Maggie McKay (Host): Have you heard of virtual nursing? Today, we'll find out what it involves, how it works, and who might benefit. Welcome to Wise and Well, presented by Community Memorial Healthcare. I'm your host, Maggie McKay. Community Memorial Healthcare recently partnered with Teladoc to bring talented, compassionate staff and the latest in virtual nursing technology together. The virtual nursing program gives you immediate access to your nurse at the click of a button, while allowing in-person team members to spend more time at your bedside when needed.

Today, we're joined by Diane Drexler, Chief Nursing Officer and Vice President of Patient Care Services at Community Memorial, to learn more about this exciting new technology. It's great to have you here today, Diane. Thanks for joining us.

Diane Drexler, DNP: Thanks, Maggie. Glad to be here.

Host: Let's just talk about the program to start off with. Community Memorial's virtual nursing program is a relatively new initiative, so can you please discuss the decision to implement this program?

Diane Drexler, DNP: Sure. Shortly, after COVID, we started seeing a decrease in staff morale. We had a lot of nurses leaving the profession and really wanted to see what we could do to help support them in this environment, how can technology help us improve staff satisfaction and retention, improve patient satisfaction and outcomes, and also physician satisfaction and family satisfaction. So, we really looked at all of those variables, worked with our IT department, and then looked for a partner, and we selected  Teladoc and we implemented our pilot in August of 2024.

Host: That sounds like a great plan. How does the virtual nursing program complement the care provided by in-person nurses at Community Memorial?

Diane Drexler, DNP: It has really done a tremendous job of giving patients a feeling they have somebody at their beck and call. They just click a button and the virtual nurse is there. They don't have to wait for somebody to answer their call bell. I've gotten comments from family members, you know, feeling secure and being able to go home, knowing that somebody is there by a click of a button. This does allow the bedside nurse to spend more in person time with their patients, walk their patients, get them up versus documenting, and a lot of the other necessary requirements. It is a combined effort though. There are identified duties for the virtual nurse, identified duties for the bedside nurse, and then what duties are combined.

Host: Would you describe what the hub is where virtual nurses work? What technology is used to facilitate communication between virtual nurses and patients?

Diane Drexler, DNP: We have it on site in the Ocean Tower. We've got two desktop computers where they've got two monitors. The virtual nurse has access to the bed board so they know when a patient is being admitted. They have access to the EMR so they are aware when patients are getting discharged. They've got the camera that's located in the patient room that also is located in the virtual nurse hub. It really serves as the air traffic control for that virtual nurse.

Host: And, Diane, what are the benefits of virtual nursing?

Diane Drexler, DNP: Part of the decision was to develop an ROI on this. And some of the indicators that we chose was reducing patient length of stay. When we started this, our baseline was 4.21. We are down to 4.02. We wanted to see a decrease in nursing turnover. We started at a 9% turnover. We are down to a 3% turnover. We wanted to see an increase in patient satisfaction scores on communication about medications. We went from 53% to 68%, and we also wanted the individual care plan initiated within 24 hours. Our baseline was 19 and we are at 2 hours. We feel that this is far exceeding our metrics.

Host: Absolutely. That's a lot of progress in a short amount of time. So, let's talk about patients. how are they feeling about it? What feedback have you gotten from them and what's been the most significant impact on your patients and your organization as a whole?

Diane Drexler, DNP: You know, as I round on patients and families, I ask them and I have gotten positive feedback from all patients and family members. Again, patient feel like they've got easy access to their virtual nurse. Our virtual nurses are also our staff. They rotate on that unit and the current virtual nurses are all bilingual, so that really does help with any translation issues.

 The families like it because if there's any types of questions, we could actually bring the family members if they're off-site via camera to discuss any care plan issues with the patient or discharge orders. They could be included in that without having to be on site.

Host: Diane, are there any plans to expand the scope of the virtual nursing program in the future?

Diane Drexler, DNP: Yes. We are currently in the middle of an EMR transition to EPIC. We go live on March 8th. After that, we would I'd like to start expanding it to all of the acute care floors at CMH and also at Ojai.

Host: That's amazing. Is there anything else in closing that you'd like to add that we didn't discuss?

Diane Drexler, DNP: I think it really just scratched the surface of the potentials of virtual nursing, not only can it help with what we're currently doing? But I see it being as an augmentation for new nurses by having an experienced virtual nurse available to them to ask any questions. I think that could be another utilization.

As our workforce continues to age, they may not want to work on the floor 12 hours anymore, but they still want to stay in nursing. This could be another potential opportunity for them or nurses on light duty. So again, I think we've just scratched the surface on what virtual nursing can bring to us.

Host: It sounds amazing and definitely like a win-win. Thank you so much for your time today.

Diane Drexler, DNP: Thanks, Maggie.

Host: Again, that's Diane Drexler. And if you'd like to learn more about all the many ways patients can expect more from Community Memorial Health Care, visit mycmh.org. That's mycmh org. And if you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels and check out our entire podcast library for topics of interest to you. I'm Maggie McKay. Thanks for listening to Wise and Well, presented by Community Memorial Health Care.