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.
Seventh annual in-person event will feature ten-plus customers discussing virtual sitting and virtual nursing
Customers attending include St. Luke’s Duluth, Michigan Medicine, Beacon Health, Baptist Medical Center South, Madonna Rehabilitation, Ascension Texas, UCHealth, and Corewell Health
BELMONT, Mich., Oct. 4, 2023 — AvaSure, the market leader in acute virtual sitting and virtual nursing solutions, announced today that the full agenda is now available for the 2023 AvaSure Symposium, an in-person event for healthcare and nurse leaders seeking an unparalleled opportunity to connect, learn, and engage around virtual care.
The in-person event, designed to elevate healthcare leadership journeys with innovative and educational programming on AI, virtual sitting and virtual nursing, will feature at least ten customer speakers. Organizations with executives speaking at the event include: St. Luke’s Duluth, Michigan Medicine, Beacon Health, Baptist Medical Center South, Madonna Rehabilitation, Ascension Texas, UCHealth, and Corewell Health.
This year’s AvaSure Symposium will be held October 25–26 at the GVSU Richard M. DeVos Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Attendees will gain insights from clinical experts and customer success stories, while rediscovering the power of face-to-face interactions through networking with esteemed healthcare and nurse leaders to exchange ideas and build relationships that extend beyond the confines of a screen.
The vibrant in-person event features numerous compelling educational sessions, including:
Saving Lives Virtually: How to Keep Suicide Risk Patients Safe: Join us for a critical discussion on safeguarding the well-being of low-to-medium-risk suicide patients and pediatric patients through virtual sitting. Beacon Health and Baptist South will share why this approach works, discuss the policies that support it, and the transformative impact it has had on their organization.
Celebrating Remarkable Results: A Customer’s Story of Reducing Falls: Nurse leaders from St. Luke’s Duluth will share their inspiring story behind the strategies, challenges, and triumphs of reducing patient falls and achieving recognition in patient safety.
A Single Virtual Care Platform Designed for Growth: How UCHealth Scaled Virtual Sitting to Virtual Nursing to Save Lives: Learn how UCHealth innovatively designed a virtual hospital, making an impact on 1.4 million lives through the combination of virtual sitting and virtual nursing programs.
Navigating Staffing Challenges: The Equum Medical-AvaSure Success Story: This session will explore how Madonna Rehabilitation faced staffing issues and partnered with Equum Medical to achieve remarkable results.
Fostering Excellence: Cross-Functional Teams in Virtual Care: Corewell Health’s Chief Information Officer will share firsthand insights into their collaborative journey, innovative strategies, and the pivotal role technology plays in shaping the future of healthcare.
Other reasons to attend include:
Dynamic learning, live: Immerse yourself in a live, dynamic learning environment. Renowned speakers, including customers and healthcare leaders, will share the latest insights and strategies, providing actionable takeaways for your leadership toolkit.
Hands-on workshops: Dive into interactive workshops led by AvaSure’s clinical staff experts and nursing leaders. Experience hands-on learning, acquire new skills, and gain practical insights to excel in your healthcare practice.
Array of insights, in-person: Break down hospital borders by engaging with healthcare leaders from across the country, all under one roof. Embrace diversity, broaden your perspective, and foster a global IT and nursing community.
“We are thrilled the AvaSure Symposium is returning to an in-person event in 2023 and can’t wait to reconnect with our wonderful nursing colleagues,” said Lisbeth Votruba, MSN, RN, Chief Clinical Officer, AvaSure. “Healthcare and nurse leaders who attend the Symposium will have the opportunity to experience the power of in-person interaction and immerse themselves in a world of knowledge and inspiration while learning more about virtual care options to enhance patient care outcomes.”
About AvaSure
AvaSure provides the leading virtual sitting and virtual nursing solutions to systems with nursing and staffing shortages that are challenged to significantly reduce labor costs without sacrificing patient health outcomes. Recognized by KLAS Research as the leader in reducing the cost of patient care, AvaSure is the pioneer in providing best-in-class, video-based AvaSure TeleSitter® and TeleNurse™ solutions. As a trusted partner of more than 1,100 hospitals, AvaSure combines virtual safety attendants, virtual nurses and other providers on a single platform to enhance clinical care without placing any additional burdens on existing staff. To learn more about AvaSure visit www.avasure.com.
Customers commend AvaSure’s proven ability to drive outcomes, ROI, scalability and value continued investments, such as AI
BELMONT, Mich., Sept. 21, 2023 —A new Segment Insights report from KLAS revealed that AvaSure customers have recognized the virtual care platform’s ability to improve staff and patient outcomes while driving better financial performance and significant return on investment.
The report, the first-ever by KLAS on virtual sitting and virtual nursing solutions, is based on structured interviews of vendors’ customers. The report designated AvaSure as the top performer in the market, noting that AvaSure is an established, recognizable name, and that customers recognize the platform’s ability to drive outcomes, saying that in addition to reducing patient falls, the solution reduces tube/line interferences, prevents patients from taking outside drugs, and ensures staff safety by preventing patient aggression.
The KLAS report also found that customers have experienced positive financial outcomes from being able to scale sitters’ capacity to observe patients and prevent adverse events. In addition to driving significant ROI, the AvaSure platform was rated at 8.2 out of 9 by customers in terms of getting their money’s worth from the investment. Additionally, the 2022 KLAS Emerging Solutions Top 20 Report ranked AvaSure first for the greatest impact on reducing the cost of care.
