Donor Spotlight: Avasure

Tell us a little bit about AvaSure.

AvaSure is an intelligent virtual care platform that healthcare providers use to engage with patients, optimize staffing, and seamlessly blend remote and in-person care at scale. The platform deploys AI-powered virtual sitting and virtual nursing solutions, meets the highest enterprise IT standards, and drives measurable outcomes with support from care experts. AvaSure consistently delivers a 6x ROI and has been recognized by KLAS Research as the #1 solution for reducing the cost of care. With a team of 15% nurses, AvaSure is a trusted partner of 1,100+ hospitals with experience in over 5,000 deployments.

Lisbeth, can you tell us a little about your role and the path that you took to get to AvaSure?  

I think it’s so fitting that I worked as a patient sitter at UCSF to help pay my way through nursing school thirty years ago.  Who knew that my career focus on virtual care would start with innovation and research proving the efficacy of virtual sitting? In my 20+ years as an ICU nurse, clinical nurse specialist and then Magnet® program director, I always believed that healthcare technology would be better if nurses had more influence on the design and implementation. It’s a privilege to be in the C-Suite of a large technology company where every day we strive to transform healthcare through virtual solutions with proven outcomes.

What are you seeing as the biggest opportunities in telehealth and virtual health care?

There is widespread agreement that we can’t keep delivering care with the traditional models that are unsustainable. Virtual care by itself is not the answer, but transformation is, and virtual care plays a key role in care delivery transformation.

What about the challenges?

One challenge with virtual care is a perception that nursing must shoulder the burden of articulating the business case and the cost cutting to financially support it. We shouldn’t only be talking about “virtual nursing.” We should be focused on the myriad of ways virtual care adds efficiency to many disciplines while consistently improving patient experience.

Where do you see health care in 5 years?  This might be going too far forward, but what about in 10 years?  

As a third-generation nurse with thirty years of experience myself, I’m very hopeful for the future of healthcare. I see nurses’ influence increasing with more nurses in the C-Suite of health systems, industry and sitting on boards. My vision is one where technology is so seamless and integrated it’s hardly noticed by caregivers and patients while it’s augmenting and supporting clinicians.  It may sound paradoxical, but I believe technology designed and implemented the right way will enable old-fashioned, connected, and therapeutic relationships between patients, families, and their caregivers.

How did you get involved with AONL and AONL Foundation?  

In 2016, I was introduced to AONL by Maureen Swick when she was serving as the CEO of AONL (then AONE). I was asked to be a charter member of the corporate advisory council and have gotten more deeply involved every year since. I’ve served on the AONL Foundation Board since 2020. When I started out as an industry nurse executive in 2014, I didn’t have a network of peers to learn from. At AONL, I’ve found my tribe. Now the Corporate Advisory Council is growing so we can support more nurses to influence technology and industry.

What would you like AONL Foundation donors and AONL members to know about you?

I’m deeply committed to the well-being of nurses. We are a profession that’s at risk because our desire to care for others can sometimes overshadow our self-care. To that end, I served as the Michigan Board of Nursing appointee to Michigan’s Health Professional Recovery Committee overseeing the state’s program supporting healthcare professionals with mental health or substance use disorders. I’m also a vocal advocate for workplace violence prevention in healthcare.

What would you like AONL Foundation donors and AONL members to know about AvaSure?   

We are not only focused on scalable and innovative technology, we know it must be clinically led in order to be effective. Fifteen percent of our employees are nurses who are dedicated to supporting change management and sustainability planning with our hospital partners to achieve measurable outcomes.

What are you reading right now?  

I just recently finished “The Water Dancer” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, and I’m excited to pick up “The Women” by Kristin Hannah about nursing during the Vietnam war.