7 Ways Virtual Sitters Are Changing Care

Virtual sitters are transforming caregiving in healthcare, merging technology with personalized care to enhance patient safety and cut costs. A 2022 study revealed hospitals using virtual sitters saw a 14% decline in fall rates, significantly improving patient outcomes. Additionally, hospitals have reported annual savings of over $1.5 million by reducing the need for continuous in-person monitoring.

Virtual sitters offer remote monitoring and real-time interventions, enabling healthcare professionals to watch patients 24/7. This reduces the need for physical presence, prevents adverse events, and lowers reliance on in-person sitters.

These systems dramatically enhance healthcare access and delivery. They free up valuable nursing resources, allowing specialized care to reach more patients at a lower cost.

Given these benefits, let’s explore seven key ways virtual sitters reshape caregiving. We’ll detail how these systems improve patient safety and care delivery through advanced technology.

1. Reducing Patient Falls 

Patient falls are a serious issue in healthcare, accounting for 42% of sentinel events in 2022. These falls, especially in elderly people, often result from poor balance, eyesight, and hearing, leading to severe injuries like hip fractures, bruises, and head trauma.

Virtual sitters help prevent falls by identifying risky situations and alerting on-site nurses immediately. Using motion detection, these systems sense when a patient tries to get out of bed and notify nurses within seconds for quick intervention.

VidyoHealth’s VirtualSitter provides early intervention for patients at risk of falls in emergency departments (ED), post-anesthesia care units (PACU), and long-term acute care hospitals (LTACH). It uses color codes to categorize patients by condition, such as critical or fall risk, helping healthcare professionals prioritize care.

These virtual sitters can also utilize night vision capabilities to capture clear and accurate videos of patients in low-light conditions, ensuring safety without disrupting sleep.

2. Remote Monitoring of Infectious Disease Patients

Bedside sitters are routinely at risk of contracting infectious diseases due to their close and frequent contact with patients. With 66% of hospitals running at less than full capacity due to staffing shortages, further absenteeism due to sickness is untenable. 

Virtual sitter solutions like VidyoHealth allow observers to remotely monitor patients with infectious diseases without exposing themselves to illness. 

The system uses camera-enabled devices in patient rooms to capture live video and audio. The video feed is securely transmitted to a remote monitoring station, where healthcare professionals continuously observe the patient’s condition and behavior, quickly assessing any signs of distress or need for assistance.

This method allows patient observers to perform virtual rounds, ensuring continuous patient monitoring while protecting their safety.

3. Preventing Self-Injury or Suicide

Managing patients with suicide ideation (SI) in hospitals is challenging. It often requires 1:1 supervision to ensure patient safety. This exacerbates staffing shortages and diverts nurses from other critical care duties.

Virtual sitter solutions such as VidyoHealth help alleviate this by enabling nurses to monitor patients with behavioral and mental health conditions continuously. 

Through intelligent algorithms and video analytics, specific behaviors or movements that indicate risk can be detected, triggering alerts and alarms. This allows nurses to intervene quickly when a patient appears at risk of self-harm.

Furthermore, observers can document the patient’s condition promptly, providing valuable information for subsequent shifts. They can also interact with patients through audio and video channels, offering immediate support to those experiencing suicidal thoughts or engaging in self-harm until a clinician can take over.

VidyoHealth’s VirtualSitter includes a privacy mode, which allows patients to have confidential conversations with family or friends while maintaining their privacy.

4. Enhanced Monitoring for Elderly Patients

America’s elderly population is growing. By 2050, the number of people aged 65 and older will rise from 58 million in 2022 to 82 million. This increase presents significant challenges, with 8.3 million Americans currently lacking necessary elder care. Many elderly patients have complex chronic conditions that require intensive, round-the-clock monitoring and costly clinical care. This burden often falls on hospitals, which may lack sufficient resources to provide the required care.

Virtual sitter solutions, like VidyoHealth, offer remote monitoring services that enable hospitals to provide high-quality care for these patients without additional resources. These solutions enhance the care of older patients in various ways:

For screening and evaluating patients’ health, virtual sitters allow clinicians to conduct assessments using two-way audio-visual capabilities. This helps identify high-risk factors like fall risks and delirium, ensuring timely interventions.

When initial test results are unclear, patients often need further observation. Virtual sitters enable clinicians to consult specialists based on the patient’s condition, facilitating a detailed evaluation. This helps clinicians decide on the appropriate course of action, whether in-person care or continuous remote monitoring.

During the transition from hospital to home and throughout the recovery period, virtual sitters offer 24/7 remote monitoring of elderly patients. This helps prevent injuries and health deterioration, providing peace of mind for both patients and their families.

5. Remote Access to Pediatric Care 

By 2034, the United States will face a shortage of 17,800 to 48,000 pediatric physicians. This, combined with rising patient numbers, overstretched staff, and increased costs, forces children to travel farther and wait longer for specialized care. Additionally, many hospitals are cutting pediatric units to make room for more profitable adult services, putting more pressure on pediatric care.

