New Orleans-based Ochsner Health has run some form of virtual nursing for more than 15 years. Its chief nursing officer said the model is only starting to reshape how care is delivered.
Ochsner began virtual nursing in the critical care and quality space, using nurses as an extra set of eyes to comb through charts and flag risk through predictive modeling, Tiffany Murdock, DNP, told Becker’s. In the past three years, the 47-hospital system moved much of that work to an admission, discharge and transfer model for virtual nurses to lead.
The shift has produced early results. Ochsner has seen a reduction in readmissions by 2% in participating units, thanks to virtual nurses managing discharges. This success is due to standardized work, Dr. Murdock said.
The system uses a hybrid staffing model, with some virtual nurses in a centralized command center and others working from home. Dr. Murdock recommends the centralized approach, which she said keeps the process structured and consistent enough to move the numbers.
“Where we get our biggest bang for a buck on our KPIs is because we’re all doing it the right way,” she said.
Ochsner is not alone in leaning on the model. In a 2026 survey, 68% of health system and hospital nursing leaders said they planned to hire telehealth nurses and 52% said virtual nurses. Norfolk, Va.-based Sentara Health has linked virtual nursing to earlier discharges, recovering more than 18,000 bedside hours across its 12 hospitals.
Dr. Murdock sees far more ahead. One idea is a virtual preceptor model. For example, Ochsner’s nurse interns can practice up to their highest level of competency but must be monitored by a registered nurse — a requirement that ties up bedside staff. Under Dr. Murdock’s vision, an intern starting an IV could tap the screen and pull in a virtual nurse to watch the skill.
Another is redesigning the shift around ambient documentation. An AI agent could ask intake questions, and a virtual nurse could complete a head-to-toe assessment through ambient listening — meaning the bedside nurse might not enter the room until the shift assessment. Dr. Murdock is also weighing whether virtual nurses could monitor emergency department observation patients post-discharge.
“The biggest thing I think we can do with our virtual nursing — and any technology right now — is pretend like we never had a process and then start to redevelop it how we would want to design it in the future,” Dr. Murdock said.
Any of those redesigns will test change management more than technology, she said. Rolling out ambient documentation will be “a total culture change,” forcing nurses to talk through assessments they often perform in silence.
Her advice for peers: involve end users from the start — especially the skeptics — and never layer new tools on a broken process.
That principle also guides where Ochsner spends its technology dollars. Dr. Murdock said she uses her front-line rounds to surface the small, everyday frustrations that wear on nurses — what she calls “the rocks in their shoes.” When Ochsner’s chief digital officer, Denise Basow, MD, joined her on rounds at a West Bank campus in Gretna, La., the nurses weren’t asking for groundbreaking technology; they wanted their beds to sync with the call-light system.
Fixing those small annoyances first, Dr. Murdock said, is what earns the staff trust that makes the bigger technology bets — whether it is virtual preceptors or ambient documentation — actually stick.
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