Today’s healthcare workforce faces a critical gap between demand and supply of new and experienced nurses:

• In 2020, the median age of RNs was 52, with more than 20 percent anticipating retirement in the next 5 years (Smiley et al., 2021).
• A 2020 survey reported that 32 percent of RNs said they may leave bedside nursing, up 10% from 10 months earlier (Berlin et. al., 2022)
• Nursing schools turned away nearly 92,000 qualified applications in 2021 due to a lack of faculty and clinical sites (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2023).
• Four million nurses are predicted to retire by 2030 (American Journal of Nursing, 2021). In response, healthcare organizations and health systems are deploying new technologies to deliver care efficiently and safely, such as HCA Healthcare’s new virtual nursing pilot program. This innovative care model increases patient satisfaction and lowers alternative care costs, while reducing burnout, providing a less physical and more flexible work environment, and offering the potential to rehire high-performers who have left nursing. HCA Healthcare initially piloted virtual nursing in a 25-bed surgical unit in a hospital with no emergency department holds and no critical throughput needs, and a second hospital with two medical surgical units and 88 total beds, with a heavy emphasis on throughput and use of a discharge lounge. In each case, a virtual nurse handled admission and medication history documentation, providing bedside nurses with 18 more minutes for hands-on patient care that they previously spent on intake tasks, according to an HCA study. HCA also found that virtual nursing improved completion and accuracy of intake documentation, including an increase of 45 percent in the response rate on one admission form that led to more effective MRSA screening. In a second use case, HCA deployed a new virtual nursing workflow for discharge, aiming to reduce documentation time while accommodating for the various resources available at individual facilities. Based on its early success with virtual nursing, HCA recently scaled up the program to cover six facilities and almost 900 inpatient beds.