From easing discharge and enhancing safety to scaling Hospital at Home and solving workforce gaps, HealthLeaders Virtual Nursing Mastermind participants are leading a quiet revolution.
Today’s virtual nursing strategy, as defined by participants in the 2025 HealthLeaders Virtual Nursing Mastermind program, sponsored by Microsoft, is to expand platforms to create multiple points of value. Why? Well virtual nursing has quickly grown from a tightly scoped experiment into an enterprise-wide movement.
In some systems, it’s ballooned into a care coordination command center, a 24/7 telesitting service, a discharge coach, a patient-family liaison, even a remote workforce infrastructure. What was once a nurse-led innovation is now a proving ground for the entire health system's digital future.
And while some see scale and success, others are confronting hard questions: What’s the sustainable funding model? Who owns the technology? How do we protect the original mission? And how do we prevent virtual nursing from becoming just another layer of complexity that nurses have to manage?
In this report, HealthLeaders reconnects with the CNOs and virtual care champions within our Mastermind program to examine what’s changed, what’s working, and what’s getting dangerously lost in translation since last year’s program. The answers point to a future that’s bigger—and riskier—than anyone predicted.
Moving forward
This time around in the program, the participants have several new goals, and a few new frustrations. The name of the game now is expansion – whether that be into other areas in the health system, or sending the technology home with patients in hospital at home programs.
When considering the future of virtual care technology, the participants are dreaming bigger. In addition to using the technology for nursing, it's clear that the next step in the journey will be to involve multidisciplinary teams. If a health system is going to invest in new technology, why not apply it everywhere possible? Once it's been tested and implemented by nurses, of course.
The 2025 HealthLeaders Virtual Nursing Mastermind program brought together leading health systems in the nation like Geisinger Health System, Mount Sinai Health System, UnityPoint Health, Emory Healthcare, Jefferson Health, Houston Methodist, ChristianaCare, and many more, who are all advancing their virtual nursing programs.
Through virtual meetings and an in-person roundtable, the participating health systems combined their knowledge and experience to provide a framework for other health systems to learn from. Comprised of case studies, infographics, and trends compiled from our virtual and in person roundtables, we created a robust report where we dig into the details of what we learned about growing and expanding a successful virtual nursing program from the best in the country.
Read the full report here.
The HealthLeaders Mastermind series is an exclusive series of calls and events with healthcare executives. This Virtual Nursing Mastermind series features ideas, solutions, and insights on excelling your virtual nursing program.
To inquire about participating in an upcoming Mastermind series or attending a HealthLeaders Exchange event, email us at exchange@healthleadersmedia.com.
G Hatfield is the CNO editor for HealthLeaders.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
What started as a narrow support tool has exploded into a digital command center impacting everything from discharge planning to telesitting, chronic care, and remote workforce strategies.
Even as virtual nursing improves workflows and patient engagement, CFOs still ask the hardest question: where’s the ROI?
CNOs aren’t just digitizing care, they’re reimagining it. By shifting tasks across disciplines and pushing tech into homes, virtual nursing could be the lever that redefines healthcare delivery as we know it.