Join us for an insightful webinar on the responsible and ethical use of AI in healthcare with Aaron Miri, Senior VP and Chief Digital and Information Officer of Baptist Health and Elizabeth Gunn, VP of Patient Services for Baptist Medical Center South. Elizabeth and Aaron will discuss how to prepare your hospital culture before implementing AI, the relevant uses to help extend your staff, and some of the common misconceptions. Register for the webinar to learn about:
Demystifying AI: Addressing misconceptions and highlighting AI’s true role as a supportive tool to support clinicians at the bedside.
Augmenting Clinical Staff: Strategies to alleviate staffing shortages with AI, ensuring it extends, not replaces, caregivers.
Real-World Applications at Baptist: Learn about AI-driven solutions for sepsis identification, fall prevention, and more.
Register now to secure your spot and explore how AI can augment your clinical operations and help extend the reach of your staff.
In the wake of staffing shortages, the need to efficiently scale virtual care programs has never been greater. Implementing virtual care is one thing, but to transform the care delivery model hospitals must deeply understand the clinical workflows, change management, and leadership required to implement real change and achieve lasting results.
Join industry pioneers Lisbeth Votruba and Claire Zangerle as they unveil an inpatient virtual care maturity model, crafted with insights from top nursing leaders and industry advisors. This session will highlight the challenges hospitals face in redesigning care delivery, offer a visionary outlook for the future of virtual care, and emphasize the importance of a structured maturity model to achieve real and lasting change.
Learning points:
Learn how a maturity model helps hospitals overcome care redesign challenges and achieve sustainable growth
Gain practical insights from industry pioneers on scaling virtual care programs for lasting impact
By Lisbeth Votruba, MSN, RN, Chief Clinical Officer
The Goal: • Improve patient safety • Reduce fall risk • Increase access to specialty care • Free up CNA and bedside nurses for other activities
The Results: 1. Success of the virtual sitting program: • Saved costs • Improved patient and staff satisfaction 2. Progression into virtual nursing: • Utilization of the same technology • Further cost savings • Enhanced patient and staff satisfaction
Nursing shortages and associated costs are not going away. While RN turnover has dropped from 22.5% in 2022 to 18.4% in 2023, the turnover rate for nursing assistants increased from 33.7% to 41.8% in the same period. And the ongoing costs as nurses continue to leave the profession are high. Each RN that leaves costs an average hospital $56,350, totaling roughly $4M – $6M per year, according to the 2024 NSI National Health Care Retention and RN Staffing Report. Bottom line: nurses need sustained support or the profession will continue to decline in well-being and in numbers.
These challenges hit particularly hard in smaller, community-based organizations. Holzer Health System is a not-for-profit, multi-disciplinary regional health system that provides the full continuum of care for its communities with locations throughout southeastern Ohio and western West Virginia. The system includes two hospital locations, including a rural critical access hospital, as well as multiple clinical locations, long-term care entities, and more than 180 providers in more than 30 medical specialties.
Matthew L. Hemphill MSN, RN, CNML, Director of Acute Care Nursing at Holzer Health System, described the problem: “We want to keep as many of our patients here rather than transferring them out to the nearest tertiary center two hours away. While we did have a small pool of one-to-one sitters, staffing was a challenge. Many needs were going unmet. There were numerous patients who required more monitoring than we could offer.”
Improving care, beginning with virtual sitting
The COVID-19 pandemic made matters worse, so Holzer had to come up with a workable plan that would allow it to augment its existing staff while keeping a larger volume of patients safe.
Holzer undertook a major initiative to improve patient safety, reduce fall risk and increase access to specialty care by securing a grant through the FCC COVID-19 Telehealth Program to implement an inpatient virtual sitting solution.
With the aid of the grant, Holzer implemented AvaSure’s virtual care technology to support virtual sitters, who watch over patients via video-and-audio connections to enhance patient safety, such as reducing patient falls and elopement. The health system implemented 16 devices, including four ceiling-mounted devices, 12 mobile devices and a centralized monitoring station. The primary goal was to enable and expand the use of virtual sitters, freeing up CNAs and bedside nurses for other care activities.
