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As hospitals and health systems redesign care to improve efficiency, optimize workforce deployment and improve outcomes, interesting trends are developing among nursing leaders.

Virtual care (32%), including telehealth, virtual nursing and patient monitoring, remains a top focus, reflecting its growing role in care delivery, notes the AHA’s American Organization for Nursing Leadership’s (AONL) released last month. Interdisciplinary collaboration (30%), upskilling leaders (21%) and team-based models of care (21%) highlight the role of teamwork and leadership development in improving patient outcomes.

Redesign Care to Improve Efficiency

Significant differences exist in care redesign priorities, according to data and analyses in the AONL study. The findings include:

• Nurse managers prioritized interdisciplinary collaboration and workforce well-being tools, with strong statistical evidence supporting this focus. They placed less emphasis on upskilling leaders and ensuring that work is performed at the top of the licensure scope of practice.
• Chief nursing officers (CNOs) and chief nursing executives (CNEs) prioritized upskilling leaders and advocacy for policy change, focusing on strengthening leadership capacity and driving systemic improvements. They placed less emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration and workforce well-being, the key focus areas for managers.
• Directors, positioned between managers and CNOs/CNEs, indicated a slight emphasis on workforce well-being tools, aligning partially with managers’ focus.

Key Takeaway

Align strategies to be effective. These contrasting priorities among nurse leaders underscore the diverse approaches to care redesign and the need for alignment across leadership tiers (managers, CNOs/CNEs and directors) to achieve cohesive and effective strategies.

Optimize Workforce Deployment

The March 2025 AONL study assessed the effectiveness of various strategies to address staffing challenges, with respondents rating each on a scale of 1 to 5, where 5 indicates “very effective.”

The most effective strategies identified by nurse leaders were listening and responding to feedback from staff (average 3.51) and partnering with nursing schools (average 3.44). Notably, listening and responding to feedback was the only solution with a median score of 4, highlighting its unique importance among the options evaluated. The findings emphasize collaboration, responsiveness to staff needs and fostering relationships with nursing schools.

Other strategies rated above average included allowing days off when necessary (average 3.43), increasing nurse recognition (average 3.39) and increasing shared governance (average 3.35). Measures such as increasing wages or bonuses, allowing adequate time for meals and breaks and offering flexible scheduling also scored well, each with averages between 3.28 to 3.30.

Key Takeaway

Develop targeted strategies. Overall, these results underscore the importance of targeted, staff-focused strategies in nurse well-being and retention.

5 Forward-Looking Care Models

While current models have demonstrated their promise, several care models have emerged as avenues organizations can take to improve nurses’ working environments and make caring for patients more seamless, notes a recent Wolters Kluwer study,

The top five nursing care delivery models that health care organizations are planning to implement are:

Key Takeaway

Tech will be vital to improve workflows. With these nursing models forecast to grow, new care-related technologies will be vital to enhance and improve daily workflows, particularly with home health, virtual and telehealth nursing. When asked how they will measure the success of these implementations, about half of the survey respondents highlighted the following areas as most impactful:

7 Nursing Roles to Be Most in Demand

To support the rollout of new nursing care models, hospital and health system leaders will be looking for specialized skills and experience when increasing the engagement and retention of their workforce, the Wolters Kluwer report states. When polled about new roles they would look to add when implementing new care models, respondents ranked the following as the top areas:

• Nurse informatics: 52%
• Telehealth nurses: 50%
• Nurse care coordinators: 50%
• Nurse educators in telehealth and virtual care: 47%
• Internal float pool nurses: 41%
• Home health nurse coordinator: 41%
• Nurse case manager: 41%

Key Takeaway

Encourage nurses to explore new roles. Nursing students and nurses looking to expand or change their careers should consider the growing demand for nursing roles that, in some cases, are tech-enabled, the Wolters Kluwer study states.