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61 million people live in rural communities across the United States. Today, on National Rural Health Day, we want to highlight the incredible efforts of rural healthcare providers, communities, health systems, and other stakeholders addressing the unique healthcare needs of rural America. One of those needs: Access to care. For example - In a big city, if a provider moves away, their patients might have 10 other options in a 5-mile radius. But in a rural community, those patients could be 45+ minutes away from a similar provider. Dr. Lydia Nightingale (Vice President, Medical Affairs at Variety Care) shared a scenario from their Anadarko clinic (Anadarko, Oklahoma's population is under 6,000), where a long-serving provider recently left, creating a potential gap in care. To help, Variety Care has increasingly turned to virtual care solutions, enabling patients to continue receiving care from metro-based telehealth providers like Dr. Qin, who specializes in family medicine. Dr. Nightingale emphasized that while virtual care may not always be the preferred option for patients, it has become a vital tool for ensuring continuity of care during transitional periods. "It's really about equity and insuring that patients have the ability to get care where they are," Dr. Nightingale said. An added benefit: Saving rural patients the time (and gas money) of making a 2+ hour round trip. We applaud Variety Care and all the innovative health systems we collaborate with for raising virtual care awareness among rural patients, emphasizing its role in providing timely and equitable access to care where and where communities need it. #ruralcare #ruralhealth #nationalruralhealthday #healthaccess

Virtual nursing has gained tremendous momentum over the past few years. But that doesn’t mean the C-suite, particularly finance, will automatically buy into a program’s value. There’s still that big lingering question: Where’s the ROI? Linda Lockwood, RN, MBA (Senior Advisor, AVIA Health) encouraged nursing leaders to start with four simple questions when putting together a virtual nursing business case: 1. What is our goal with virtual nursing?? 2. What is the problem we're trying to solve?? 3. What is it going to feel like for our nurses and patients?? 4. What is the impact we're going to make? Involve leadership from the very beginning. At the outset, share the vision and roadmap with Finance. Too often, Finance only sees virtual nursing numbers on the balance sheet without additional context. Linda emphasized the importance of establishing buy-in and making virtual nursing part of the health system’s culture. “When senior leadership endorses virtual nursing and says this is a way we’re delivering care. This isn’t a little pilot that we’re doing. This is really our new care delivery system and the virtual nurse is going to be a piece of that.” Start with those four simple questions. Involve the leadership/finance team. Then, be clear on what you’re going to measure. The KPIs should directly link back to the problems you’re trying to solve. Finally, understand that all of the value isn’t going to happen immediately. Measure what you can right now. Share the program’s success stories. But keep in mind the ROI will continue to increase as the program scales across the entire health system, not just 1 or 2 pilot locations. #nursing #virtualnursing #healthcareROI #digitalcaretransformation #healthsystems

One of the many highlights from last week's American Telemedicine Association Health Anywhere Insights Summit was this session from Joy Carpenter-Hicks, MBA, LVN, LSSBB, CSPO. Joy is the Director of Digital and Virtual Transformation at Texas Health Physicians Group. In her session, Joy shared key insights on optimizing virtual care for primary and specialty care, focusing on 4 areas: Strategy. Communication. Provider Onboarding. Enhancing patient experience. Here are a few notes on each: Strategy - A staged deployment works best in most instances, beginning with one and slowly deploying additional locations/departments until completed. This allows room for an agile environment, making small changes as needed to perfect the following deployments. Communication - Update internal and external webpages to highlight virtual access. Provider Onboarding - Host pre-go live Q&A sessions. Create and assign interactive courses relating to the virtual care program. Enhancing patient experience - Provide consumer transparency. Let your patients know you are piloting a new process and be open to their feedback early on. This transparent back-and-forth helps reduce negative feedback and improve patient workflows. Thank you, Joy Carpenter-Hicks, MBA, LVN, LSSBB, CSPO, for hosting a great session! #virtualcare #primarycare #specialtycare #healthsystems #digitalcaretransformation

Health systems have decades of experience evaluating their bedside nurses and determining who excels in the role. But what does that look like on the virtual side? Especially since many of these programs are only 3 or 4 years old. Sarah Bell, RN, MSN, MHA (Chief Clinical Officer at OutcomesAI and formerly at Mayo Clinic from 2005 to 2023) and Kristen Lawton (Chief Nursing Officer at Equum Medical) share 6 key productivity metrics worth tracking: - How often is the virtual nurse on video?? - How many discharges and admissions are they getting done in a day?? - Are they completing all aspects of what an admission was designed for? - How many times are the in-person nurses reaching out from a mentoring perspective? Why is that? - Are there specific virtual nurses becoming trusted coaches within the team?? - Survey results. Feedback from your other nurses The goal here is to better determine who’s doing virtual nursing well and how you can use that as a model for training other nurses. #virtualnursing #virtualcare #nursing #digitalcaretransformation #healthsystems

