Kentucky-based Owensboro Health is teaming up with Optum Insight to pair bedside nurses with virtual nurses, freeing up frontline clinicians to dedicate more time to patient care.
The virtual nurses work on-site at Owensboro's hospitals in collaboration with bedside nurses to ensure that patients receive the necessary support during busy shifts. For example, the virtual nurses can support the bedside teams with admissions, discharges, medication reconciliation and care coordination.
Erin Satterwhite, CEO of Optum Insight Provider, told Fierce Healthcare that the company has collaborated with Owensboro for three years, providing key IT and other services to the health system. That foundation is what allowed the two organizations to come together to build the virtual nursing program and figure out how best to integrate it into existing workflows.
"The opportunity for us to help develop the technology that would create this virtual nursing program is something that is reflective of how strong the partnership is in the collaboration between our organizations," Satterwhite said.
The program initially launched in 2024, and since then, the virtual nurses have logged more than 30,000 patient interactions, including support for 3,600 admissions and 2,000 discharges. The program has also managed about 5,800 medication verifications, Optum said.
These virtual interactions have returned 1,700 hours to the bedside nurses.
In July 2026 alone, the virtual nursing teams returned 337 hours to the bedside teams by supporting admissions and discharges equating to about 11 additional hours per day that frontline nurses can use to provide direct care.
"The needs of our patients were growing at the same time our nursing workforce was under tremendous pressure," said Joni Sims, R.N., chief nursing officer at Owensboro Health, in a press release. "Virtual nursing is not about replacing nurses. It's about giving nurses the support they need to take care of our patients."
Medication management is a key piece of the puzzle, Satterwhite said. Through the virtual model, the nurses are able to have a more direct connection to the pharmacy to ensure a patient's existing medications are all documented and brought in during their stay.
The virtual program also makes it easier to complete reconciliation at discharge, and ensure that any medications the patient needs after the stay are sent to the pharmacy.
"One of the hardest things about patient care is adherence to medication, understanding medication," Satterwhite said. "Ensuring that goes well is a really important piece."
Satterwhite said she's made multiple visits to Owensboro and has had the chance to meet with the virtual nursing staff firsthand. Because they're in the same building, they are able to go and triage an issue in-person if necessary—say, if a camera disconnects or isn't working properly.
That bridges gaps with the patient, but also allows the virtual nurses to build and maintain relationships with the frontline nursing staff, too, said Satterwhite.
She added that alongside the raw data on how the program is working, the Optum team has heard consistently positive feedback from nurses participating in the program. In addition to the benefits for the nurses on the floor, the virtual program adds an option for a nurse who may not be able to participate in frontline care in full—for example, following an injury that prevents them from lifting patients or equipment—to stay connected to the patients.
"The virtual nursing actually creates capacity for nurses that might have other issues that allow them to continue to work and not have the kind of physical demands that being at the bedside does," Satterwhite said. "So it really does open up the model for how nurses can work, and the joy that I saw on the faces of the nurses in Owensboro, and how much they loved their job was really awesome."