A robust virtual nursing program should be created with long-term goals in mind, says this CNE.
HealthLeaders spoke to Patty Donley, SVP and CNE at WellSpan Health, about the health system's virtual nursing program and how to develop a virtual nursing strategy. Tune in to hear her insights.
An evolving healthcare landscape means the CIO's role is changing. A new HealthLeaders Exchange will take a look at this new hierarchy, where collaboration is the key.
The healthcare C-Suite is evolving, and no position better encapsulates these changes than the CIO. Once considered solely a technology-based role, focusing on EMR adoption and integration, the CIO – be it the chief information or innovation officer (or both) – is assuming more strategic and management duties as the industry embraces new concepts like digital health and transformation.
"Because of those disruptions and because of that focus, now you're a force-multiplier," Aaron Miri, MBA, FCHIME, CHCIO, Baptist Health Jacksonville's EVP and Chief Digital & Information Officer, said during a CHIME CIO panel at VIVE 25 this past spring in Nashville. "It changed the lexicon of CIOs to be talking more like a CFO, or a COO, or a Chief Human Resources Officer."
"I spend part of my day looking at recruitment, part of my day looking at P&L [profit and loss], part of my day looking at futuristic digital transformations and what we can do [to be] disruptive, as well as strategically, where are we going as a health system," he added.
Indeed, while the EMR/EHR still occupies a large chunk of C-Suite time and effort, the onset of new technologies like digital health, virtual care and AI
In a 2024 study supported by surveys of 51 executives from 33 health systems, the National Institutes of Health summarized the newly evolving CIO as having three roles:
Enabling strategic change and transformation;
Developing technology and leadership talent; and
Driving organizational culture.
"As healthcare continues to evolve, the role of the CIO is expected to expand further, requiring a blend of technical and strategic business skills," the article, written by researchers at the Georgetown University Department of Health Management Policy and the University of Alabama at Birmingham', concluded. "This evolution presents opportunities for health systems to enhance their leadership development programs, preparing leaders for the complexities of the contemporary health system sector."
In addition, healthcare leadership is not only redefining the CIO but in some cases reorganizing the C-Suite, either due to budget concerns or the changing face of healthcare transformation. Chief strategy and partnership officers are helping to address disruptors and extend the healthcare organization's traditional footprint, while chief digital health and transformation officers are handling the growing integration of technology in patient care, especially as healthcare moves out of the hospital and into the home. Some organizations are even carving out a leadership role for AI development and management, with the idea that this technology requires full-time stewardship.
At the VIVE panel, Tessa Springman, SVP and chief information / digital health officer at LifeBridge Health, noted she's become more of an educator and facilitator.
"I am the person who is the glue in the organization," she said. "I am constantly educating my peers on what their peers are doing."
"I spend most of my day thinking about, OK, how am I going to improve this business function, how are we going to partner to make this improvement, and will technology help that particular function or not?" she added.
The gist of this evolution is that the CIO is being called upon to work more closely with others in the executive chain, particularly as new programs and strategies require input from a wide variety of sources, including the CFO, the CMO, the CNO, and even the CEO. The top job description of the future may well be "works well with others."
To address this shifting role, HealthLeaders is launching a new Exchange aimed at bringing together top CIOs, chief digital health officers, chief transformation officers and others to network and discuss how technology strategy is changing their roles.
As cost of living continues to rise, nurses, like many other professionals, are feeling the strain.
Financial insecurity has a significant impact on every aspect of a person's life, and inadequate compensation can be a major driving factor in employee turnover at an organization.
Nurses are overworked and feeling burnt out, and that plus high cost of living pressures is a recipe for increased turnover rates. CNOs must do what they can to advocate for their nurses and define the value of their work to build more sustainable workforces that benefit the nurse, the patient, and the organization.
Here's what CNOs need to know about nurse compensation in 2025, according to a report by Vivian.
Virtual nursing can provide multiple kinds of support to the bedside nurse that can help with retention, says this nurse leader.
On this episode of HL Shorts, we hear from Emily Warr, system administrator for the Center for Telehealth at MUSC Health, about how virtual nursing can boost nurse retention in health systems. Tune in to hear her insights.
