YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Technology is playing an increasing role in providing care for seniors, either at home or in residential facilities, area care providers report.
In some cases that means advanced hardware that allows seniors to call for assistance with fast responses, and systems that monitor locations. Other providers increasingly are using artificial intelligence to help guide care decisions and adjustments.
Area facilities, including Levy Gardens Assisted Living in Youngstown and Boardman-based Briarfield Health Care’s centers, give each tenant a pendant from which they can summon a nurse.
“If they need assistance of any type, they push the pendant, and then it goes to our walkie talkies, and then we can assist the tenant, whether it be in the room or wherever they’re at,” Doug Love, Levy Gardens’ director, says. “It’s pretty standard in most assisted living centers.”
Robert Rupeka, chief financial officer at Briarfield, acknowledges the technology at Briarfield is not “what some people would consider brand-new technology” but rather “tried and true methods and equipment that have been improved.”
Previously, a patient would have to hit a button on a wall and a console light would blink at a nurses station.
Now the systems are WiFi- and server-based, he continues. Residents can call using their pendants, and WiFi antennas will triangulate their position so that assistance can be dispatched to the right location. “Those kinds of things improve our response time, improve the ability of the residents to communicate with us,” he says.
Additionally, motion sensors can be added, he says. If a resident is prone to wandering in the middle of the night, a motion sensor can be set by their door to alert nurses.
Both Heritage Manor Skilled Nursing & Rehabilitation – which like Levy Gardens is operated by Senior Living by Youngstown Area Jewish Federation – and Briarfield employ WanderGuard systems for memory care residents.
“It allows us to monitor residents who are trying to get out of the building,” Shane Baldwin, interim executive director at Heritage Manor, says.
Residents who are at risk of such elopement are fitted with an ankle monitor, and WanderGuard alerts staff when the resident wearing it comes close to a door. “It’ll say their name and what door they’re at, so then we can respond to that door to prevent them from getting outside,” he says.
WanderGuard is in place in conjunction with the nurse call technology at Briarfield’s memory care spaces, as well as “specific design patterns that help us manage and monitor the residents,” Rupeka says. “This all comes down to programming.”
If the system is set to monitor a door from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. and if a certain door is opened during those hours, a nurse or an aide will get a page alerting them to the activity.
“That kind of system also has the ability to have other peripherals added to it for monitoring and safety,” he says.
At-Home Care
Change-in-condition technology has been “a real game changer” for FirstLight Home Care of the Valley, FirstLight owner Michael Senchak says.
“We’ve had variations of this, but with so much new technology coming out, it’s only gotten better and better,” he says.
In-home caregivers electronically document the care they are providing against the set plan that had been laid out for the patient, Senchak says. If a change is indicated, the system alerts the care managers to the inconsistency.
“It’s not necessarily diagnosing it, but it’s sending that trigger to the care coordination person to say this is something that needs to be looked at,” he says. At that point, FirstLight staff follow up, usually with a phone call to the patient or a family member, or a visit by the director of nursing.
Electronic Records
Patriot has utilized electronic medical records since the company was launched in 2012, contributing to continuity of care for patients, Seidler says.
“It’s a lot easier to see what the patient has going on when you have everybody else’s notes at your fingertips who have seen that patient beforehand,” as well as the hospital documentation of everything on the patient’s chart,” he says. “Our clinicians are able to walk into the door and already know what they’re walking into… not just that the patient has a wound, but what type of wound, how big it is, where we are in the care, what’s to be expected by the end of their visit, what type of healing they should see.”
Early adoption of electronic medical records also spared Patriot from having to convert from paper records under federal mandate in 2014.
Using electronic medical records allows facilities to track trends when nurses on staff enter vitals such as blood pressure and pulse, helping the doctors who care for those residents, Rupeka says.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is playing an increased role in senior care, both in institutional settings and in the home.
Care providers at Patriot Homecare in Girard are employing the RogerAI app on smartphones and other mobile devices to assist with documentation, Robert Seidler, vice president of compliance and technology, reports. The technology is helpful especially when the clinician is providing hands-on care such as addressing wounds or if a therapist is walking alongside a patient.
“It’ll basically document everything that is heard during that visit, so they don’t have one hand on the iPad and one hand on the patient,” he says. “It’s entirely patient-focused and just takes the live documentation out of the clinician’s hands.”
Seidler acknowledges that the technology isn’t perfect, and clinicians still need to go over the transcribed material for accuracy.
“Instead of composing a 6-, 7-, 8-sentence narrative while they’re sitting there with the patient or writing everything down on a piece of paper and trying to remember it to document it when they get home,” he remarks. “Now all they have to do is just review what was picked up by the AI… I still want our clinicians to go through and ensure that accuracy, but from a time-savings perspective, they’re basically just going back and reviewing and reading and making sure it’s accurate.”
Utilizing grant funds, Heritage Manor implemented AI technology to monitor for falls in resident rooms “to predict and alert us when a patient was going to get up out of bed and then hopefully get to them in time and stop them before flailing,” Baldwin says.
The technology was expensive and Heritage Manor discontinued its use when the grant funds ran out about two years ago. “We’re actually looking at trying to get back into something similar to that now that it’s not a new emerging technology, where hopefully the pricing is a little bit more facility friendly,” he says.
In-home systems employing AI are being piloted, Senchak says. Sensors and cameras employing the technology can pick up on sounds and other cues.
“If a patient has a fall in a home the AI sensors in the home will pick up on that and send an alert,” he continues. “That can be done through an agency like ours, where we would work in coordination with companies like Sensi AI.”
Briarfield’s software provider says an AI component is coming that overlays the electronic medical records. “Then it will monitor those vital signs and those statistics and raise a red flag for the doctor,” Rupeka says,
On the Rise
Care providers in other markets are offering even more advanced options.
Love previously worked at a facility in Florida where memory care residents had smart watches that could be used to open individual apartments as well as provide location information via geofencing. The system was designed to address clients in memory care settings.
“There are financial considerations involved with having that kind of system,” he acknowledges. To his knowledge, no area facilities are employing the technology.
In addition to providing biometric data such as heart rate, the watches can detect the motion of the wearer eating to detect any changes in patterns and to detect falls.
Additionally, the devices can interact with each other to log social time between residents. Analytics also could be transmitted to family members.
If prescribed by a doctor, such electronic monitoring systems often are covered by insurance, Senchak says. Typically the devices send alerts directly to the physician.
Pictured at top: Shane Baldwin of Heritage Manor with ankle monitor used for memory care residents.
