One of the key challenges in memory care is wandering. This is when a dementia patient is on the move, without a clear idea of where they are or where they are going.

If they exit their home or community while wandering, it is an “elopement.” This turns a moment of confusion into a high risk scenario. Outdoors, they may get lost, struck by a motor vehicle, experience extreme weather, or encounter other dangerous situations. These cases often prove fatal.

According to the Alzheimer’s Association, 60% of individuals with Alzheimer’s will wander at least once. To address this, memory care communities implement strategies that prevent elopement and keep residents safe.

Medication and Restraint

In some cases, communities have used medication or restraints to keep patients in place. However, this presents concerns for residents’ overall health and dignity, such as:

• Negative side effects
• Ineffective prevention
• Loss of autonomy and independence
• Potential for abuse and mistreatment
• Emotional distress

 Many states have introduced regulations and restrictions around these practices to preserve the wellbeing of people with dementia.

The Wander Management System

A better solution: the wander management system. By using technology, communities can preserve the dignity of residents while preventing elopement.

For example, the QUANTUM™ Wander Management system works together with door control to automatically lock exit doors when a memory care resident gets close. It can also send alerts to caregivers or sound an alarm at the door, allowing staff to care for the resident and redirect them away from the exit.

In the case of a fire, emergency egress is built in. A prolonged press on the door will open it, even when a wandering sensor is within range. This ensures safety in an emergency while effectively preventing an exit from a wandering patient.

Additional features allow for fully customizable door schedules and permissions that provide advanced protection. For example, with environmental monitoring, doors can be automatically locked on particularly cold or hot days. Or, if a resident has family members that can safely escort them outside, those loved ones can use their own credentials to exit.

The Impact

This technology makes elopement prevention seamless, discrete, and effective. Rather than restraining or medicating individuals, a wander management system preserves dementia patients’ independence and health while keeping them protected.

In addition to this, a wander management system like QUANTUM™ can provide protection to individuals who have not yet moved to a fully equipped memory care area. With a wander tag, they can stay safe and remain connected to the community they are currently in.

If your senior living community is seeking better ways to manage wandering, the team at JNL Technologies, Inc. would be happy to help. Schedule a call with a QUANTUM™ expert and learn more about the impact of an effective wander management system.

Staffing is one of the greatest challenges assisted living providers face today. With high turnover, burnout, and overstretched staff, many communities experience expensive hiring and reduced quality of care.

To address this concern, administrators are seeking ways to improve the day-to-day experience of caregivers and other staff in their communities. By making their lives easier, staff are more likely to last.

An often overlooked method to improve staff experience lies in the nurse call system. At first glance, nurse call simply alerts caregivers when a resident needs assistance. But its functionality and features can make or break the experience of staff who provide care in assisted living.

Functionality: The Most Essential Nurse Call Feature That Often Gets Missed

A faulty nurse call system leads to massive headaches. The network may have spotty coverage, leading to missed alerts and frustration. The system may rely on outdated technology, like corridor lights, pagers, and display screens that don’t show all the information that staff need. Sometimes, the system simply does not work as promised.

Replacing a broken system feels overwhelming. But the lack of basic functionality is costing communities by adding friction and reducing the effectiveness of staff efforts. Caregivers use the nurse call system every day. A frustrating experience compounds the stress of their work. 

This makes the staff experience smoother, shortens response times, and ensures every call is answered. With customized alerting, QUANTUM™ sends notifications via the app, text, email, and more.

To further assist with coordination, the app has a built-in messaging feature. There is also an option to add resident photos to the alert interface. This helps new staff to identify residents.

The app interface is intuitive, so staff can easily use it without intense training or a steep learning curve. This is nurse call that goes above and beyond traditional alerting to make life easier for assisted living staff.

Track Care To Gain Visibility Into Increasing Resident Acuity and Staff Performance

What if communities could translate every alert into care data? That transforms decision-making, giving insight into increased resident acuity, staffing levels, and performance. With the QUANTUM™ Cares feature built into every nurse call system, communities can track care like never before. This improves the resident experience, shows opportunities for revenue, and celebrates high performing staff.

The Cares feature allows staff to quickly and easily note what each resident needed when they activated the nurse call. Over time, this data compounds to reveal patterns that affect everything from billing to staff levels.

For example, Cares tracks call volume and staffing, providing visibility into how much coverage each shift really needs. This keeps staff from becoming overwhelmed during high call times and makes scheduling decisions clear.

When assisted living communities rely on the care plan to determine billing, tracking the level of care delivered is essential to unlock unseen revenue and expenses. This also equips staff to have conversations with family members about their loved one’s care, backed with real data for informed decisions.

Having accurate care plans and call volume visibility prevents staff from being overloaded. But improving staff experience is about more than just removing obstacles. It also means recognizing and rewarding the efforts that they are already making. With Cares, managers can view the highest performing staff members answering every call. Appreciation goes a long way in improving morale and keeping staff committed.

Ready to Transform the Experience of Your Assisted Living Staff?