A robust virtual nursing program should be created with long-term goals in mind, says this CNE.
Virtual nursing is rapidly becoming a standard of care in the healthcare industry.
Right now, while many programs are still in their infancy, CNOs have a great opportunity to learn from each other's strategies and outcomes.
For Patty Donley, senior vice president and CNE at WellSpan Health, the original goal of WellSpan's virtual nursing program was twofold. First and foremost, Donley emphasized the workforce shortage and planning for when the baby boomer generation retires.
"We'll likely need more care at the same time that our baby boomer nursing and healthcare professionals are retiring," Donley said.
Donley explained that as nurses retire, the rate at which they will retire is predicted to be greater than the rate of those entering the profession.
"That combined with that increase in the number of aging adults will likely create a supply and demand issue," Donley said. "We're really trying to look ahead and determine how [to] plan for what likely will become an even greater shortage moving forward."
Additionally, WellSpan is considering how to support nurses with their current workload and how to do that in an innovative way that provides greater satisfaction for bedside nurses, Donley said. The health system is also interested in leveraging the knowledge of experienced nurses to help support newer generations of nurses.
Developing the strategy
According to Donley, developing the virtual nursing program, which has been in place since 2023, began by looking at it from a cross-functional perspective.
"We knew what we were looking to accomplish, but doing it in such a way that we pulled in our IT colleagues," Donley said.
WellSpan’s innovation and design teams also got involved with the project. According to Donley, the next step was to create a governance structure that leveraged executive leadership who had the vision, a budget, and a timeline, and a committee of clinical leaders and team members who provided insights on the program’s impact. The technical team also was present to look at all the technical components that needed to be considered.
"I think that's what made us successful and particularly engaging frontline nurses from the beginning was integral to our ability to be where we are today," Donley said. "I think that listening and gaining their insights and input into how we did it initially helped us to build a platform and to create a virtual care model that worked for our nurses."
Donley also emphasized the importance of messaging when starting a virtual nursing program.
"The other thing we started at the very beginning was to message that the virtual care nurse was not meant to replace nurses, but to support them," Donley said.
Looking to the next generation
In terms of looking to the future, while there are no new grads currently working in WellSpan's virtual nursing program, Donley says they have taken Gen Z nurses into consideration for their strategy.
"We're looking to partner with…our colleges and universities to introduce the technology while the nurses are in nursing school so that they can be prepared if potentially that's an area that they're interested in," Donley said.
The goal would be to get new graduate nurses familiar with the technology to equip them for the future of their careers.
"Introducing that technology and the platform and how it's done early on in a person's career might help to eventually move in that direction," Donley said.
In the future, WellSpan plans to continue reducing administrative tasks and unnecessary burdens at the bedside. Donley says they are looking into ambient listening and how to leverage their virtual nursing platform for documentation. The health system is also looking at different efficiencies in sites of care like the operating room and where the virtual care platform and their chosen vendor platform, Artisight, can help capture different documentation pieces.
"That's exactly the position we want to be in as we continue to talk to our frontline nurses and team members, to say, 'how else can we support you?'" Donley said.
Donley recommends having a long-term mindset when strategizing for virtual nursing. Engaging the frontline teams and celebrating milestones and successes are also key for CNOs and other leadership.
"You might start small, you might start with doing admissions or something like that, but think about a platform that's going to take you to the next level and that might be able to solve some future challenges.”
HealthLeaders' Michelle Ponte sits down with Rob St. John, senior clinical director and technical fellow for the Acute Care and Monitoring Division of Medtronic, to learn how HealthCast's portfolio can allow nurses and clinicians to deliver better care without replacing them.
This week’s The Winning Edge panel set the stage for AI in clinical support, from compiling a better patient record to identifying the care gaps in population health.
Clinical care is the next big thing for AI integration, and healthcare leaders have a lot of ideas about how the technology can be used.
In this week’s The Winning Edge, sponsored by Lightbeam Health Solutions, Michael Wells, president of OSF HealthCare’s Saint Francis Medical Center in Illinois, and Ishani Ved, MHA, CPHQ, FHELA, director of transformational population health and outcomes for Saint Peter’s Healthcare System in New Jersey, explained how AI is slowly and carefully being used to help with care management.
