GrandCare Introduces Senior Housing Check-In Button

Many senior living communities spend a lot of man hours calling residents to ensure that they got out of bed and are going to head to breakfast. This clearly is a time consuming process and could be avoided if the residents could simply “check in” when they woke up, eliminating the need for a check-in call.

We wanted to help and let those caregivers log their time and energy doing what they love to do and what they do best, providing passionate care to their residents! So, guess what’s new with GrandCare? Yep, it’s our brand new ‘Group Check-In’ feature, right on your resident’s touchscreen in his/her room.

This optional feature is flexible and can even be configured for groups. Whether it’s your entire building or just the people who live on the east wing, when the check-in feature is enabled for the group, every system in the group will have a check-in button displayed on their screen.

When you enable check-in, you establish the time range for the check-in to occur. A typical example might be between 6 AM and 9 AM. The check-in button will appear on screen during the three hours in between these times. Once it’s been touched, the button disappears for the rest of the day, and reappears the next morning.

At the end of the check-in period, the Group page in the care portal shows a pie chart indicating who checked in and who didn’t. Clicking through the chart to see the check-in failures provides a list of accounts that didn’t check in, along with their phone numbers. Follow-up calls can then easily be placed to the residents to make sure they’re OK. Furthermore, it can be determined who frequently fails to check in, prompting perhaps more proactive and customized services for select residents.

This feature is designed for senior living communities of all kinds. It provides a simple safety check in a non-intrusive way that preserves the resident’s independence and dignity. As often happens at GrandCare, you asked for it, and we couldn’t wait to get it to you.

Community Messages

 

Mary Smith, a resident in your senior housing community, has a package waiting at the front desk. How do you let her know? Already today many residents have called the front desk to see if the mail has arrived and there’s not a quick way to let them know when it actually does come. Today’s Bridge Club meeting has moved from 2PM to 3PM. How do you inform the members? There’s a safety issue in your building and everyone needs to meet in a common area. How do you get everyone’s attention? GrandCare’s new Community Messages. That’s how.

With our new Congregate Message Center you can address all these concerns and more. You can send a message directly to one resident’s touchscreen, to a designated group (e.g. poker group), or to your entire Community at once. You can choose from a canned template message or write your own. It’s as easy as sending an email. Select your recipients, type in a subject and a message body, and send. Your message will pop up, and be prominently displayed on the resident’s touchscreen, accompanied by an optional sound, even if the screen is sleeping when the message arrives. The message remains on the screen until it has been acknowledged by having your residents touch a button on the message.

Emergency messages are even harder to miss. They’re outlined in red, and accompanied by a shrill alarm sound. And, you can be notified which residents didn’t acknowledge the message. This is critical when time is of the essence.

Our new Message Center is just the latest in a group of features designed for senior community living. If you haven’t used Flyers or Community Pictures, you might want to check those out, too. The GrandCare Congregate Message Center will be available soon for any GrandCare care portal users with Group-level or higher roles.

Introducing one of GrandCare’s newest features, “Away Mode”

You asked for it, we’re making it happen.

You already know that GrandCare is the ultimate in senior residence monitoring. It can alert professional and family caregivers if medications are not taken, if there’s no morning activity in the bathroom, or if health readings are out of the norm. But what happens to the alerts when your loved one is away from home on vacation?

To help caregivers avoid a flurry of spurious alerts, we will soon release “Away Mode.” It’s a new way for caregivers to silence text, email and phone call alerts when your senior is away from home. Whether your loved one is on a brief weekend holiday or just gone for the day, your caregiving team will be free of false alarms.

How does it work?

You’ll simply log in to my.grandcare.com (or the GrandCare server for your organization) and navigate to the Details tab on the Account page. Click Activate Away Mode and confirm. (Notice, GrandCare will warn you to ensure you don’t mistakenly activate this Away Mode for someone who is not really away.)

It’s as simple as that.

When your loved one returns, simply log in to deactivate the Away Mode and alerts will continue as they did before. Caregiving is hard work. It’s our business to make things easier and more convenient wherever we can.