When it comes to caring for seniors, there’s nothing like the human touch. Or is there?
At Senior Lifestyle’s Chancellor’s Village Assisted Living community in Fredericksburg, Virginia, our team members are discovering new ways high-tech solutions like QuietCare® from Intel-GE Care Innovations™ can help team members provide a higher level of safety, security, and well-being for residents. Learn how Chancellor’s Village and other Senior Lifestyle communities are using QuietCare to check in on residents to offer a helping hand when they need it most.
Smart Sensors Help Provide Safety and Security for Assisted Living Residents at Chancellor’s Village
Each morning, when Donna Lehman gets to work at Senior Lifestyle’s Chancellor’s Village Assisted Living Community, the first thing she does is check on how the residents fared during the night. Instead of asking every senior, Lehman, the director of the community, simply looks at the nightly report from QuietCare, which uses unobtrusive motion sensors to track activity in resident apartments.
A glance at the computer screen can tell Lehman which resident was up at night, whether they entered the bathroom, and how often. Flagged with yellow or red alerts, the QuietCare report gives Lehman a sense of which resident might have had a difficult night. “I look for excessive bathroom visits,” Lehman, a nurse, says. In the case of excessive urination, Lehman can decide if a doctor’s visit to test for a UTI is appropriate. That type of quick, proactive response can prevent an unnecessary—and expensive—hospital visit.
According to Kristen Hansen, the Executive Director at Chancellor’s Village in Fredericksburg, Virginia, the information obtained from QuietCare “has improved our ability to catch issues early, without being invasive.” Because the QuietCare system of smart sensors works behind the scenes, monitoring residents’ activity patterns and movements as they go about their day, Chancellor’s Village can offer an extra measure of safety and security. Residents, who barely notice QuietCare, retain their dignity and live an independent lifestyle.
What Donna Lehman values about QuietCare is “our ability to adjust the way we work based on what we learn from QuietCare reports. We are able to fine-tune our care, offering assistance to residents on an individual case-by-case basis.” If QuietCare reports a resident gets up at the same time every night, Lehman can assign someone to check in at precisely the right time to offer help. Because QuietCare tracks residents’ activity over days, weeks, and months, the team members at Chancellor’s Village can establish baseline patterns for each resident. Activity in the apartments late at night indicates “trouble time” according to Hansen. To help prevent falls, Hansen says, team members will “proactively check on their residents to ask if they need anything. Perhaps a blanket? A drink of water?” By checking on residents during these challenging times, “We can reduce and eliminate the risks that lead to falls,” Hansen says.
The night team members appreciates the way QuietCare functions as an extra set of eyes and ears. By setting the Wander feature on QuietCare from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., the team members will automatically be notified if a resident leaves their apartment anytime during that period. As Hansen explains, “If a bedroom door opens late at night our team members gets an alert and a staffer can meet the resident in the hall. Even if the person is fine, and there’s not an emergency, it’s a level of care and concern that provides peace of mind.” After all, she says, “Who doesn’t want to see a friendly face coming down the hall?” The team members at Chancellor’s Village can work the night shift with a feeling of confidence that the residents are well looked after.
Family members appreciate the insights that Lehman and her team members provide. She uses QuietCare data to “share with family members issues as they arise.” In addition to the objective reports, Lehman says family members “feel more relaxed knowing we have a system like QuietCare that can help our team members provide assistance. It really puts their mind at ease.”
This post was courtesy of Intel-GE Care Innovations™.