Ved noted the benefits to population health, particularly in gathering and assessing data from disparate and siloed sources to understand the social determinants of health that are keeping underserved populations from accessing the care they need. And Wells pointed to the possibilities in improving inpatient care, from capturing conversations in the hospital room to improving the patient’s medical record, even monitoring patients when no one else is in the room.
Both said the key to using AI in clinical care is ensuring that the data used in AI programs is up to date and reliable, and that means good governance and continuous monitoring. It also means making the entire process transparent, and helping doctors and nurses understand how AI will improve their workflows and give them more time to spend with their patients.
As Danielle Bergman, MSN, APRN, FNP-BC, AVP of clinical development at Lightbeam Health, noted, AI has the opportunity to take a lot of time-consuming and administrative tasks off the provider’s “mental bandwidth” and help them focus on patient care.
Here’s the YouTube presentation of Tuesday’s webinar.
Nurses are overworked and feeling burnt out, and that plus high cost of living pressures is a recipe for increased turnover rates.
As cost of living continues to rise, nurses, like many other professionals, are feeling the strain. Financial insecurity has a significant impact on every aspect of a person's life, and inadequate compensation can be a major driving factor in employee turnover at an organization.
According to Bankrate's 2024 Financial Freedom Survey, Americans report needing to make a six-figure salary of $186,000 on average to live comfortably, which is more than double the $79,000 that the average full-time employee makes annually. Additionally, about 75% of Americans report that they are not completely financially secure.
When thinking about the nursing workforce shortage and why it's happening, it's critical that CNOs take a look at compensation. To get a full picture of nurse compensation in 2025, let's take a look at some facts and figures.
The current state of compensation
As of June 4, 2025, the average RN salary is $43.97 an hour, according to a report by Vivian. If a nurse works the standard 52 weeks at 40 hours per week, this number comes out to be $91,457 annually. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the median annual wage for RNs was $93,600 in 2024, which translates to $45 an hour.
In 2025, the highest paying state for RNs is California, with an average hourly salary of $73, and a max hourly salary of $91, according to the Vivian report. The next highest paying states are Oregon ($69 average), New York ($62 average), Minnesota ($61 average,) and North Carolina ($56 average). Vivian also reports that the average travel nurse salary is $2,147 per week, and the highest paying state is California, with an average weekly salary of $2,570 and a maximum of $4,491 per week for traveling nurses.
When comparing the average and max hourly rates in each state, it becomes clear that many nurse salaries are hovering below the six-figure salary threshold needed to live comfortably without worry. According to the 2024 National Nursing Workforce Study conducted by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN), one of the top five reasons nurses are leaving the workforce is inadequate salary.
While many health systems are operating on thin margins, it's important to keep in mind that nurse turnover also comes with a price tag. The average cost of turnover for a bedside RN is $61,110, according to the 2025 NSI National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report.
Nurses are overworked and feeling burnt out, and that plus high cost of living pressures is a recipe for increased turnover rates. CNOs must do what they can to advocate for their nurses and define the value of their work to build more sustainable workforces that benefit the nurse, the patient, and the organization.
This week’s Winning Edge webinar focused on the benefits and challenges of adding AI to clinical care pathways
After seeing success with AI in back-end operations and the revenue cycle, healthcare executives are eager to see how the technology can benefit clinical care.
But as the executives in this week’s The Winning Edge webinar, sponsored by Lightbeam Health Solutions, pointed out, there are a lot more checks and balances in play when patient care is affected. The data used in these programs has to be reliable and up-to-date, requiring strong governance and continuous monitoring. And both providers and patients have to confident that AI is being used to make things easier.
That said, Michael Wells, president of OSF Healthcare’s Saint Francis Medical Center; Ishani Ved, MHA, CPHQ, FHELA, director of transformational population health outcomes at Saint Peter’s Healthcare System; and Danielle Bergman, MSN, APRN, FNP-BC, AVP of clinical development at Lightbeam Health noted, there are key pain points in clinical care – both inside and outside the hospital – that AI can address.
