real person on the other end of the room unit and can take time off from caring for their loved ones.
This system helps traumatic brain injury patients who might be disturbed by voice with no video.
Two-way video access for monitor staff is determined by clinical leadership and set in AvaSure Administrator Panel®. Depending on the settings selected in AvaSure Administrator Panel, monitor staff may have the option to toggle two-way video on and off. To find out more about the 2-way TeleSitter® feature or the Guardian® 2-way mobile device contact your AvaSure sales representative or click here.
MUSKEGON, Mich., March 2, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — AvaSure, a leading provider of virtual patient safety monitoring systems, today announced new features of its Online Reporting of Nursing Analytics (ORNA®) software.
ORNA®, AvaSure’s unique comparative database on safety, quality and the experience of care, provides a real-time dashboard for day-to-day clinical triage; hospital-specific data to investigate adverse events; and the ability to run comparison reports with similar hospitals.
The updated software – available early 2021 – allows for comparisons of performance to be more focused, helping to improve outcomes through its TeleSitter® Solution. TeleSitter, an interactive audio/video solution, allows hospitals and other clinical care environments to monitor inpatients to prevent patient harm, protect staff from violent patients and visitors, and enhance nursing resources.
“ORNA® now enables users to run their own comparisons on utilization and alarm rates, and monitor staff interventions and their effectiveness, as well as bedside staff responsiveness,” said Lisbeth Votruba, MSN, RN, chief clinical innovation officer of AvaSure. “Users can compare data with similar organizations nationally or regionally, by market type and filtered by care units or specific groups. This allows the user to educate, evaluate and optimize performance of their TeleSitting program – to see how they stack up relative to similar hospitals.”
Leaving a loved one for a stay at the hospital can be tough. Are they getting the attention and the care they really need if a family member or a friend isn’t there with them to call the nurse? But through advances in virtual health, West Michigan based AvaSure is working to bring assistance to patients and peace of mind to their families.
For years, women in healthcare technology—in fact, the technology field altogether—were more of an anomaly than the norm. Today, they are still in the minority when it comes to executive leadership in the field but opportunities for women in healthcare technology are increasing. A new generation of technology leaders will continue to push healthcare forward in the years ahead, bringing with them a strong technical background and a potentially different take on addressing current and future issues.
Fawn Lopez, publisher of Modern Healthcare and vice president of Crain Communications, sat down with four female leaders in healthcare technology to discuss the path they’ve taken to get to their current positions as well as the road ahead.
