Topic: Virtual Nursing
Virtual Classroom Series Session 4: Introducing the Expert Oversight TeleNurse™ Model
This model of virtual nursing focuses on retaining an experienced nurse to oversee a cohort of complex patients, monitoring for early signs of adverse patient events, mentoring novice nurses and providing support to bedside care teams.
Hear from Lisbeth Votruba, RN, MSN, CCO of AvaSure and the team from UCHealth, Amy Hassell, RN, MSN, Director of Patient Services and Dr. Hemali Patel, ACMO of Inpatient Services. Amy and Dr. Patel work in the innovative Virtual Care Center at UCHealth which helps to support monitoring for patient deterioration, post rapid-response monitoring and more using the Expert Oversight model of Virtual Nursing. Hear about how their program started, outcomes they’ve experienced over the past year and roadblocks they’ve faced in scaling their virtual nursing efforts.
In this session, you’ll learn:
- What’s driving the need for this nursing model, areas of focus and hear best practices from those who’ve already piloted.
- Early outcomes from those already using this model to help detect adverse events sooner and drive satisfaction in nursing staff, especially novice team members.
- Tips on staffing and scaling your virtual nursing program
Presenters:
Amy Hassell RN, MSN, Senior Director of Patient Services, UCHealth Virtual Health Center
Dr. Hemali Patel, MD, ACMO, Inpatient Services, UCHealth
This free, six-part series will take place the last Thursday of each month featuring Lisbeth along with special guests and experts. Lisbeth will cover key topics, lessons learned from ongoing programs, and audience questions.
If 20% of RNs quit by 2027, could virtual nursing be enough to fill the gap?
Some recent staffing survey results should be scary to health system leaders. A virtual nursing expert discusses the value of two emerging tele-nurse models, and how provider organizations can get started with them.
Virtual nursing has been getting an increasing amount of attention in healthcare, especially with telemedicine entering the mainstream during and following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Baptist Health has a successful virtual nursing program up and running, as does Providence. (For more on virtual nursing, click here and here and here.)
Toby Eadelman is chief technology officer at AvaSure, a virtual care technology and services company that works in virtual nursing. AvaSure has six virtual nursing implementations underway.
Eadelman attended HIMSS23 in April and said there was a lot of curiosity among attendees he talked with about virtual nursing. Hospital leaders told him they’re considering some form of virtual nursing but have not actually started a program because they don’t know where to begin.
Healthcare IT News spoke with Eadelman to discuss the state of virtual nursing and how healthcare provider organizations can benefit from these programs.
Q. You attended the HIMSS23 in April. What did you hear at the show about virtual nursing?
A. There was a lot of curiosity among health system and hospital leaders about virtual nursing. On more than one occasion, hospital leaders told me they were considering launching a virtual nursing program in some form but were unsure of where to begin.
The reasons behind this interest and curiosity are familiar to anyone who follows the healthcare industry – rapidly escalating labor costs and widespread staffing shortages.
For instance, according to a recent national survey of nurses, 100,000 nurses quit their jobs during the pandemic, and by 2027, nearly 900,000, or almost one-fifth of the 4.5 million registered nurses nationwide, plan to do the same, endangering the overall national healthcare system if no action is taken.
Both nurses themselves and hospital leaders understand the current approach to nursing is not sustainable, so they are looking to virtual nursing solutions to solve the problem.
Q. You say you’ve been seeing two models of virtual nursing emerging. The first model you call the “expert oversight tele-nurse.” Please describe how this works in-person and virtually.
A. In general, hospitals begin their journey into virtual nursing by employing one of the two primary models that have developed across the healthcare industry. One of those virtual nursing models is what we call the expert oversight tele-nurse model. In this approach, virtual nurses focus on overseeing higher-acuity patients for potential deterioration triggers, supporting novice nurses, and conducting virtual rounding.
An example of a hospital that has implemented this model is Colorado-based UCHealth, which reduced emergency “code blues” by 70% after implementing a virtual nursing program that improved detection of patients experiencing deterioration.
UCHealth has found that virtual nurses can observe changes in patients’ health status, just as they would if they were in rooms with patients, which has helped reduce phone calls and bedside interruptions for in-hospital nurses.
Separately, one hospital in the Southeastern U.S. has launched a virtual nursing program to decrease holding times in the emergency department by streamlining admissions from the ED to inpatient beds. Hospital leaders view this program as a means of supporting nurses on the frontlines without compromising patient safety or patient experience.
