Updated September 30, 2024
What is virtual nursing?
Virtual nursing is the ability to remotely provide nursing services through an electronic platform. Nurses (RNs and NPs) provide a variety of virtual tasks while assessing, planning, and evaluating patient outcomes, intervening as appropriate utilizing the Nursing Process. The key difference is they are interacting virtually. We are currently seeing a rising interest in providing Virtual Nursing bedside support to staff nurses.
Virtual nursing use cases
Virtual nursing solutions are not just a temporary fix for staffing challenges; they’re a revolutionary model of care. By supporting nurses with a spectrum of virtual capabilities–from patient monitoring to care coordination–these solutions can significantly reduce administrative burdens, improve patient outcomes, and enhance overall healthcare efficiency. Embracing virtual nursing allows hospitals to reimagine care delivery, optimize resources, and provide more personalized attention to patients.
The case for virtual nursing
Healthcare systems are grappling with a multifaceted crisis: an aging population with increasing chronic conditions, widespread care delays due to cost concerns, and severe staffing shortages.1 Nurses, facing burnout and high turnover rates, spend only a fraction of their time on direct patient care due to administrative burdens.2 Hospitals struggle with patient flow and experience ED boarding and transfer delays, while the average length of stay continues to rise.3 These challenges are compounded by infrastructure limitations, with many facilities planning upgrades to their systems. The situation calls for innovative solutions to improve efficiency, reduce staff burden, and enhance patient care quality, potentially through technologies that can automate tasks and streamline operations while maintaining personalized care.
To succeed, health systems must adapt to a new care delivery model:
Health systems are on the cusp of a revolutionary change in care delivery, necessitating a shift towards a hybrid model that leverages both bedside and virtual nursing roles. This new paradigm optimizes patient care by strategically distributing responsibilities between physical and remote nursing presence.
Bedside nurses continue to provide crucial hands-on care. Complementing this, virtual nurses take on vital supportive roles that enhance overall care quality and significantly lighten the administrative load on bedside staff. This model isn’t about replacing one role with another, but rather about creating a synergistic partnership that enhances patient care quality, improves nurse satisfaction and retention, and ultimately creates a more efficient and effective healthcare delivery system.
Virtual nursing by the KPIs
| Key performance indicator | Demonstrated virtual nursing impact 4 |
|---|---|
| Overtime costs | Reduce end-of-shift overtime costs 11.95% |
Travel nurse expense | Reduced travel nurse FTE from 172 to 98 |
| Staff turnover labor costs | Nursing turnover decreased 56% in first 33 months after eICU implementation, saving $1.1 million |
| Length of stay and readmissions | 12.6% decrease in LOS and 37.7% reduction in readmissions through use of virtual case managers |
| Quality of care | 50% decrease in falls and falls with injury through use of virtual sitters |
| HCAHPS scores | 20% increase in HCAHPS scores for “Communication with Nurses” through use of virtual nursing support for bedside nurses |
Key attributes of virtual nursing solutions
Framed as a set of capabilities instead of individual virtual tasks to support a variety of use cases such as staffing, virtual nursing solutions can support nursing staff and balance workloads with a spectrum of tasks that range from low to high complexity. Virtual nursing is not a band-aid solution to short-term staffing woes– it’s an innovative new model of care.
| Virtual sitters | Virtually monitoring patient safety to prevent patient falls |
| Virtual triage | Performing virtual assessments for low-acuity patient conditions |
| Virtual visits | Providing virtual visits to support patient access, for a variety of medical conditions |
| Care coordination: PCP and specialist | Providing virtual visits to support access, chronic care management, and remote monitoring |
| Care coordination: care transitions | Assisting with discharge planning to enable a smooth and timely transition |
| Health at home | Providing virtual, hospital care at home for complex patients, creating inpatient capacity |
| Virtual bedside support | Providing bedside nurses with virtual support, mentoring, and education |
| e-ICU | Providing critical care services to patients and nurses at the bedside |
| Command center | Driving system capacity and throughput via a centralized hub |
Organizing for success with virtual nursing
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- https://www.aha.org/guidesreports/2022-08-15-pandemic-driven-deferred-care-has-led-increased-patient-acuity-americas;
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/medical-care-costs-americans-skipped-gallup/;
https://www.ncsbn.org/research/recent-research/workforce.page - https://www.accenture.com/content/dam/accenture/final/accenture-com/document/Accenture-Solving-The-Nursing-Shortage-For-The-Future.pdf
- https://www.ahrq.gov/sites/default/files/publications/files/ptflowguide.pdf;
https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/healthcare/a-potential-weak-link-patient-safety-er-to-inpatient-handoffs;
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jonm.13451 - https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-study-demonstrates-improved-patient-flow-and-financial-benefits-of-philips-eicu-program-for-managing-critical-care-populations-300377182.html?tc=eml_cleartime;
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/telehealth/guthrie-clinics-virtual-nursing-saves-7m-in-labor-costs.html