“AvaSure’s use cases for telesitting provide a huge return on investment,” said one director, July 2023. “Instead of having multiple in-person sitters, we are using one person. We have economies of scale, and those give us that financial return. Even if we wanted to pay for in-person sitters, there is a scarcity of resources to get them. AvaSure has improved our patient outcomes for falls, fall prevention, and staff retention. It is frustrating when nurses don’t have the resources they need. AvaSure has been an avenue for our nurses to get those resources through different means.”
Separately, the report revealed that respondents overwhelmingly agree that virtual sitting and nursing solutions have been helpful in addressing staffing shortages. These solutions have helped organizations to increase their observation capacity from a 1:1 sitter-to-patient ratio, enabling one sitter to now observe several patients, freeing up skilled clinical staff previously assigned to sitting roles, and allowing them to apply their skills and expertise more meaningfully where needed the most.
“This KLAS report validates that AvaSure’s virtual care platform is helping customers achieve genuine improvements to patient outcomes while alleviating staffing shortages and reducing costs,” said Adam McMullin, CEO, AvaSure. “Customers continue to choose AvaSure because our solution is unmatched in its ability to combine intelligent workflow designs and thoughtful enhancements such as AI, integrations, cloud-based offerings, and flexible devices at scale. Our team is committed to supporting our customers at every stage of their virtual care journey, ensuring they have the tools and guidance they need to succeed.”
The latest report is not the first time AvaSure has been recognized by KLAS. For example, earlier this year, AvaSure earned top marks from KLAS in a Second Look Performance report, which found that all interviewed customers were satisfied to highly satisfied with AvaSure’s solution, noting AvaSure has continued to improve and deliver on its product, and that 100% of respondents would buy again.
KLAS is a research organization that helps healthcare providers make informed technology decisions by offering impartial vendor performance information.
About AvaSure
AvaSure provides the leading virtual sitting and virtual nursing solutions to systems with nursing and staffing shortages that are challenged to significantly reduce labor costs without sacrificing patient health outcomes. Recognized by KLAS Research as the leader in reducing the cost of patient care, AvaSure is the pioneer in providing best-in-class, video-based AvaSure TeleSitter® and TeleNurse™ solutions. As a trusted partner of more than 1,100 hospitals, AvaSure combines virtual safety attendants, virtual nurses and other providers on a single platform to enhance clinical care without placing any additional burdens on existing staff. To learn more about AvaSure visit www.avasure.com.
Fill out the form to read more about our unified Virtual Care Platform for Virtual Sitting and Virtual Nursing and how it can lead your organization to a future where cutting edge technology and compassionate care converge.
Gaylord Specialty Healthcare reveals inspiring results with the TeleSitter® solution
During AvaSure’s Digital Summit, Henry C. Hrdlicka, PhD, Director of Research, Milne Institute for Healthcare Innovation presented recent findings from Gaylord Specialty Healthcare’s TeleSitter® program. Watch here.
Inpatient falls are a universal safety concern in healthcare facilities, and their consequences can be devastating. This is especially a concern in the LTACH setting where individual risk is increased by anticipated longer lengths of stay & early and frequent encouragement of patient mobility. Up until now, 1:1 patient sitters have been the primary option for ensuring patient safety, however, staffing 1:1 sitters is a costly solution that can pull much needed hands from the bedside.
“Often the demand for 1:1 sitters outpaces staff availability. This accrues a massive financial burden on any institution. These factors have been further exacerbated due to ongoing national staffing shortages as well as the COVID-19 pandemic. This led us to the conclusion that an alternative needed to be found.”
Henry C. Hrdlicka, PhD, Director of Research, Milne Institute for Healthcare Innovation
Gaylord Specialty Healthcare, a rehabilitation-focused nonprofit healthcare system, embarked on a study to assess the impact of continuous virtual monitoring on inpatient falls and 1:1 sitter usage. In partnership with the Milne Institute for Healthcare Innovation, the study was carried out at Gaylord Hospital, a 137-bed Long-Term Acute Care Hospital (LTACH), in Connecticut. The results of this research not only demonstrated a profound impact on patient safety but also revealed a promising opportunity for significant cost savings that can benefit healthcare facilities across the board.
Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems plans to expand virtual sitting to 29 hospitals as the program has been successful in preventing patient falls.
The 78-hospital system started piloting the sitting platform from telehealth company AvaSure in 2021 at two locations. The program later expanded to 15 CHS hospitals in Arkansas, Indiana and Tennessee, and the health system plans to roll it out at another 12 facilities by the end of 2023. No patients in the program reported any falls with injuries in 2022.
“We really are able to clearly create some efficiencies and redeploy caregivers back to the bedside,” Lynn Simon, MD, president of healthcare innovation and chief medical officer of Community Health Systems, told Becker’s.
Remote “sitters” operate out of a CHS hospital in Tennessee, each monitoring 12 to 16 high-risk patients at a time for signs they might be getting up or otherwise be in danger of a fall.
“They have eyes on the patients at all times,” Dr. Simon said. “There’s also two-way audio, so the person watching can audio into the room and talk and have a conversation with the patient, ask them if they’re uncomfortable, remind them to stay in bed. That conversation seems to be the difference. It’s more than just alerting the nurse — that does happen when the patient appears to be trying to get out of bed — but it’s really about the back-and-forth communication with the patient that helps keep them safe and keeps them from falling.”
Since implementing the program, the health system has experienced up to a 76 percent drop in falls at some hospitals, Dr. Simon said.
Community Health Systems’ big bet on virtual sitting comes at a time when many health systems are going all in on virtual nursing. CHS has had some “small” virtual nursing pilots, helping with things like patient admission and discharge, but is still in the “exploration stages” for that model, Dr. Simon said.
“The biggest value that we’re seeing that we’ve been able to scale is the virtual sitting, but we do intend to continue to iterate with our other virtual nursing opportunities,” she said.