Q. The second model you call the “clinical resource tele-nurse.” Please describe how this works in-person and virtually.
A. The second model of virtual nursing, called the clinical resource tele-nurse model, is focused on using virtual clinicians for admission and discharge support, patient and family education, consults, and more. This model supports episodic intervention with two-way audio-video technology allowing personal interaction with the patient during important care events.
After having successfully implemented a virtual sitting program in 2020 in its medical surgical and intensive units, a hospital in the Southeast has launched a pilot virtual nursing program to decrease ED holding times by streamlining admission from the emergency department to inpatient beds.
The medical center sees this as a way to support nurses on the frontlines without compromising patient safety or patient experience.
Q. Where should healthcare provider organization health IT leaders interested in virtual nursing begin the process of starting a program?
A. The first step to starting a virtual nursing program is to identify the biggest challenges that are confronting the provider organization. Doing so will provide insights about unique pain points and clues about how to relieve them.
Gather a group of cross-functional stakeholders, including bedside staff, and listen to them describe the problems they encounter, which are likely to include challenges such as burnout and exhaustion, patient throughput bottlenecks, rising patient complexity, and retirement vacancies causing a lack of highly experienced staff.
Next, prioritize the challenges by greatest impact, build a compelling business case to health system executives about how virtual nursing will lead to financial and operational improvements, and select the right vendor partner.
To ensure success, do not attempt to DIY this. Partner with an experienced virtual care company that offers a system with very high uptime and very good audio and video quality. Ideally, a vendor with experience providing video and audio in the acute care space, for example, a tele-sitting company, and be sure they also have exceptional 24/7/365 customer care.
The ideal virtual care platform enables virtual team care by combining remote patient sitters, virtual nurses, and other providers in a single enterprise technology solution to enhance clinical care without placing any additional burdens on existing staff.
Once you’ve selected a tech partner, it’s time to select the first use case.
For a virtual nursing program’s first use case, it is advisable to start small to demonstrate early success. For example, consider launching in a single unit or department. After rolling out the first use case, spread the word about the virtual nursing program’s positive impact on staff and patients.
Virtual Classroom Series Session 3: Building a Virtual Nursing Business Case
Join AvaSure Chief Clinical Officer, Lisbeth Votruba, MSN, RN, for Session 3! In this session, you’ll learn:
- Learn how to partner clinical and IT resources to build a business case for virtual nursing
- Identify key metrics to use as goals & benchmarks for your program
- Get best practices for setting up an initial pilot & how to sell your leadership team on starting a program
Presenters:
Lisbeth Votruba, MSN, RN, Chief Clinical Officer, AvaSure
Dana Peco, MSN, RN, Director of Clinical Sales, AvaSure
UCHealth slashes code blues up to 70% with telehealth technologies
UCHealth is a nonprofit healthcare organization based in Colorado made up of 12 hospitals across the state. UCHealth had already implemented AvaSure’s TeleSitter® for patient safety and VerifyTM for virtual ICU. Here, they looked at expanding the use of these technologies to create a program they call Virtual Deterioration. Keep reading to learn more about this new case use.
Challenge
Looking to identify deteriorating patients sooner
The organization had a new use case for virtual care, a program called Virtual Deterioration. Through this virtual platform, they were looking to identify patients who were deteriorating in the hospital sooner in order to provide rescue and treatment faster, enhancing better overall outcomes.
Solution
AvaSure reduced Code Blues by as much as 70%
Early outcomes using AvaSure to watch ICU patients for deterioration have shown significant promise in reducing cardiac arrests by as much as 70%. Additionally, UCHealth has seen an increase in rapid response events (26%-86%), while Code Blue rates are plummeting (down 25%-70%), mostly in high-risk areas. UCHealth is also tracking whether patients remain in their current environment instead of being transferred to a higher level of care after an event.
- Up to an 86% increase in rapid response rates
- Up to a 152% increase in post–rapid response vitals being ordered and completed
“And so if you are considering any sort of hybrid approach from, for example, a clinical command center or nursing workflows, you want to have a great platform that you feel your staff can use and interact with seamlessly and with ease.”
— Amy Hassell, RN, UCHealth
How Jefferson Health turned a capacity crisis into an opportunity with virtual nursing
There’s no telling what type of illness surges hospitals will see this year: Take lessons from Jefferson Health’s nurse-led virtual nursing pilot program here.