JNL Technologies, Inc. is dedicated to creating reliable, easy-to-use technology. QUANTUM™ by JNL is founded and designed by senior living workers, for senior living workers. Not content with basic nurse call, this team is always seeking new innovations while maintaining reliable functionality.

Explore how a better nurse call system can elevate the experience of your assisted living staff. Schedule a call with a QUANTUM™ expert today!

The Impact

Over one in four older adults fall each year, leading to 36,000 deaths, three million emergency department visits, and one million hospital stays in America alone.¹

Many people who fall, even if they’re not injured, become afraid of falling. This fear may cause a person to cut down on their everyday activities. When a person is less active, they become weaker, increasing their chances of falling. If they have fallen before, their chance of falling again doubles.²

So, not only does falling cause injury, fatalities, and high medical costs, it impacts all areas of wellbeing. It is essential for senior living communities to take steps to prevent falls and protect their residents.

Prevent

Prevention is possible. The best approach is holistic: combining strategies that address the environmental, behavioral, and biological risks. These can include safety features like automatic lighting and handrails, exercise programs to improve physical strength, and addressing medical and physical health.

Step One: Assess

The first step is assessing and addressing the risk factors unique to each resident. One way to do this is to use a risk survey. For example, this online quiz from the National Council On Aging quickly and clearly outlines whether an individual is high or low risk, allowing communities to identify individuals who need further support.

Step Two: Environmental

Next, address the physical environment to remove risks and provide support systems. Clear living areas of hazards and ensure safety equipment such as railings, grab bars, and slip-resistant surfaces are installed. Make sure there is adequate lighting in living spaces and community areas. Automatic lighting solutions can sense when a resident is active and turn the lights on to provide immediate visibility.

Step Three: Behavioral

One of the most impactful fall prevention strategies is to build strength and balance. Provide an exercise program with a focus on fall prevention. When residents maintain and grow their mobility, they are less likely to fall. Take a look at the CDC’s “Guide to Implementing Effective Community-Based Fall Prevention Programs” to learn more about how to implement one of these programs.

Step Four: Biological

Finally, check residents for vision, foot, and overall health. Ensure that eye prescriptions are up to date so that a resident can clearly see their surroundings and navigate spaces. With age also often comes loss of feeling in feet, which can contribute to the danger of falling. Ensure residents are wearing proper footwear to support.

Medications and Vitamin D intake can affect fall risk as well. Some medicines or medicine combinations can cause drowsiness, dizziness, and increased fall risk. On the other hand, taking Vitamin D supplements has been shown to decrease falls by 38%.³ Encourage residents to talk to their physician about medication effects and to consider taking Vitamin D supplements.

Protect

Prevention efforts are essential to reduce the number of falls that residents experience. However, it is even more crucial to have a safety net in place for residents who do fall.

Many older adults are unable to get back up after a fall, whether from an injury or a lack of mobility. This can result in a “long lie”, when a person is left on the ground for an hour or more after a fall. These long lies can cause increased injuries, fatalities, and psychological damage.

The first step to address this danger is to once again to identify high-risk residents. When you are aware of who is at risk, you can then equip them with strategies to protect and safeguard against the worst case scenarios.

Educate residents on how to get back up after a fall in cases when they are uninjured. The AARP has provided a guide of step-by-step techniques that can help seniors navigate the aftermath of a fall safely.

Then, invest in fall detection technology. This ensures that falls will not go unnoticed. Instead, caregivers will be immediately alerted in the event of a fall and can respond right away. Not only can this prevent long lies and all the damage associated with them, but they can also catch the falls that go unreported, which can help to identify residents that may be at risk of a worse fall in the future.

Fall Detection

The QUANTUM™ Fall Detection solution consists of pendants that tie into a nurse call system. When the pendant senses that its wearer has fallen, it sends a special alert to caregivers, making sure help is on the way.

Other solutions may use sensors or cameras to detect falls. While this can prove effective, many residents are uncomfortable with a camera in their homes, and prefer to protect their privacy. In addition to this, a camera is only able to catch falls within its view. With the fall detection pendant, a resident can continue living independently throughout their community and stay protected in every room they enter.

Facilities are encouraged to explore their options and find technology that best supports their residents. Learn more about the QUANTUM™ solution here.

A study looked at the effects of fall detection on a resident’s fear of falling and found that they reported feeling more confident, independent, and safer.⁴ So not only does this technology protect residents in the worst case scenario, it also helps high-risk seniors to maintain their lifestyles and enjoy their communities without fear.

^“1 CDC. “Facts about Falls.” Older Adult Fall Prevention, 9 May 2024, ww.cdc.gov/falls/data-research/facts-stats/?CDC_AAref_Val=www.cdc.gov/falls/facts.html.

² Bloch, Frédéric. “Critical Falls: Why Remaining on the Ground after a Fall Can Be Dangerous, Whatever the Fall.” Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, vol. 60, no. 7, July 2012, pp. 1375–1376, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-5415.2012.04017.x.

³ Gallagher, et al. “Active Vitamin D (Calcitriol) as a Falls Intervention.” 2007.

⁴ Brownsell, S. and Hawley, M. “Automatic fall detectors and the fear of falling.” Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare, 2004, 10 (5). pp. 262-267.