Revolutionize Behavioral Health Monitoring with AvaSure

Caring for behavioral health patients can be challenging, especially when dealing with suicide ideation. Low and moderate risk SI patients are in acute emotional pain and deserve empathetic and patient centered care. It is essential that a caregiver ensure these patients are safe and receiving the necessary treatment. However, with the current workforce crisis, meeting this important need can be even more challenging. This can create an unsafe environment for patients & staff, adding more burden to already burned out?nursing teams.?

At the same time, when resources are at an all-time low, behavioral health patients are on the rise. This is bringing hospitals to the breaking point and forcing them to look elsewhere for solutions. While many have long trusted TeleSitter solutions for other acuities like falls risk & elopement risk patients, many clinicians have been under the false perception that these virtual solutions aren’t suitable for patients dealing with behavioral health challenges. When, in fact, TeleSitter solutions have been proven to be more effective and lower cost than 1:1 sitters and most facilities simply need to work to put a policy in place allowing for the use of virtual monitoring on low and moderate risk SI patients. Using a TeleSitter solution as part of your behavioral health program can help nurse leaders and bedside teams improve patient safety while optimizing nurse productivity.?

AvaSure’s partners Methodist Health System , St. Peter's Health Partners , and Ascension Michigan implemented program to focus on falls prevention but saw increased value using to help with their SI patient population. Teams were hesitant to use virtual monitoring on this population, but worked together to create an ethical framework and decision support tool allowing the virtual monitoring to guide equitable workforce distribution during emergencies based on the patient needs. Read below for key highlights from our panel discussion on this underutilized but important use case of the TeleSitter solution.

Through using the TeleSitting solution, teams were able to make critical catches to protect patients – including preventing strangulation attempt with heart monitors, reporting smuggling of contraband in a pillow from home and an intervening when an on-staff security guard was overly aggressive with a pediatric patient. Events like this encouraged the facility to think even more outside the box on potential future use cases for the TeleSitter program – such as watching infants for potential abduction, monitoring eating disorder patients & keeping an eye on family members in the room for potential staff or patient injury & medication theft. With a well-supported program, the use cases truly are endless.