We're excited to participate in this afternoon's panel discussion at the American Telemedicine Association #HealthAnywhere Insights Summit. Topic: Shaping the Future of Care at Home: Challenges, Opportunities, and Visionary Use Cases What's being discussed: The panel will address the key challenges of scaling care-at-home models, from technology integration to regulatory hurdles, and share real-world use cases demonstrating the impact of these innovations on patient outcomes - such as chronic care management, specialty care, primary care, and more. Looking forward to another great day of sessions! #careathome #virtualcare #specialtycare #digitalcaretransformation

The American Telemedicine Association #HealthAnywhere Insights Summit is officially underway! As you're mapping out sessions to attend, here's one we highly recommend on Thursday afternoon. Who: Dr. Aman Mahajan, MD, PhD, MBA (Senior Vice President, Health Innovation, Enterprises at UPMC) What's being discussed: Dr. Mahajan will share how UPMC's telestroke program solved for the following challenges: 1. Operational bottlenecks delaying care? 2. Geographically skewed clinical expertise 3. Existing solutions insufficient for efficiency The results have been outstanding. With over 40,000 consults conducted, UPMC is seeing a 92% reduction in the time it takes to connect a bedside provider with a stroke specialist. When/Where: Thursday, November 14th at 3:10 PM. Room: Longhorn B For those interested in learning more about the program and the technology behind it, we'd be happy to chat before or after the session. Feel free to schedule some time here (https://lnkd.in/eEM4nxZK) or look for our colleagues: Justin Miller, Arnie Zissman, and Curtis Munlin. Looking forward to a great conference! #teleconsults #virtualcare #digitalcaretransformation #healthcaredelivery #telestroke

Nurses are incredibly busy. Their day-to-day tasks are endless, and workloads have increased due to staffing shortages and overloaded caseloads. So, when new technology is introduced to assist, the nursing team will naturally want to know: 1. Is this helpful?? 2. Is this easy to learn?? 3. Will it help or disrupt my work? During our recent Virtual Nursing webinar, in collaboration with Equum Medical, Kristen Lawton (Chief Nursing Officer, Equum Medical) shared how critical it is for new technology to seamlessly fit into a nurse’s busy schedule. There must be minimal barriers to onboarding. To ensure a successful transition, nurses should be part of the decision-making process from the very beginning. The nursing team can ask why a particular software is being implemented. Why are we making this change? What will this look like out on the floor? It’s important to answer these questions, gather different perspectives, and ensure that “people and process” receives as much attention as the technology evaluation. Ultimately, virtual nursing programs don’t require extravagant technology setups to get started. As Kristen points out, many pilots launch with nothing more complicated than an “iPad on a stick.” What's most important is having everyone aligned toward a common goal, creating one cohesive team where your bedside and virtual nurses work together to care for your patients. #virtualnursing #nursing #digitalcarestransformation #nursestaffing

For the past few weeks, we've shared insights from UPMC on how to start, grow, and scale a telestroke program. Before we shift gears and share new virtual nursing content, here are a few resources in our "telestroke toolkit" highlighting best practices from UPMC and other leading, innovative health systems. 1. Full "No Time to Wait" Telestroke Webinar Available for Download - https://lnkd.in/gSdrSuCz 2. New Webinar Recap Blog - https://lnkd.in/g-GDV_sE 3. White Paper in collaboration with CHIME: Navigating the Digital Frontier of Transformative Telestroke Care - https://lnkd.in/gVrhbkJi We hope you enjoyed this chapter of the Virtually Integrated Care series. Stay tuned this week as we turn the focus over to virtual nursing. #telestroke #teleicu #digitalcaretransformation #healthaccess #healthequity

Honoring our veterans today and every day. Their dedication, courage, and sacrifices make an enduring impact on our communities and our nation. Grateful for their service and proud to support those who have served!

Another year, another excellent CHIME Fall Forum! Thank you, CHIME, for hosting such a great event, and thank you to everyone who participated in our Digital Care Transformation Focus Group yesterday. Well, we've got a long plane ride ahead and pages of notes to review. Wishing everyone safe travels back home and let's keep these conversations going as we close out 2024. #digitalhealth #CHIME24 #DigitalHealthMavericks #healthsystems #HealthcareTransformation #virtualcare