University Hospitals Launches Whole-Hospital Virtual Nursing Program

University Hospitals has launched its Connected Care Team initiative at UH Lake West, making it one of the first hospitals in the nation to go live with a whole-hospital virtual nursing program. The initiative, powered by Vitalchat's AI-driven audio and video platform, builds on a successful initial phase that demonstrated strong benefits for patients, caregivers, and health system efficiency.

Key Takeaways:

• The Connected Care Team at UH Lake West extends the reach of UH nurses through secure, high-definition video and two-way communication, supporting admissions, discharges, patient education, monitoring, and urgent interventions.
• The virtual nursing program optimizes capacity, allowing bedside clinicians to spend more time providing focused hands-on care and building personal connections with patients.
• Phase 1 outcomes included higher patient experience and caregiver engagement scores, more efficient support for critical workflows, and three clinical studies, including an FDA-supported trial evaluating AI to detect fall risks.
• The program will continue to expand, including piloting 24/7 operations, adding virtual patient observation, and broadening use cases into the emergency department and operating room.
• Frontline leaders at UH underscored the cultural shift, highlighting the joy and excitement in the care teams as they ignite innovation and improve the system.
• The partnership between UH and Vitalchat sets a new national standard for virtual nursing, demonstrating how intelligent technology can transform care by supporting caregivers, improving outcomes, and creating lasting value for health systems.

Statistics:

• The UH Lake West virtual nursing program has implemented a whole-hospital virtual nursing program, reaching every inpatient unit.
• The program has expanded from a centralized command center with one remote nurse per unit to a whole-hospital launch with virtual nursing support available to every inpatient unit.
• Patient experience and caregiver engagement scores improved in Phase 1, outperforming comparable units.
• The virtual nursing platform has been utilized in three clinical studies, including an FDA-supported trial.
• UH employs over 30,000 employees, making it one of the largest employers in Northeast Ohio.

Sources:

• UH Lake West Medical Center go-live makes UH among the first hospital systems in the U.S. to fully implement a whole-hospital virtual nursing program (Source: University Hospitals, Vitalchat)
• The Veale Healthcare Transformation Institute (Source: University Hospitals)
• University Hospitals Cleveland, Ohio (Source: University Hospitals)
• Vitalchat delivers a flexible audio and video platform designed to transform healthcare delivery (Source: Vitalchat)
• View original content to download multimedia: (Source: Vitalchat; University Hospitals)