The primary staffing model stretches resources and staff to deliver care to hospital patients. By leveraging new technologies such as virtual nurses and teleprofessionals, hospitals can implement a partnered care delivery model to lower readmissions, increase the number of patients a hospital can handle every year, and improve patient outcomes across the board.
The Virtual Nurse and Partnered Care Delivery
A virtual nurse is an expert RN who can oversee care teams. Additionally, a virtual nurse can monitor a greater number of high-risk patients without adding costs. By contrast, the traditional care delivery model has a team of between three and four staff members and nurses monitoring and caring for six patients at a time. By integrating a virtual nurse, care teams can be streamlined while increasing the capacity. The new partnered care delivery model gives hospitals the ability to monitor and provide quality care for 9-12 patients with a single team, saving on resources, reducing burnout among staff, and improving patient outcomes. In addition to oversight, a virtual nurse also handles real-time surveillance, admissions and discharges, and supports new RNs, which allows for more specialized care delivery.
Partnered Care Delivery in Action
Hospitals throughout North America and abroad are using partnered care delivery to improve coverage, create specialized teams, and improve patient outcomes. With partnered care delivery, patients can be grouped by care needs and the microsystems needed to provide treatment. The nursing team can be given more concrete roles, such as a daily care RN, continuous care RN, and an auxiliary nurse. Overseeing and assisting the functions is the virtual nurse. By using partnered care delivery, teams can focus on providing the best care for patients, thus lowering readmissions and improving overall satisfaction. The focused teams can work more efficiently and attentively without burnout, and hospitals can care for more patients per year than under the traditional staffing model.
BANYAN helps hospitals transition to partnered care delivery by assessing the needs of facilities, staff, and patients. From there, we can implement the changes necessary, including virtual nurses, patient monitoring stations, teleprofessionals, and other services to reduce costs and readmissions, and provide higher satisfaction for nursing staff and patients alike. Contact BANYAN today to learn more about partnered care delivery.