PA Health System Uses College Students to Support New Telehealth Program

With its nursing corps stretched thin, a Pennsylvania health system is using college students to support its new in-patient telehealth program.

The St. Luke’s University Health Network has hired roughly 15 students to help in its Virtual Response Center (VRC), which tracks patients in eight of the health system’s 12 hospitals through a telemedicine platform. The students on-board patients into the remote patient monitoring system and help to keep an eye out for technical issues and signs of distress.

“Nurses are at a premium right now,” says Kim Sargent, RN, MSN, the project leader and an IT business relationship manager for the Bethlehem-based health system. “This helps take the burden off of them and gives us an extra set of eyes on our patients.”

The idea to use “support associates” was raised in December, Sargent says, as St. Luke’s experienced a new surge in COVID-19 patients. With many college students home for the holidays or on virtual education, administrators saw an available pool of tech-savvy people who could handle tasks otherwise handled by clinicians, giving them a break and freeing them up to spend more time on patient care.

The health system recruited in-house at first, placing a premium on students majoring in healthcare and biological sciences, and received more than 400 applications. They’re now advertising outside the system for more help, as the RPM program was recently expanded to cover a nearby assisted living facility and has plans to monitor patients at home post-discharge.

Sargent says students are stationed around the clock in the VRC – an office building in downtown Allentown a few miles from the closest hospital – to support nurses and clinical staff there and at each hospital. They’re given orientation and training, and follow strict protocols to immediately notify clinical staff at the hospital and in the VRC when they see anything out of the ordinary.

Sargent and Sam Kennedy, St. Luke’s corporate communications director, say the students are also helping staff get used to an RPM program – Masimo’s SafetyNet platform – that was put in place last April, in the midst of the first COVID-19 wave.

Prodded into action by the pandemic and supported by federal and state emergency measures designed to improve telehealth coverage, many hospitals have adopted RPM and telehealth for the first time, and they’re slowly learning what they can and can’t do with the technology.

“This technology is new to us,” says Kennedy. “And they have a good grasp of technology.”

Sargent says “it’s pretty much a daily occurrence” that the students prove their value, often helping someone get accustomed to the technology or spotting al alarm or some other visual clue that could, if unnoticed, lead to a much more serious issue.

She says the program will likely continue past COVID-19, as the health system looks to expand its RPM program and other telehealth capabilities while the making the best use of its workforce. That means giving a younger generation with thoughts of going into healthcare a glimpse at new connected health technologies now being used, as well as improving the workflows for existing staff.

“We’re in the infancy stages now,” she says, “and we have to be very fluid during these times. But this is working well for us.”