Orlando Health begins offering 24/7 video monitoring for at-risk inpatients
Orlando Health is the latest hospital system in the region to start virtually monitoring at-risk inpatients.
In the program, which began July 18, a trained patient safety attendant— also called a sitter— watches a patient in their room constantly through mobile cameras with video chat software. The technology allows the sitter to supervise patients at risk of falling or other injuries, speak to patients in order to provide safety reminders and alert a patient’s in-person clinical care team when they need to intervene.
It’s in use at four hospitals throughout the system.
“Our goal is to truly try and make Orlando Health the safest place for care and the easiest place to deliver it,” said Kelly Edmondson, vice president of nursing and patient care.
The tech has the potential to tackle a serious problem. Up to 1 in 3 inpatients enter a state of delirium that can strip them of their ability to care for themselves and result in injuries, the most common being falls, according to Cleveland Clinic. Every year, 700,000 to 1 million patient falls occur, resulting in around 250,000 injuries and up to 11,000 deaths, according to a 2019 research review published in Clinics in Geriatric Medicine.
It’s standard practice for hospitals to hire in-person safety sitters to stay in at-risk patients’ rooms 24/7, and the hospital will continue to do this in situations where someone is at moderate or high risk of self-harm, Edmondson said. But in some cases, putting a stranger in a patient’s room agitates them further, Edmondson said.
“We are still able to able to accomplish the goal of ensuring their safety … while still allowing them to have the protection of privacy and dignity,” she said.
Virtual sitters are trained to recognize when an in-person sitter may be necessary, Edmondson added.
One of the hospitals implementing this tech, Orlando Regional Medical Center, saw a patient kill himself last spring. Edmondson said the decision to use this software was not motivated by that incident.
“That unfortunate situation really was not associated with our desire to move forward with this platform. Again, this platform is really for a patient that we know can be safe with reminders, and so we’re using this platform for, mostly, a confused patient population,” Edmondson said.
This technology was developed by Orlando-based software company Andor Health, and the program has been in the works for over a year. It’s just one of many innovations that have come after demand for remote health care took off during the COVID-19 pandemic, and, like other new health technologies, virtual monitoring appears to be here to stay.
Orlando Health’s virtual sitter program will soon be joined by a virtual nursing program that is planned to launch in September, Edmondson said. Virtual nurses can go a step beyond sitters and provide patient care and answer medical questions. The hospital chain also began a program in February that takes virtual monitoring to another level by offering hospital care at home.
AdventHealth Central Florida began using virtual sitters and nurses to help watch hospital inpatients over a year ago.
