In this day and age, hospitals can no longer afford to overlook workflow improvement, according to FJ Campbell, chief medical officer at Ardent Health.

He pointed this out during an interview last month at the Reuters Digital Health conference in Nashville, noting that the pandemic highlighted just how overwhelming hospital workflows can be. The fragmented, cumbersome nature of these workflows led to high levels of staff burnout and turnover, as well as unsustainable reliance on contract labor, Campbell explained.

“We needed to be in a situation where we could better recruit and retain the staff that we had. And much of the message from them was coming down to: ‘What can you do to improve my workflow burden?’” he said.

In Campbell’s view, virtual nursing technology has been one of the most impactful tools advancing Ardent’s workflow improvement efforts.

By implementing the technology infrastructure for virtual nurses, Ardent is offloading routine and cognitively taxing tasks from on-site RNs. Campbell said that this team-based model has increased efficiency and enabled clearer role delineation. Virtual nurses take care of tasks like discharges, collecting patient histories and hourly rounding, and nurses who are physically present in the unit have more time to do things like monitor patients or prepare them for imaging tests.

“[On-site RNs] are spending more time focusing on the care plan for the patient and monitoring those patients who are going through the continuum of care — who is actually losing ground or deteriorating, who is improving, who can have earlier discharge. They have more time for that oversight,” Campbell explained.

Ardent’s nurses seem to appreciate this reduction in cognitive burden. Since implementing virtual nurse technology, the health system’s nurse turnover rate has dropped from 15.5% to 9.5%, Campbell stated.

This could translate to significant cost savings in the long run, given the average cost of recruiting a nurse is $40,000, he added.

“If you’re a nurse, what this meant was, ‘I’m less stressed at work, I actually get a lunch, and I leave on time.’ And that’s why we feel that this is so sustainable — because they’re less burned out being at work,” Campbell remarked.

Success with virtual nursing has also led to expanded virtual consults with specialty physicians, such as cardiologists, nephrologists and neurologists, in rural hospitals.

Campbell noted that these virtual consults are reducing unnecessary transfers to tertiary centers by 85%, as well as increasing the level of care acuity that patients are able to access in rural facilities.

“Patients were appreciative of the fact that they were finally getting care in their community, versus having to go up to an hour away to a tertiary care center that they don’t want to go to,” he stated.

As Ardent continues to scale its virtual care strategy, Campbell said the goal remains the same: easing clinicians’ cognitive burden while giving patients the care access they deserve.

Photo: sdecoret, Getty Images