After seeing the virtual sitting program’s success in saving costs, as well as improving patient and staff satisfaction, the health system progressed into virtual nursing using the same technology platform. AvaSure’s intelligent virtual care platform enables virtual sitting, virtual nursing and specialty medical consults.
Progressing to inpatient virtual nursing and realizing multiple improvements
When Holzer progressed from virtual sitting to virtual nursing, one key principle it followed was to structure the use of virtual sitters and nurses so that all nurses work at the top of their licenses. This enables a care model where RNs, CNAs, and VRNs perform the most-appropriate patient care activities based on their skills and experience.
Using the AvaSure platform, scarce specialists in neurology, nephrology, diabetes education and wound care can serve more patients in both facilities, the main Gallipolis Hospital and the rural critical access Jackson Hospital.
For example, Holzer has one certified wound and ostomy nurse (CWON) serving both facilities, located 30 miles apart. Natalie Gardner BSN, RN, CWON, CFCS, described 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.” Giving patients easier access to specialists improves care and facilitates early intervention to prevent transfers from the critical access hospital to the main facility.
Continuing to hone the virtual nursing program
For community health systems, the strain on resources will continue for the foreseeable future. Progressing on a path from virtual sitting to virtual nursing extends precious resources to enable high quality patient care, while allowing all nursing staff to work at the top of their skills and licenses. Holzer is continuing its path to expand its virtual nursing program to encompass more activities across more inpatient care units. At every stage, Holzer is delivering better patient outcomes while enabling a care model that gives nurses more time for their most satisfying work – spending time on direct patient care.
AvaSure Analytics helps providers benchmark virtual care program performance against 800+ hospitals
BELMONT, Mich., [April 8, 2024] — On the heels of its breakthrough innovation with the AvaSure Episodic solution that allows hospitals to transform their virtual care model, AvaSure, has announced significant enhancements to its industry-leading analytics portal that further advances its AI-powered Intelligent Virtual Care platform. The AvaSure Analytics™ portal has been revamped with Microsoft PowerBI tools that enable healthcare providers to conduct deep analysis of critical metrics. As the only comparative database of its kind, AvaSure enables benchmarking an organization’s virtual care program performance against more than 800 hospitals nationwide, including a wide range of sizes and types, to drive care quality improvements and return on investment.
“The AvaSure platform has logged over 145 million hours monitoring nearly 2 million patients across the country, consistently delivering program results that improve patient safety while reducing costs,” said Adam McMullin, CEO of AvaSure. “In addition to delivering measurable labor cost savings by reducing the need for 1:1 sitters by 75%, AvaSure gives hospitals actionable insights based on their own data to further reduce the risk of falls, elopement, workplace violence, and other events. Plus, it allows them to assess the health of their virtual care program by comparing their performance against similar organizations, such as academic medical centers or pediatric hospitals, to track performance against relevant targets.”
Amid persistent staffing shortages and rising pressure to control costs, virtual care has become essential for hospitals looking to adapt. The AvaSure platform enables organizations to seamlessly blend remote and in-person treatment at scale, leveraging AI to use resources more efficiently, respond faster to patient needs, and let clinical teams focus on the work they love. With insightful analytics, healthcare providers gain:
Actionable Intelligence: With clear insights into labor cost savings, patient demographics, utilization, alarm rates, staff interventions, adverse events prevented and more, organizations can identify and target areas for improvement by care unit and staff member.
Clear Results: Straightforward visualizations make it easy to equip leadership to communicate program highlights, ROI, and successes.
Macro to Micro Analysis: Users can view data at the program level and easily drill down into data for care units and individual virtual safety attendants for a granular understanding of performance and opportunities for data-driven intervention strategies.
Comparative Advantage: Organizations can view benchmarks by the national average and by organization type (e.g., academic medical centers, Magnet®-designated hospitals, Veterans Administration, rehabilitation facilities, critical access hospitals, etc.) to see how they stack up.