Here are three ideas. Also read today’s wrap-up in HealthLeaders and check back tomorrow for the YouTube video of Tuesday’s webinar.
The health system's virtual nursing program has morphed quite a bit in the med surg realm, says this nursing science leader.
While virtual nursing will likely have an impact in all areas of health systems, many organizations are beginning their programs on med surg units and have seen great successes in doing so. As virtual care technology continues to evolve, med surg units will also change and patient care workflows will become more efficient.
Monique Bouvier, corporate director of nursing science at Emory Healthcare and assistant professor at the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, recently gave HealthLeaders an update on the health system's virtual nursing progress over the past year.
Bouvier is part of the HealthLeaders Virtual Nursing Mastermind program, which brings together several health systems to discuss the ins and outs of their virtual nursing programs and what their goals are for now and the future.
What's changed?
Since last year, Bouvier told HealthLeaders that Emory's virtual nursing program has morphed quite a bit in the med surg realm.
"A year ago, we did a pilot to show the value," Bouvier said. "Now, we are hard-wiring bidirectional virtual nursing systems into our patient rooms, and hope to have 1,000 medical-surgical rooms hard-wired for virtual care by the end of the year."
Right now, Emory uses patient care metrics to measure outcomes, including length of stay, readmissions, number of ED visits, patient satisfaction, and quality metrics.
“Additionally, for our nurses we are capturing retention, contract utilization, nurses' perceived workload, work satisfaction, [and] time spent in the EHR," Bouvier said.
In terms of staffing, Bouvier explained that they are on a journey to discover the right model.
"We are really listening to our nurse and patient needs, desires, and critiques to create a staffing strategy that meets the needs of not only our patients, but our nursing staff as well," Bouvier said.
Currently, the health system is working with several vendors for virtual care technology, but the goal is to consolidate as much as possible.
"Our end goal is to have a virtual platform that is a one-stop shop across all sectors of care," Bouvier said.
Overcoming obstacles
As this is a huge financial investment for hospitals to take on, Emory Healthcare is intentionally measuring impact of such a significant investment. Bouvier explained that right now, literature is limited to rely upon for metrics, staffing, and financial benefits, which can make virtual nursing programs a hard sell.
"We are kind of building the ship as we sail because inpatient medical-surgical virtual care is truly a new nursing care delivery model," Bouvier said. "As nurses, we follow evidence-based practices, and because the inpatient virtual landscape is developing, I can understand the hesitancy of investing time and money."
However, Bouvier believes that this technology is not going to go away, and it's the responsibility of partners in the technology space to ensure that the technology is working for providers. Bouvier also pointed out how the virtual care boom is happening concurrently with the rise of AI.
"These huge shifts have revealed a level of unknowns with new technology," Bouvier said. "Hospital organizations need to acknowledge that shift and work with their medical staff to ensure informed, safe, [and] ethical roll outs."
The future is bright
As of right now, Bouvier does not expect much to change on the technological front as the health system is still working on deploying and implementing all of the new technologies for inpatient virtual care, with a current focus on integrating translation services. However, going forward, Bouvier said that Emory plans to expand the virtual care program to outpatient settings.
"We are starting a pilot program for a virtual transition of care platform for our patients from the inpatient to outpatient setting," Bouvier said. "We want our patients to experience uninterrupted care across their care journey."
So far, nurses have reported experiencing benefits from the virtual care program, and have expressed to Bouvier that they appreciate it.
"Hearing nurses who were initially hesitant to be part of the virtual nursing trial transform their thoughts from uncertainty to praise for the platform has been the best part," Bouvier said. "We are taking the time and listening to our nurses via an empathy-based PDSA cycle, [and] that is what has made this great."
The HealthLeaders Mastermind seriesis an exclusive series of calls and events with healthcare executives. This Virtual NursingMastermind series features ideas, solutions, and insights intoexcelling your virtual nursing program.Please join the community at our LinkedIn page.
To inquire about participating in an upcoming Mastermind series or attending a HealthLeaders Exchange event, email us at exchange@healthleadersmedia.com.
