Executive Summary
Virtual nursing is rapidly emerging as a critical care delivery strategy—one with the potential to relieve frontline burden, improve patient experience, and fundamentally reshape how health systems deploy nursing expertise. As organizations move from experimentation to scale, leaders are grappling with questions about which virtual nursing models deliver sustained value, how to operationalize them effectively, and how to bring frontline nurses along in the transformation.
To help answer these questions, Nursing Catalyst conducted research from 2023 through 2024: interviewing leaders from more than 15 health systems and facilitating discussions with nursing executives planning to scale their pilots. The research explores how virtual nursing programs are being designed, operationalized, and scaled in practice.
This deliverable brings that research to life through Program Snapshots—concise, real-world profiles of innovative virtual nursing pilots at leading health systems. Program Snapshots provide visibility into how programs are designed, staffed, and governed; the technology and investments required; the challenges encountered; and the outcomes achieved. By distilling practical lessons from peers, these snapshots are designed to help health system leaders de-risk innovation decisions, assess scalability, and move more quickly from pilot to enterprise impact.