“With such straightforward, intuitive access to advanced analytics, the AvaSure platform helps our clients take their virtual care programs to the next level,” said Lisbeth Votruba, MSN, RN, AvaSure’s chief clinical officer. “It’s never been easier for our clients to quantify the value they are receiving, based on both their own metrics and against similar organizations. The latest analytics portal release is an investment in AvaSure’s virtual care platform that demonstrates our commitment to innovation and delighting our customers. By partnering with AvaSure, our customers can be sure that we are going to continue to push the envelope with the latest technology and develop solutions that delight stakeholders across the organization – clinical, IT, and finance.”
The AvaSure Intelligent Virtual Care platform gives organizations flexibility in the use of virtual care solutions that reduce labor costs while ensuring high-quality patient care. Clinicians can admit and discharge patients, engage with them bedside, and monitor them remotely at scale no matter where they are, relieving the onsite team and seamlessly integrating in-person and virtual workflows. AvaSure continuously innovates in the virtual care space while demonstrating a proven record of clinical outcomes with AI-powered continuous monitoring, episodic care, and analytics that help to drive real results.
To learn more about AvaSure analytics, click hereor stop by AvaSure’s AONL booth #1112 in New Orleans, April 8-11.
About AvaSure
AvaSure® is an intelligent virtual care platform that healthcare providers use to engage with patients, optimize staffing, and seamlessly blend remote and in-person care at scale. The platform deploys AI-powered virtual sitting and virtual nursing solutions, meets the highest enterprise IT standards, integrates seamlessly with technology partners, and drives measurable outcomes. AvaSure consistently delivers a 6x ROI and has been recognized by KLAS Research as the #1 solution for reducing the cost of care. With a team of 15% nurses, AvaSure is a trusted partner of 1,100+ hospitals with experience in over 5,000 deployments.
In this session, you’ll hear from a panel of CIOs who will share their vision for what the future of virtual care looks like, real-world success stories and strategies for overcoming challenges. They’ll cover patient-centric approaches, collaborating with clinical leaders, the role of artificial intelligence, integration within existing IT infrastructure and building the business case for virtual care.
Learning points:
Explore specific ways healthcare IT plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of virtual care.
Learn principles for designing virtual care solutions that prioritize the patient and caregiver experience.
Gain insights on challenges in implementing virtual care initiatives and strategies for future proofing.
Learn how to fund your virtual care program on a cost-neutral basis.
Presenters:
Edward Marx, CEO, Marx Advisory
Brian Sterud, MBA, CHCIO, FACHE, VP of IT, CIO, CISO, Faith Regional Health Services
Joshua Rosentel, MBA, BSN, RN, CPHQ, Nursing Informatics Officer, Lehigh Valley Health Network
Inderpal Kohli, Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Englewood Health
Marc Perkins-Carrillo, MSN, RN, NI-BC, NE-BC, HACP, Chief Nursing Informatics Officer, Moffitt Cancer Center
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.
Ready to take your virtual care program to the next level? Elevate your virtual care program with AvaSure Episodic™, the latest solution from AvaSure’s Intelligent Virtual Care Platform. Watch this webinar on-demand to see how Episodic transforms healthcare delivery, offering scalability and seamless patient interactions for virtual nursing, specialty consults, admission and discharge, mentorship, and more. Don’t miss this opportunity to witness how AvaSure Episodic™ is reshaping virtual care, paving the way for enhanced patient outcomes and improved healthcare delivery.
Learning points:
Understand the concept and use cases for episodic virtual care
Explore key features designed to facilitate seamless communication between patients and caregivers
Learn how Episodic prioritizes patient engagement and satisfaction, fostering a more personalized and empathetic approach to care delivery
Presenters:
Jacob Hansen, Chief Product Officer, AvaSure
Dana Peco, MSN, RN, Director of Clinical Solutions, AvaSure
Caregivers can now provide thoughtful care from anywhere with a fast, reliable two-way connection that supports virtual care for admission, discharge, specialty consults, rounding, and more.