A surge in respiratory viruses over the fall and winter months placed immense capacity and resource strain on hospitals. This year, they can’t afford to wait and see what the next respiratory virus reason might bring.
In this session, leaders from Philadelphia-based Jefferson Health will share how a nurse-led approach helped the organization meet staffing demands during this past pediatric surge in respiratory syncytial virus cases. Colleen Mallozzi, RN, senior vice president and chief nursing informatics officer at Jefferson Health, and Laura Gartner, DNP, RN, clinical informatics director at the health system, will share how the team quickly expanded an existing virtual sitting program into a virtual nursing pilot to meet patient care and staffing demands.
Learning points:
- The timely implementation of a systemwide virtual nursing pilot
- The CNIO’s pivotal role in ensuring the clinical practice leads the technology and not the other way around
- Critical steps to structure the program including the right setting, staffing, and outcome measurements
Presenters:
Colleen Mallozzi, MBA RN, SVP, Chief Nursing Informatics Officer, Jefferson Health
Laura Gartner DNP, MS, RN, NEA-BC, Division Director Clinical Informatics, Jefferson Health
Lisbeth Votruba, MSN, RN, Chief Clinical Officer, AvaSure
Virtual Classroom Series Session 2: Introducing the Clinical Resource TeleNurse™ Model: What is It and How Can It Help?
Join AvaSure Chief Clinical Officer, Lisbeth Votruba, MSN, RN, for Session 2! In this on-demand webinar, you’ll learn:
- How the Clinical Resource TeleNurse focuses on offloading documentation and administrative burden from bedside teams, helping to optimize your labor force and deliver elevated patient care
- What’s driving the need for this nursing model, areas of focus and hear best practices from those who’ve already piloted
- Early outcomes from those already using this model to help reduce discharge time, increase patient & staff satisfaction and optimize outcomes
Presenters:
Lisbeth Votruba, MSN, RN, Chief Clinical Officer, AvaSure
Wayde Batt, MSN, NEA-BC, BC-RN, Patient Services Manager, NSICU/Virtual Nursing, UNC Health Rex
Laura Gartner, DNP, MS, RN, RN-BC, NEA-BC, Director Clinical Informatics, Jefferson Health
AvaSure Launches Virtual Nursing Application and Care Model
With six virtual nursing implementations underway, AvaSure is leading the way in hospital virtual nursing deployments
BELMONT, Mich., April 25, 2023 — AvaSure, the inventor of the TeleSitter® solution and the market leader in acute virtual care and remote safety monitoring, announced today that it has launched a Virtual Nursing application and Care Model to support six virtual nursing implementations with many more in early planning phases.
Hospitals and health systems have been compelled to explore new models of nursing care during a period of escalating labor costs and widespread staffing shortages. For example, 52% of nurses are considering leaving the bedside, at a time when there are more than 1.1 million vacancies. Hospital leaders know the current approach is not sustainable, and experts estimate that 83% are considering virtual nursing as a solution.
To help hospitals and health systems respond to these growing market needs, AvaSure has recently launched several new virtual nursing-related initiatives.
AvaSure’s Nurse Elevated Care Model
As the pioneer in virtual sitting with the AvaSure TeleSitter® Solution, the company has expanded its offerings to support a more comprehensive nurse elevated care model. Consisting of virtual telehealth technology, and a team of nurses to support clinical technology adoption, AvaSure’s approach to virtual nursing represents an innovative new model of care that creates an augmented care environment where a virtual team provides support – offloading documentation burden, providing a second set of eyes on complex patients and helping to close the growing experience/complexity gap in nursing – to the bedside team.
To address growing labor challenges, six hospitals have recently adopted AvaSure’s TeleNurse™ solution, which enables health systems to reduce labor costs while liberating their bedside nurses to provide elevated, hands-on patient care.
“Nine out of ten hospital leaders say they’re considering some form of virtual nursing, but just a small percentage have actually started a program – why the gap? Many don’t know where to begin,” said Adam McMullin, CEO, AvaSure. “We have implemented our pioneering TeleSitter® solution in a thousand hospitals to establish virtual care. Many of these hospitals are now turning to us to partner on a virtual nursing program in order to reap further clinical, operational, and financial benefits from the AvaSure virtual care platform.”
Click here to learn how AvaSure customers have used virtual nursing solutions to improve HCAHPS scores, reduce code blues and decrease discharge times.
