By Jill Kaminski

Given the financial pressures healthcare leaders face, delivering measurable returns for technology investments is a must. Yet, many organizations struggle to prove ROI. One such technology is hospital virtual care, viewed as a viable way to adapt to ongoing nursing staff shortages.

Hospital virtual care has seen a wave of adoption in the U.S. Healthcare system for its ability to address pressing labor and cost challenges, while facilitating high-quality care, even as patient cases increase in complexity. Moreover, the emergence of hospital virtual care means that the way care is delivered and the way that clinicians interact with patients will fundamentally change. For example, hospital virtual care enables clinicians to admit and discharge patients, engage with them bedside, and monitor them remotely no matter where they are, freeing up more time for bedside teams to provide direct patient care.

As with any technology, simply implementing a hospital virtual care solution is not enough. The key to success is data. Data helps the organization assess exactly how solutions are being used and create change management strategies for further program improvement. Organizations can use their own data to further reduce the risk of falls, elopement, workplace violence, and other events. Moreover, organizations can set reasonable targets by benchmarking their performance against other organizations of similar type. By focusing on three foundational steps to applying a data-driven approach, organizations gain clear insights – and measure results – for labor cost savings, utilization, adverse events prevented and more.

Establish performance assessment metrics
When organizations embark on a hospital virtual care program, it’s important to establish key performance metrics that will accurately reflect return on investment and patient outcomes. The underlying technology needs to gather and report data to allow users to view data at the program level and easily drill down into the details, such as data for care units and individual virtual safety attendants.

To accurately assess performance, organizations need to track a wide range of metrics and have the ability to slice and dice by hour, day, month, year, unit, facility, use case, and more. Critical metrics include:

• Patient demographics, such as reason for monitoring (falls, elopement, staff injury)
• Volume of patients monitored and treated
• Utilization rates for virtual sitting and virtual nursing

Business Affairs Homepage