AvaSure Episodic™ Solution
Virtual care is essential to adapt
As healthcare systems grapple with rising costs, staffing shortages, and increasing complexity of patient care, the urgency for change is at an all-time high. With a staggering 22.7% turnover rate among staff, hospitals struggle to uphold their commitment to patient care. Amidst these challenges, there’s a growing recognition that digital transformation measures are essential.
Hospitals across the world are adopting virtual care solutions to alleviate the mounting pressures facing healthcare systems globally. This signals a brighter future for both patients and healthcare providers alike. Using technology to facilitate remote consultations, monitoring, and support, virtual care offers a pathway toward improved staff satisfaction, enhanced patient experiences, better health outcomes, and more efficient hospital operations. With the right virtual care platform, hospitals can redefine patient experiences and revolutionize the way healthcare services are delivered.
The path to virtual care isn’t always clear
As hospitals and health systems embark on the journey toward the hospital room of the future, the road is fraught with obstacles, requiring hospitals to confront complex issues head-on. Historically, hospitals have adopted point solutions to address specific virtual care needs, resulting in fragmented systems and siloed approaches. Now, there is a growing recognition of the need to consolidate these disparate solutions into integrated virtual care platforms that can scale across the entire enterprise. Such endeavors require a significant investment, posing financial constraints for resource-strapped healthcare institutions. Without a clear adoption model that demonstrates ROI, hospitals struggle to build the business case for virtual care, further complicating the decision-making process.
Amidst this backdrop, hospitals are piloting virtual care platforms, each with varying levels of success and clinical adoption. The stakes are high, as the initial impression of these pilots can significantly influence the trust that caregivers have in these technologies to deliver on their promise. Hospitals must tread carefully, ensuring that their chosen solutions and partners not only meet the clinical needs of their patients but also garner widespread acceptance and support from healthcare professionals. Support from clinical, IT, and finance departments paves the way for successful implementation and integration into routine care delivery practices.
Episodic™ Care solution powered by AvaSure’s Intelligent Virtual Care Platform
Step into the hospital of the future with AvaSure’s new virtual care solution, AvaSure Episodic™. Designed in close collaboration with clinicians and technical experts, AvaSure Episodic delivers a reliable two-way video solution designed to scale to the entire enterprise.
With the AvaSure Episodic solution, caregivers gain full control over the quality of remote, consultative patient interactions. It enables two-way video with group calling and polite entry, allowing for specialty consults, admitting and discharging patients, rounding, and more. Virtual care with the Episodic solution frees up time for nursing and support staff, enables seamless remote nursing workflows, and allows collaboration with specialists across the country. With AvaSure, clinicians can achieve more without stretching themselves thin.
Highlights:
Group calling to include multiple parties: Care teams can easily invite family members, interpreters, caregivers, and consulting specialists from multiple locations to join a group session, saving time and making conversations more efficient.
Polite entry to patient rooms: Caregivers respect patients’ privacy by notifying patients before entering the room virtually with a doorbell chime, allowing them time to accept the call.
Web-based access: Neither caregivers nor families need to download anything – all access to episodic care sessions is delivered via a web browser, whether on mobile or desktop.
Fast, reliable two-way video: Clinicians admit and discharge patients remotely, engage with them on rounds, connect with specialists in other locations, and provide training and mentoring to other staff members using portable, flexible devices with high-fidelity cameras.
Integration with Epic: Caregivers can easily launch virtual patient visits from Epic without disrupting their workflow, creating a seamless experience.
The ability for a variety of caregivers to connect with a patient, whether it is a nurse, physician, specialist, or case manager, opens a whole realm of possibilities to drive better patient experience, more efficient operations, and reduced burden on bedside staff. AvaSure’s Intelligent Virtual Care Platform allows healthcare teams to seamlessly integrate in-person and virtual caregivers, promoting continuity of care and ensuring treatment plans are tailored to individual needs. Interpreters and family members can also participate in virtual group interactions to simplify communication. By leveraging AvaSure to involve a diverse range of caregivers in patient care, healthcare organizations can optimize resource utilization, streamline workflows, and alleviate pressure on frontline staff, ultimately enhancing the quality of care and patient outcomes.
