Providing optimal clinician-to-patient ratios is challenging right now due to ongoing staffing shortages. Many hospitals are looking for alternative solutions to help, including virtual sitters.
With a virtual sitter solution, hospitals can expand coverage and provide more effective care collaboration without adding resources. This can help improve outcomes and enhance the patient experience.
It is important to note, however, that not all virtual sitter solutions are of equal quality and value. The following are eight key features hospitals should look for when selecting the best solution for their organization.
8 Features of the Best Virtual Sitter Solution
A unified user experience
A virtual sitter solution must provide a unified user experience across all mobile, desktop, and clinically-focused endpoints. The best solutions are designed specifically for a care setting. This ensures consistency and ease of use, which can help drive clinical adoption across the care continuum.
Exceptional video quality and error resilience
Quality care requires that clinicians see true-to-life color, motion, and skin tone. The best virtual sitter solutions provide the highest quality audio and visual options, including 4K and 5K displays. Error resiliency is essential for ensuring a reliable connection over variable bandwidth and network conditions in all care settings.
Easy for patients and clinicians to use
The best virtual sitter solutions should enhance the patient experience. Choose a solution that uses simple, onscreen buttons that make it easy for patients and clinicians to connect. A one-click solution is the best choice. It is also essential to have onscreen email and text invitation options. This allows clinicians to invite the patient’s family, providers, specialists, and other members of the care team to the conference. Ease of use is critical for clinician adoption and optimal collaboration.
Unparalleled ease of deployment
The virtual sitter solution you use should be simple to deploy on any application, including Windows, macOS, and Android, and on various screens, including desktops, browsers, medical carts, and mobile devices. Choose a solution that will meet your unique deployment needs. This might include on-premises for high-level control over traffic, CDRs, and network access; private cloud through Google Cloud Platform or Amazon Web Services; or a multi-tenant cloud for scalability, silent upgrades, and proactive monitoring.
Integrations with top EHRs
The best virtual sitter solutions are those that fit seamlessly into existing workflows. Therefore, it is essential to pick a solution that integrates with your EMR, HIS, or PMS systems. Choosing a solution with long-standing integrations with systems like Epic will help reduce operational interruptions and facilitate a more efficient implementation.
Call recording
Depending on your organization’s needs, having the option to record virtual sitter calls can be important, especially for consult reviews and patient education. To address privacy concerns, you may want to bypass solutions that offer to keep recordings in their systems. Instead, opt for a solution that allows hospitals to manage recordings within their own systems.
Motion detection technology
More than a million people fall in hospitals each year. The best virtual sitter solutions offer motion detection so that the virtual sitter is alerted when the patient is trying to get out of bed. The virtual sitter can intervene by instructing the patient to stay in bed while a bedside nurse is notified. This feature helps patients get the help they need more quickly while improving a hospital’s safety ratings.
Supports HIPAA compliance
Be sure to choose a virtual sitter solution that meets all HIPAA-compliant Business Associate Agreement requirements.
The path forward
Healthcare staffing shortages aren’t likely to end anytime soon. Leveraging a virtual sitter solution is an excellent way for hospitals to make better use of scarce resources while ensuring optimal outcomes and a positive patient experience. VidyoHealth can help.
VidyoHealth’s VirtualSitter solution was designed for hospitals that need a turnkey solution to connect clinicians with patients and their families within an in-patient or outpatient setting. Unlike other solutions on the market, VirtualSitter is scalable, flexible, and can be integrated into a hospital’s existing network of audio and visual equipment.
With VirtualSitter, clinicians can easily monitor multiple patients simultaneously on the same monitor from any location. Conferencing with a patient is also easy, with onscreen buttons for audio-only or audio-visual calls. Clinicians can invite family members, providers, or specialists to join the conference via an onscreen email or text invitation options. There’s even a “doorbell” alert to let patients know a conference is about to begin and a privacy option patients can choose when having confidential conversations with family or friends.
Learn more about the VidyoHealth VirtualSitter solution. Visit www.vidyohealth.com.
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