GrandCare Cocktail Mixer and showcase at booth 325 at Leading Age Wisconsin

GrandCare Systems will be showcased in BOOTH 325 at LeadingAge Wisconsin on Wednesday October 1st, 2014 in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Stick around and join GrandCare at the Hyatt pub from 830 – 10pm on Wed Oct 1st.
Capture Leading Age Invite 2014

GrandCare will be providing a free drink ticket for individuals that visit the GrandCare booth. Stop by booth 325 anytime during exhibit hours to pick up your free drink card.

Exhibit Hours:
Wednesday October 1st :30 – 730p

GrandCare will be sharing their innovative, comprehensive caregiving technology platform, designed for professional caregivers and long term care organizations to provide better, more efficient, proactive and cost-effective care, while encouraging the resident to continually engage with family using the one touch video chat and video/photo/message sharing features.

“GrandCare has made our staff more efficient, while improving the quality of care. Our residents love it. Connecting them to family has reduced isolation and made residents happier to be at Evergreen. GrandCare gives us a game-changing advantage over our competitors.”
– Evergreen Assisted Living Admin, Martha Brewer and Esmeralda Coronado

GrandCare Systems is a complementary caregiving technology that arms senior living providers with tools to monitor an entire community at one glance, improve resident experience with on-going family interaction and socialization, allow additional service revenue opportunities, improve staff productivity, and secure a significant advantage over competitors. The large GrandCare touchscreen appliance and selected wireless sensors are placed in resident rooms throughout the community, encouraging family engagement, and enabling community-wide remote monitoring capabilities.

[RE]Defining Age
The LeadingAge Wisconsin 2014 Fall Conference and 34th Annual Exhibitors Forum will be held October 1-3, 2014 at the Hyatt on Main & KI Convention Center in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Laura Mitchell of GrandCare to be Interview on Reaching For The Gold with Harriet Tramer

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Reaching For The Gold with Harriet Tramer airs on ArtistFirst Radio Network, a Partner with CBS Radio News. The interview with Laura Mitchell will include discussions on how the GrandCare System works, how it can be utilized in nursing homes, and how need for the GrandCare System has expanded. Laura will also highlight success stories from GrandCare and its use. Laura will also talk about her role with GrandCare and how her involvement impacted upon the manner in which you view aging. The interview will continue with conversation about the acceptance of GrandCare by seniors.

Please tune using the provided link to hear this interview.

http://www.artistfirst.com/tramer.htm

Wednesday September 24, 2014 – 8pm Eastern Time

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CBSRadioNews2

GrandCare’s Neil Tantingco to Present at Health 2.0

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Neil Tantingco of GrandCare Systems will be presenting on Monday, September 22nd. Easing the Burden: Connected Caregiving Tools will take place from 10:45AM-11:45AM in Ballroom E. Health 2.0 is being held at The Santa Clara Convention Center 5001 Great America Parkway, Santa Clara.

Easing the Burden: Connected Caregiving Tools
Moderated by Michael Painter – Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
This session will follow and build upon “Future Technologies for Family Caregiving”. After discussing and hearing about the need for caregiving technologies, participants will get to see those tools in action. From task coordination to non-invasive remote monitoring, supporting the circle of care to incentivizing caregiving tasks, this session highlights the breadth of innovation around supporting caregivers today.

http://www.health2con.com/events/conferences/health-2-0-fall-conference-2014/#agenda

https://www.grandcare.com/

Maximus Announces Shared Pilot program with GrandCare

MAXIMUS to Share Pilot Program for Using Telecare Technology at the National Home & Community Based Services Conference

(RESTON, Va. – September, 2014) – MAXIMUS (NYSE: MMS), a leading provider of government services worldwide, announced today that Barbara Selter, Vice President, MAXIMUS Health Services, and an expert in long-term services and supports (LTSS), will be a featured presenter at the National Association of States United for Aging and Disabilities (NASUAD) Home & Community Based Services (HCBS) Conference.

The session, titled “Using Telecare/Telehealth Technology to Support Aging in Place,” will highlight a California pilot program that aims to reduce costs for the LTSS population by managing chronic conditions, while achieving an enhanced quality of life for the participants. The session will share the experiences of the pilot program and provide insights into addressing both the medical and social needs of the LTSS population and how to better target the use of scarce resources to provide care in their homes or communities. Ms. Selter will be presenting with Laura Mitchell, Chief Marketing Officer, GrandCare Systems; Cindy Morton, Chief Operations Officer, California Telehealth Network; and Phil Nowak, Chief Executive Officer, Northeastern Rural Health Clinics.

“Shifting the care for older adults and those with disabilities from institutions to home and community-based settings helps them lead more satisfying and productive lives,” said Bruce Caswell, President and General Manager of MAXIMUS Health Services. “We are currently working with several states on their LTSS programs and are excited about this opportunity to share our experiences with other leaders focused on new strategies for improving the lives of this population.”

“Most people want to stay independent, safe and connected in their own homes, particularly when they want to manage chronic conditions or stay out of the hospital,” said Dan Maynard, CEO of GrandCare Systems. “We provide a solution that can enable an individual to be involved in his or her own wellness, keep health professionals involved, and notify a caregiver if a red flag event occurs.”