The AvaSure Episodic solution can support a variety of virtual care workflows for virtual nurses, physicians, specialists, and other caregivers, including:
Admission and discharge documentation: Virtual caregivers streamline the admission and discharge documentation process by securely reviewing, capturing, and updating patient records remotely. This reduces administrative burden, minimizes errors, and ensures accurate and efficient documentation, enabling smoother transitions of care for patients.
Patient education: Patients can benefit from virtual education sessions delivered by healthcare professionals, empowering them with knowledge and resources to better understand their conditions, treatments, and self-care strategies, decreasing the risk of readmissions.
Novice nurse mentorship: Novice nurses receive guidance, feedback, and support from experienced mentors remotely, often offering a second set of eyes for high-risk medications or patient assessments. Mentors can observe, assess, and provide tailored coaching to help novice nurses develop clinical skills, confidence, and competence in their practice, ultimately improving patient outcomes and enhancing the overall quality of care delivery.
Specialty consults: Care teams can easily connect with specialty consultants through virtual care platforms, enabling timely consultations and interdisciplinary collaboration, ensuring that patients receive the most appropriate and effective care tailored to their needs.
Proactive rounding: Virtual rounding enables care teams to conduct proactive check-ins with patients remotely, ensuring ongoing monitoring of their condition, progress, and satisfaction. Through video conferencing or virtual visits, healthcare providers can address any concerns, provide emotional support, and reinforce treatment plans, promoting continuity of care and patient-centered communication.
One platform can change everything
The ideal virtual care platform must meet the criteria set by both clinical and IT leaders. In addition to essential hardware and monitoring software, today’s virtual care platforms must meet increasingly high enterprise-level IT standards. They should operate on open, scalable infrastructure to seamlessly integrate with existing systems, ensuring minimal downtime and optimal connectivity for care teams. They should include robust analytics and an intelligence layer for generating clear, measurable outcomes, along with AI capabilities to enhance patient safety and alleviate the workload of virtual staff. Most importantly, access to comprehensive support is essential, particularly for clinical teams navigating change management and envisioning a sustainable virtual care strategy. That’s a tall order.
AvaSure is the only virtual care platform that fulfills each of these crucial requirements, continuously innovating while demonstrating a proven record of clinical outcomes. Hospitals use AvaSure for AI-powered continuous monitoring, episodic care, and building a greater ecosystem of solutions and workflows that transform the hybrid care delivery model. Our team of experienced nursing and healthcare experts collaborate with customers to shape a vision for the future and bring it to life.
One platform can change everything. AvaSure’s Intelligent Virtual Care Platform combines continuous monitoring and episodic care solutions designed to free up more time for nursing and support staff, enable seamless remote care workflows, and ensure better outcomes for patients.
AvaSure Episodic allows care teams to seamlessly collaborate regardless of location around admissions, discharges, rounds, consults and more,allowing health systems to better leverage the talents of their precious nurses and enhancing patient care and staff satisfaction
BELMONT, Mich., [Feb. 26, 2024] — AvaSure, the market leader in acute virtual sitting and virtual nursing, today announced a new solution for virtual episodic care called AvaSure Episodic™. The latest addition to AvaSure’s Intelligent Virtual Care Platform includes robust two-way video capabilities with group calling and polite entry that provides full control over the quality of remote interactions. Nurses leaders in hospitals across the US and Canada can immediately start planning their deployment of AvaSure Episodic for common workflows such as admittance and discharge as well as virtual patient care, specialty consults, mentoring, and coaching.
AvaSure already provides virtual care solutions to more than 1,100 hospitals, with proven clinical evidence and customer results showing significant increases in safety, reduction in costs, improved patient outcomes, and higher staff satisfaction. AvaSure Episodic will improve the quality of episodic encounters at scale, which will further enhance the speed and efficiency of patient care.
