A recent AvaSure survey has shown that virtual nursing has yet to be fully embraced in acute inpatient care, but holds much promise, 74% of hospital leaders believe that virtual nursing will become an integral part of the care delivery models. That is up from 66% last year, although only 10% of hospital leaders and 14% of IT leaders have integrated virtual nursing into their standard care models. The survey was conducted in partnership with the American Organization for Nursing Leadership and reached over 1,000 healthcare professionals working in acute care settings.

Virtual Nursing

Virtual nursing already shows value in care efficiencies, nurse well-being, and operating hospitals. The survey does give several areas where virtual care would have immediate impact. This includes virtual sitting, a concept involving trained non-licensed safety attendants who sit with the patient. This will reduce patient falls as well as other adverse incidents resulting in cost savings and an improved safety profile. For instance, St. Luke’s Duluth saved $1.5 million in 2023 while sitting virtually and maintaining its goals for fall reduction and the decrease of staff costs.

The survey also found that 46% of hospital leaders are piloting or have implemented virtual nursing, up from 38% the previous year. Hospitals are taking a phased approach to virtual care, starting with virtual sitting before expanding to virtual nursing. Virtual nursing can take the form of either a clinical resource model, offloading documentation tasks to virtual nurses, or an expert oversight model where virtual nurses are overseeing high-acuity patients and mentor bedside nurses.

Lisbeth Votruba, RN, chief clinical officer at AvaSure, says virtual nursing has the potential to revolutionize the way care is delivered, becoming more efficient, accessible, and patient-centered. Hospital executives are increasingly realizing virtual nursing can expand access to specialty care, reduce staffing costs, improve nurse well-being, and enhance patient safety.

A potentially exciting opportunity for virtual nursing is in addressing workforce challenges, including the shortage of nurses and high turnover among unlicensed staff. In a place where the demand for nurses continues unabated, virtual nursing offers a scalable solution that could lighten some of the clinical workforce burden so that the latter can spend more time doing direct patient care.

It also identified the most significant use cases for virtual nursing, such as virtual sitting and offloading documentation tasks. Those areas focus on several of the key problems in hospitals, like patient safety improvement and the smoothing of administrative processes, which might result in better outcomes and substantial cost savings.