In addition to the presentation, MAXIMUS and GrandCare Systems will demonstrate GrandCare System’s telecare technology solution, which empowers patients to self-manage and share their statuses virtually through an intuitive, large screen touch-based appliance. The appliance reminds patients of upcoming appointments, prompts them to take medications, and connects to family and care providers through a one-touch, HIPAA-compliant video chat. It also connects to various telehealth and activity sensors throughout the patient’s residence, notifying family and care providers if a potential health event has occurred. The demonstration will take place during the exhibit booth portion of the conference, at 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, September 16, and Wednesday, September 17.

The 30th Annual NASUAD HCBS Conference is the premiere LTSS conference in the country, showcasing innovative national, federal, state and local delivery and policy developments that work to ensure individuals receive the highest quality community living supports, care and services. The conference takes place from September 15-18, 2014 at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia. To learn more, visit www.nasuad.org/hcbs-conference.

About MAXIMUS

MAXIMUS is a leading operator of government health and human services programs in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Saudi Arabia. The Company delivers business process services to improve the cost effectiveness, efficiency and quality of government-sponsored benefit programs, such as the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, Medicare, Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Health Insurance BC (British Columbia), as well as welfare-to-work and child support programs around the globe. The Company’s primary customer base includes federal, provincial, state, county and municipal governments. Operating under its founding mission of Helping Government Serve the People®, MAXIMUS has approximately 11,000 employees worldwide. For more information, visit www.maximus.com.

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Knute Nelson uses GrandCare Systems to Keep Seniors at Home

By Amy Chaffins
Today at 7:01 a.m.
www.echopress.com

Remote monitoring means home sweet home for seniors

New technology is helping people live at home healthfully and independently as long as possible.

Echo PressFor one year, Knute Nelson has been using GrandCare [Systems] – a home-based technology that provides remote patient monitoring – primarily with its home care and hospice patients.

“It can go in any residence, no matter where the person lives, to provide them support on a variety of platforms,” explained Daphne Karpan, nurse and palliative care manager for Knute Nelson.

In most cases, the system is set up as a touchscreen monitor for patients to use. The program provides a customized intuitive, user-friendly interface for things like health and lifestyle assessments, medication reminders, on-screen messages, news and weather, therapeutic games and puzzles, appointment reminders, daily checklists and more.

It also remotely monitors vital signs using wireless health devices that can measure, track and report things like blood pressure and blood sugar testing.

Test results that are detected outside of a normal parameter – like low blood sugar – would be reported immediately to a nurse and caregiver.

“A nurse can then check in with the patient and assess what’s happening before a doctor visit or ER visit,” said Katie Perry, foundation executive director and vice-president of Knute Nelson.

“GrandCare is more of a consistent and steady approach to monitoring the clinical and socialization aspects, rather than the episodic check-ins, monthly or whenever,” she added.

“We’re keeping them in preventative, more cost-effective care rather than the more expensive ER or hospitalization,” Karpan said.

“Home is the preferred setting for care,” she added. “Even among the 85 and older group, as of 2005, 75 percent of 85 and older Medicare beneficiaries were living at home. It’s where they want to be and where they are so this is how we can keep them there safe and keep the caregiver supported so that they’re able to go to work.”

SERVING CAREGIVERS TOO

GrandCare certainly serves the patient, but the caregiver is also the customer.

“There’s an interest from adult children being actively involved in managing care or having some degree of involvement with their parents’ care,” Perry said.

Caregivers access GrandCare’s online portal to also monitor or receive alerts on the patient’s health and status. There are also sensors that link to the system to detect motion, opening of things like doors or cupboards and bed sensors to determine if the patient has gotten out of bed.

The patient dictates who is allowed access to the information. From that, the caregiver determines which notifications they’ll receive when an event occurs. The system can be accessed from any Internet-connected device.

There are currently about 40 GrandCare systems in use across Knute Nelson’s 26-county coverage area. Users range in age from 7 to 99 years old, but the average age group is 75 and older.

“I have a lady in Little Falls whose son lives in California and he’s her primary caregiver… he’s able to help monitor her activity, provide reminders, provide contact, give her some photos to look at to keep her mind functioning,” Karpan said.

When it comes to training patients who are not at all familiar with computers, staff said they use a delicate approach. In fact, they don’t use terms like “email,” instead it’s an electronic “letter.”

Cadi Breun, a nurse and technical care specialist for Knute Nelson, recently used GrandCare’s video chat feature with a client who has some memory issues.

“She has a daughter in California so we Skyped her daughter for the first time and the look on her face when she saw her daughter on the screen – it’s burned into my memory. She said, ‘Is this real? Is this sci-fi? Is this recorded?’ She was just so happy to have that conversation with her daughter,” Breun said. “Her daughter contacted me and said if it wasn’t for this, she wouldn’t have had the good conversations and good memories with her mom.”

Currently, costs associated with GrandCare and remote patient monitoring don’t qualify for Medicare reimbursements.

However, a bipartisan bill moving through Congress is aimed at boosting telehealth use, which reportedly has the potential to reduce Medicare spending on hospital readmissions.

Remote monitoring technology like GrandCare is used worldwide.