“As Benefis is progressing in its virtual care journey, AvaSure Episodic has played an important role in proving the value of virtual nursing,” said Rayn Ginnaty RN, BSN, MBA, President of Benefis Great Falls Hospital. “Our staff appreciates assistance with admissions and discharges from a remote, seasoned nurse and our patients appreciate being able to interact with a clinician and experience an efficient discharge with expert clinical teaching to prepare them for home.”
AvaSure Episodic provides highly reliable episodic care capabilities that can easily scale to thousands of rooms and devices across multiple locations. AvaSure customers get access to expert clinical onboarding and ongoing technical support teams to ensure smooth implementation and adoption.
AvaSure Episodic enhances virtual care workflows with:
Fast, reliable two-way video: Clinicians admit and discharge patients remotely, engage with them on rounds, connect with specialists in other locations, and provide training and mentoring to other staff members using portable, flexible devices with high-fidelity cameras.
Polite entry to patient rooms: Caregivers use AvaSure to respect patients’ privacy, notifying patients before entering the room virtually with a doorbell chime and allowing them time to accept the call.
Group calling to include multiple parties: Care teams can easily invite family members, caregivers, and consulting specialists from multiple locations to join a group session, saving time and making conversations more efficient.
Web-based access: Neither caregivers nor families need to download anything – all access to episodic care sessions is delivered via a web browser, whether on mobile or desktop.
Integration with Epic: Caregivers can easily launch virtual patient visits from Epic without disrupting their workflow, creating a seamless experience.
“As hospitals across the U.S. continue to be challenged with nursing shortages and retention, skill gaps and increased patient complexity, nurses are being stretched too thin. Virtual care has become essential to adapting to this reality,” said Adam McMullin, CEO of AvaSure. “Integrating virtual care with daily bedside workflows for a wide range of interactions is not only more efficient for care teams, but extremely appealing to patients and their families.”
In addition to AvaSure Episodic, AvaSure is investing heavily into advancing virtual care and has integrated additional artificial intelligence (AI) enhancements to its industry-leading virtual care platform. AI augmentation enables health system partners to enhance efficiency and time-savings while also improving the quality of care they deliver. 72% of AvaSure customers see outcomes in less than six months, including over 50% reduction in adverse patient events and a 6x return on investment. With over 5,000 deployments, the platform helps many of the best clinical teams in the nation deliver modern care from anywhere.
To learn more about the AvaSure Episodic solution, click here or stop by booth 2050 at ViVE 2024.
About AvaSure
AvaSure® is an intelligent virtual care platform that healthcare providers use to engage with patients, optimize staffing, and seamlessly blend remote and in-person care at scale. The 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. AvaSure consistently delivers a 6x ROI and has been recognized by KLAS Research as the #1 solution for reducing the cost of care. With a team of 15% nurses, AvaSure is a trusted partner of 1,100+ hospitals with experience in over 5,000 deployments. To learn more, visit www.avasure.com.
Media contact: Marcia G. Rhodes / mrhodes@acmarketingpr.com
In the transformative world of healthcare right now, one topic is at the center of all the headlines: the critical nursing shortage. This gap of over 1 million nurses nationwide is the culmination of years of declining nurse enrollment amplified by the pandemic. As hospitals must function with fewer RNs without sacrificing quality care, the use of virtual care has emerged as a potential savior to a dire situation.
Hospitals across the U.S. are dipping their toes into the world of virtual nursing, but many are unsure where to start and not making much progress. Yet Aurora, Colo.-based UCHealth has been in the virtual care game for years and can be viewed as a roadmap for other facilities looking to cope with capacity challenges, staffing shortages, and extended emergency department wait times.
Download the whitepaper to learn:
Concrete strategies and starting points for implementing virtual care with an adoption model based approach
How virtual nursing can improve employee retention and patient outcomes
Real-world results from a successful virtual nursing program
Please fill out the form to download the whitepaper.