Two Models of Virtual Nursing Emerging
Some hospitals are implementing a model of virtual nursing called the Expert Oversight TeleNurse® that focuses on overseeing higher acuity patients for potential deterioration triggers, supporting novice nurses & conducting virtual rounding. In an article in Healthcare IT News, Amy Hassell, BSN, RN, CCRN, senior director for the Virtual Health Center for UCHealth, spoke about the key benefit of this model.
“They (virtual nurses) are able to see what’s occurring so that it’s just like we’re in the room with that care team member,” Hassell explained. “When we do this, it helps us cut down on phone calls and interruptions at the bedside, allowing us to still participate and do our part of the program. The program provides support and makes sure milestones of care are being met throughout that deterioration event, and help triage if needed.”
Several other hospitals are implementing a model of virtual nursing called the Clinical Resource TeleNurse® focused on admission & discharge support, patient & family education, consults and more. This model supports episodic intervention with two-way audio/video technology allowing personal interaction with the patient during important care tasks.
An East Coast hospital has expanded its AvaSure program from virtual sitting to virtual nursing, a simple process because both functions are performed via AvaSure’s virtual care platform. The transition will enable the health system to deliver a greater level of support to front-line nurses and bedside caregivers.
A Midwest hospital has implemented AvaSure’s TeleSitter® and TeleNurse™ solutions to integrate with its Epic electronic health record. The hospital is defining new workflows in which virtual nursing can make a difference in enhancing their care teams.
After having successfully implemented a virtual sitting program in 2020 with AvaSure in its medical surgical and intensive units, a hospital in the Southeast has launched a pilot virtual nursing program to decrease ED holding times by streamlining admission from the emergency department to inpatient beds. The Medical Center sees this as a way to support nurses on the frontlines without compromising patient safety or patient experience.
Medical-surgical Virtual Nurse Certification
AvaSure Chief Clinical Officer Lisbeth Votruba, MSN, RN is participating as a subject matter expert on the task force that has defined the role of the virtual nurse and will be creating a medical-surgical virtual nurse certification from the Medical Surgical Nursing Certification Board, which will be launched later this year. Votruba pioneered virtual sitting and has published five studies helping to establish virtual sitting as a standard of care for patient safety in the hospital setting.
AvaSure Virtual Classroom Series: Virtual Nursing 101
AvaSure recently announced a six-part virtual classroom series, “Virtual Nursing 101,” in which Votruba details how nursing leaders can launch and implement virtual nursing programs. In the series, Votruba is joined by special guests and experts who cover key topics, such as the role of the virtual nurse, how to be certified, how to build a virtual nursing business case, as well as lessons learned from current programs. This free, six-part series takes place between March and August. To register, click here.
About AvaSure
AvaSure provides the leading hospital virtual care platform to systems with nursing and staffing shortages that are challenged to significantly reduce labor costs without sacrificing patient health outcomes. Recently 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 1,000 hospitals, AvaSure combines remote patient monitors, 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.
Media Contact: Marcia Rhodes Amendola Communications
Introducing the Nurse Elevated Care Model
Read our white paper on how the Nurse Elevated Care Model can help reduce labor costs and allow bedside nurses to spend more hands-on time with patients.
Summary
Nursing shortages, patient acuity increase and an uptick in behavioral health challenges have created a perfect storm in healthcare. Nurses are being stretched too thin, constantly asked to do more with less resulting in 52% of nurses considering leaving the bedside when shortages are already at an all time high. This environment forces hospital leadership to think differently about how technology can help create a new model of care delivery.
Introducing the Nurse Elevated Care Model by AvaSure. An augmented care environment where a virtual team provides support – offloading documentation burden, providing a second set of eyes on complex patients and helping to close growing experience/complexity gap in nursing – to the bedside team. This model of care helps health systems reduce labor costs while liberating their bedside nurses to provide elevated, hands-on patient care.
Provide your information to download the full white paper.
Your Guide to the Future of Care Delivery: Virtual Nursing
Now, the most proactive healthcare organizations are exploring initiatives to mitigate the effects of a growing labor shortage. Learn how central video monitoring enabled “virtual nurses” to support bedside nurses and uphold high standards of patient care amid a COVID-19 surge across Houston-based Memorial Hermann Health System.
Key learning points:
- The basic components of virtual care, including the easy-to-use technology involved to interact with patients and bedside staff
- The policies and workflows that best support virtual nursing staff and make for easy implementation
- How virtual nurses can use specialized care resources to alleviate existing staff
Download the whitepaper to learn more.