Archbold Virtual Care Program Improves and Enhances Patient Care

Archbold Memorial recently introduced on-site virtual care, including virtual sitters and virtual nursing, to support healthcare teams at the bedside and increase patient satisfaction. 

As hospitals across the nation face nursing shortages, virtual care programs can increase the timeliness of care, enhance patient education opportunities, and facilitate the inclusion of family and friends in communications between the patient and bedside care team. This strategy has also been shown to improve quality measures, improve nurse retention, reduce turnover, reduce readmission rates, and improve patient flow at other facilities.

The addition of virtual care alleviates some of the tasks of the bedside nurses and care team and allows them to give more personal attention to each patient.

“Studies show that virtual nursing programs like ours increase satisfaction for both the patient and the nursing staff,” said Kellie Odom, director of nursing at Archbold Memorial. “This strategy allows our bedside nurses to better balance their workload and provides our patients with more efficient, quality care.”

On future visits to Archbold Memorial, patients can expect to see bedside nursing consulting with their on-site team members via video call. These virtual nurses may also help in the admission process and provide patient-specific discharge information and education.

“When I’m working as a virtual nurse, I’m able to assist my nursing coworkers across hospital floors and complete more time-consuming tasks virtually that may keep bedside nurses from assisting other patients,” said Courtlen Long, RN, who works as a virtual nurse at Archbold. “I am an Archbold employee working right here at the hospital, but this virtual capability allows me to assist my patients and fellow nurses more efficiently.”

Archbold strives to embrace a culture of adaptation and improvement in everything it does throughout the four-hospital system and has named innovation one of five core values. As Archbold has done since its founding, the introduction of virtual care, including both a sitter and nursing program, allows the hospital to leverage the benefits of technology for the benefit our patients, their families and our staff.