Virtual sitters, like VidyoHealth’s solution, address these challenges by:

• Access to specialists: Virtual sitters allow providers to evaluate and triage pediatric patients remotely before they reach the emergency department. This ensures timely consultations with specialists so children receive optimal care without waiting for specialists to be physically present. Additionally, specialists can easily communicate with guardians using high-quality audio-visual capabilities.

• Remote Monitoring and Treatment: Limited resources in pediatric hospitals make it challenging to manage complex cases. Virtual sitters enable centralized PICU monitoring, where clinicians oversee multiple patients from a single location. When issues arise, onsite staff are promptly alerted. Bedside carts equipped with digital stethoscopes and other devices allow continuous remote monitoring of a child’s vitals, enabling swift intervention and improved outcomes for high-risk cases.

For example, Nemours Children’s Health System utilized VidyoHealth’s CareConnect to enhance ICU admissions from remote consultations by 34.4%. This approach not only increased access to complex pediatric care but also improved clinical outcomes and streamlined care coordination across multiple locations.

6. Centralized ICU Monitoring 

Providing care for critically ill patients requires advanced expertise and continuous monitoring. With nurse turnover rising by 7.5% annually, hospitals struggle to maintain adequate staffing.

VidyoHealth’s virtual sitter enables centralized ICU monitoring. Virtual sitters can oversee multiple ICU patients via video connections from a single command center and communicate with patients and on-site staff as needed. 

This approach allows hospitals to optimize resources without compromising care quality.

VidyoHealth’s VirtualSitter enables clinicians to respond promptly. If a patient is in distress, they can collaborate with ICU nurses in real time and offer immediate help. 

7. Cost-effective Observation Care

Managing observation care in EDs is expensive and distracts nurses from critical patients who need more dedicated care. This situation is especially burdensome in the face of staffing shortages, which lead to backlogs, a stressful work environment, a shortage of ED beds, and a poor patient experience. 

Virtual sitter solutions offer a cost-effective way to manage observation care. Hospitals can use remote nurses to continuously monitor up to 16 observation care patients, regardless of location. This approach allows nursing staff to focus on emergent care.

VidyoHealth’s VirtualSitter can save hospitals up to 97.6% in costs by handling routine observation tasks, optimizing resources, and enhancing patient care.

Enghouse VidyoHealth: Your Trusted Virtual Sitter Solution

Patient safety is a critical challenge in healthcare, with hospitals struggling to provide adequate clinician coverage. 

VidyoHealth’s VirtualSitter offers a solution through continuous remote monitoring and real-time interventions. It allows healthcare professionals to oversee multiple patients from any location, improving care delivery and enhancing patient safety.

VidyoHealth seamlessly integrates with existing audio and visual equipment, providing the flexibility and scalability needed for modern healthcare. 

Trusted by over 4,500 healthcare providers worldwide, VidyoHealth is celebrated for its exceptional care and cost-efficiency. The system ensures secure bi-directional communication, is HIPAA-compliant, and supports easy implementation. VidyoHealth customizes VirtualSitter to meet specific institutional needs, providing adaptability for future challenges.

Discover how VidyoHealth VirtualSitter can transform patient care at your facility by contacting us today!

FAQs 

1. What is a virtual sitter?

A virtual sitter, often employed in healthcare settings, is a technology-based solution designed to monitor patients remotely, especially those at risk of falls, self-harm, or other safety issues, without compromising care quality. It helps prevent costly falls and injuries while optimizing nursing staff use during shortages.

1. How does a virtual sitter work in the hospital?

Virtual sitters perform real-time, continuous video monitoring of up to 16 patients simultaneously from a remote platform, raising alerts when there is a risk of harm. The technology includes mobile or fixed room devices with pan, tilt, and zoom cameras installed in hospital rooms. The platform supports two-way audio communication, privacy mode, doorbell systems, and family collaboration.

1. What are the pros and cons of virtual sitters?

Pros of virtual sitters:

• A reduction in patient falls
• Preventing tube/line issues
• Managing staffing shortages 
• Reducing costs of 1:1 patient sitting
• Discouraging unauthorized drug use
• Ensuring nurse safety by preventing patient aggression

Cons of virtual sitters:

• Patient privacy concerns
• Quality control
• Small screen size and low video resolution when monitoring multiple patients

1. What are the top virtual sitter solutions?

The top virtual sitter solutions are:

• VidyoHealth’s VirtualSitter
• Avasure
• Caregivility
• Vitalchat 
• Hicuity Health.

1. Which is the best virtual sitter solution?

VidyoHealth’s VirtualSitter is the best virtual sitter solution due to features like high video quality, error resilience, ease of deployment, integrations with EHRs, call recording ability, patient privacy controls, and HIPAA compliance.