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
Gerard Phillips, the health system’s Senior Director of Nursing, explains in this week’s HealthLeaders podcast how UCSD Health is improving patient safety—and where they expect to use the technology next
KEY TAKEAWAYS
USCD Health integrated remote video monitors into its TeleSitter program in 2012, and now has 30 cart-based cameras in five healthcare sites.
Over the past decade, the health system has seen more than $10 million saved in costs associated with falls and medical emergencies, and has used those savings to invest in other parts of the health system.
UCSD Health is now integrating AI technology into the platform to help monitors spot visual cues, and is looking into expanding the program into virtual nursing.
UC San Diego Health has avoided more than $10 million in healthcare costs since adding remote video monitoring to its TeleSitter program in 2012.
In this week’s HealthLeaders podcast, Gerard Phillips, DNP, MBA, RN, the health system’s Senior Director of Nursing, says the bidirectional cameras placed in patient rooms enable specially trained video monitoring technicians to monitor patients and communicate with them around the clock.
The 24/7 monitoring program is designed for patients deemed at risk of falling, wandering, or causing harm to themselves by pulling out attached lines and tubes. The health system now has 30 cart-based cameras stationed across five healthcare sites, monitored by three technicians, who are trained CNAs, at a central video monitoring hub.
Phillips says the program not only has allowed UCSD to “maintain a higher level of safety [for] our patients,” but enabled the health system to use those savings to invest in other areas of the organization.
He also says UCSD envisions using remote video monitoring in a number of areas, including virtual nursing, staff safety and home-based care management. And they’re embedding AI technology into the cameras to help monitors spot visual cues of signs of concern with patients.
Listen to Phillips and learn how the health system is making the most out of its Virtual TeleSitter program here.
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
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.
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
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.
