The next phase in virtual nursing

The face of a nurse now appears on a television screen in hundreds of rooms at Jackson, Mich.-based Henry Ford Jackson Hospital. From a command center down the hall, the nurse conducts safety checks, reviews charts and helps patients prepare for discharge — all without ever crossing the threshold.

This new model, known as virtual nursing, is not a futuristic experiment so much as a response to an immediate crisis. Michigan is already short as many as 20,000 registered nurses, according to Eric Wallis, DNP, RN, chief nursing officer of Detroit-based Henry Ford Health, and the average nurse in the state is older than 50.

“We know that a lot of that workforce is going to be moving to retirement age,” he told Becker’s. “What I’m excited about is that this gives some of our nurses the opportunity to take on a virtual role, to not have to be on their feet for a 12-hour shift.”

The system began experimenting with the idea in 2024, asking bedside teams which parts of their work could be shifted to the virtual model. Tasks heavy with documentation — admissions, discharges, chart reviews — topped the list.

“Coming out of the pandemic, there was an incredible workload and burden and burnout and stress that was on our nurses,” Dr. Wallis said. “And so we really were trying to think about, you know, what is that next evolution? What is that next model of care? And really, how do we support our teams?”

When the program expanded this summer, its effect was immediate. According to Wallis, in August — the first full month live across Jackson’s acute care units — virtual nurses spent more than 600 hours on patient calls, completed nearly 25,000 tasks and interacted with about 1,350 patients. More than 200 beds at the hospital are now wired for the technology. Wallis said those numbers translated into hundreds of hours of bedside work lifted off floor nurses — time redirected to bedside care.

For nurses on the floor, the change has been welcome.

“The feedback that we get from our nurses over and over and over again was, this is the best thing that you’ve ever done for us,” Wallis said. “It’s really pretty rare that we get almost 100 percent universally positive feedback on something, and so it’s been really, really well received.”

Patients and families have been receptive as well. Hospital leaders say Jackson’s communication and “likelihood to recommend” scores each rose about four percentage points during the pilot, lifting the hospital’s percentile ranking from the teens to above the 80th percentile nationally.

Virtual nurses also intercepted potential lapses in care. In the program’s first week, they caught eight issues before they became problems, Dr. Wallis said.

“Family members really like having the virtual nurse available for their loved one as well,” he said. “They feel like it’s another layer of safety.”

The technology, developed by Care.ai, links with interactive televisions already in patient rooms. A green light signals when a camera is active; when not in use, it angles toward the ceiling. Henry Ford plans to add features such as fall-risk detection and keyword recognition later in 2025.

Outfitting each room and integrating the technology requires significant upfront costs, though Dr. Wallis said the health system expects to recoup the investment in patient safety gains, nurse retention and labor savings. Clinton Township, Mich.-based Macomb Hospital will be the next site to launch later this year, followed by Wyandotte (Mich.) Hospital and West Bloomfield (Mich.) Hospital in 2026.

Dr. Wallis has begun referring to the initiative as “virtual acute care,” a reimagining of hospital staffing he hopes could expand beyond nursing.

“We’re talking with some of our physician service lines right now about how they can use the virtual technology to make their providers more efficient, to make our pharmacists more efficient,” he said. “We’ve already got a list of at least eight other use cases that we’re working on.”

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