Senior Living Wander Tech Reduces Staff Response Times

A New England assisted living community has taken a holistic approach in rolling out a new pilot program that uses a campus-wide monitoring technology to track resident location and reduce staff response times the the event of an emergency, reports The Washington Post.

Utilizing a real-time locating system from Stanley Black & Decker, Benchmark Senior Living is able to monitor the health statuses of residents from anywhere on the grounds of its Split Rock community in Shelton, Conn.

Upon moving in, each resident at Benchmark Senior Living at Split Rock is given a pendant device that uses WiFi to signal location in real-time. Each community staff member is also outfitted with an iPad Touch, enabling them to not only observe resident whereabouts, but also tag those who might be prone to falls or wandering.

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For example, if a resident who is at high risk of falling is shown to be lingering in a certain area for an extended period of time, the system alerts staff that an incident may have occurred.

Though the pilot is still in its early stages, the community’s Executive Director Doug Cormack indicated to The Washington Post that his staff has been able to “reduce emergency response time significantly because they can track the location of the residents.”

“It’s kind of a dignified approach to supporting a resident who may at times feel the need to wander,” Cormack said in the article. “The doors automatically lock, there’s no alarms that are sounding…the staff gets the alert on their [iPod], and so we’re responding quickly to that, but the resident may not even know.”

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Read more at The Washington Post.

Written by Jason Oliva