In addition to the improvement in turnover, Ardent executives say their operations are benefiting in other ways from virtual nursing. For instance:

• President and CEO Marty Bonick said at a recent Morgan Stanley conference that Ardent is saving $13 per patient day via its virtual nursing program. In addition to that financial boost, the company’s quality scores are benefiting, too, because it is using fewer contract workers who often need time to get up to speed.
• The virtual nursing program is partnered with a similar push involving attending physicians focused on cardiology, nephrology, pulmonology and neurology. “Doctors are very open to seeing patients like this,” Dolan said, adding that the technology gives them more time with patients because they’re not traveling between facilities.
• That in turn is flowing through to Ardent’s admissions statistics: The outlying hospitals in the company’s East Texas region have seen admissions climb about 11 percent since the virtual pilot started because they are being seen where they are and more often don’t need to be transferred.

Eyeing the next steps

The Ardent team is close to taking its next big step in its virtual strategy. Gardenhire said her team is aiming to decide by mid-November on a main vendor from the four Ardent has been testing so that it can significantly ramp up its virtual push. Guiding that process, she said, are both learnings about use cases where the company’s hospitals can make a true difference in patient care as well as the idea that it’s important to define the scope of Ardent’s virtual offerings.

Also important to consider in the decision-making, Gardenhire said, are a technical question and a very human one. On the one hand, she said, it’s important to consider the bandwidth needed to supersize virtual care. On the other, it’s also vital to ask, “How do we not lose our imagination?” as virtual care grows. Today’s technologies and/or prices may not work for what’s being considered but an ongoing partnership between clinicians, nurses and patients—one that views both of those latter groups as customers—can make future iterations better, Gardenhire said.

Ardent’s successes echo those of a similar program at American Family Children’s Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. There, a virtual-care initiative in the neonatal intensive care unit lowered the turnover rate among nurses new to practice from 38 percent just a few years ago to zero since July of last year.

As Ardent prepares to expand the scope of its pilot across the company’s footprint, Dolan also is thinking about more tightly connecting virtual nursing to other elements of its work. From expanding the use of wearable devices to working a virtual element into hospital-at-home care, Dolan said there are many more opportunities to simultaneously improve quality and reduce costs.

“This technology is going to take us into whole new spaces,” she said.