This month, we’re talking about emergency preparedness from the perspective of seniors and those who require in-home assistance.
When we think about emergency preparedness, we often think about big emergencies that impact many people. But, emergency preparedness is about being prepared for crises big and small—and at the heart of successful preparation, for any size emergency, is preventative thinking.
While emergency communication technologies won’t necessarily prevent an emergency, they can certainly help keep a bad situation from getting worse. This is especially true for our loved ones who are in an in-home care situation. A system like VoiceCare, for example, is just another level of protection for those who want to maintain their independence, yet need a little extra help along the way.
An emergency communication system is a special communication system that makes it easy for someone in need to get help, without having to get to a phone.
What if your loved one fell and broke a bone while alone at their house?
What if someone broke into your loved one’s house, while they were home?
What if your loved one needed someone to just come over and help them to get out of a chair?
These are all very real possibilities that can become dire emergencies very quickly. With this kind of communication system, your loved one would have a special activator that they keep on their body (like a bracelet) that allowed them to push a button and get help on the phone within minutes, not hours.
As we talked about in our description, one of the biggest benefits is access to immediate help for your loved one, but it’s a little more than that:
A lot of communication occurs about a patient. There are face-to-face conversations in offices, hospitals and at home. There are phone calls, letters, emails, patient record portals, etc.
Also, more often than not, someone who is in a homecare situation is getting care from many different people. They probably have more than one doctor, family members, a home care assistant, a pharmacist . . .That’s a lot of moving parts!
With advances in communication technology, our healthcare system is moving towards finding a way to keep patient information consolidated in one place, automatically, but we aren’t there yet. An emergency communication system can provide a “meeting place” for all of these people, so that if an emergency situation occurs, the right people are contacted as quickly as possible and there is a central source for a patient’s emergency contacts, critical caregivers and medical information.
It’s widely known that information and communication are what makes medical and in-home care successful, so naturally, technologies that support that are important. For example, a recent study showed that half of all unfavorable events in a study of primary care physicians were associated with communication problems.
With VoiceCare or a similar communication technology, you have another effective way to communicate in urgent situations and your important information is available to those who need it, in order to help you in the best way they can. That includes getting in touch with your loved ones so that they can help support you and communicate your needs clearly, whenever necessary.
These systems are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So, you know, no matter what, there is always someone you or your loved one can contact for help. That’s great, because emergencies don’t follow hours of operation.
These are just a few of the benefits of an emergency communication system. There are other systems available, but we’ve chosen to offer VoiceCare to our patients because it is the most proven of these systems.
