Nurse Call Solution Helps Retirement Home Deliver Peace of Mind

For seniors and their families, the prospect of transitioning to a retirement home can be a source of great anxiety. Families need to know that Grandma is going to be safe, comfortable and happy in her new home.

“From a family perspective, what they're really paying for, and what they really want, is peace of mind so that's what we try to provide both the residents and their loved ones,” explains Kirsy Alvarez, Office Administrator at Casa Dolce Casa, an assisted living retirement home in Woodbridge, Ontario.

Casa Dolce Casa installed the full Nurse Call solution from Panasonic in 2019, replacing an unreliable, older system. Since then, the Nurse Call solution running on Direct Care Connect DCC™ (DCC) has been helping Casa Dolce Casa provide peace of mind to its residents and their families in several different ways.

Residents have three convenient options for contacting the care team through the Nurse Call solution. First, they can simply press the button on their wearable pendant. The DCC system monitors the location of each pendant, enabling the care team to quickly find residents who require assistance. Especially important for seniors with Alzheimer’s or dementia, the system raises an alarm when it cannot locate a pendant, alerting staff that the resident has left the building.

When residents are in their room, they can also summon help using either the bathroom call bell or bedside communication terminal. Staff members can remotely activate the communication terminals at any time to speak with residents or, when residents call for help, listen to see if they are in distress, perhaps from a fall. As a precaution, Casa Dolce Casa has configured the system to send each resident’s call to the ruggedized cordless phones of the entire care team. The team member assigned to the resident either responds immediately to the call or, if busy, uses their phone to reject it; the call is then picked up by an available colleague or escalated to the Head Nurse. The call alert stays active in the system until the attending staff member arrives and clears it.

During the early days of the pandemic, when Casa Dolce Casa was locked down, the Nurse Call solution with DCC and Panasonic communications systems offered an extra measure of comfort to both residents and their families. “With the families not being able to come in person, at least they knew there was a reliable system in place to ensure their loved ones would be looked after in a timely manner if an issue came up,” says Alvarez. “The technology is not going to forget them, it's not going to disregard them, and it keeps everybody accountable to our standards.”

The Direct Care Connect DCC™ software keeps a complete record of calls made, helping managers to track performance and identify areas for improvement. If a family has concerns about the care team’s response time, management can present them with a detailed report of the resident’s calls. This transparent approach reassures families that residents’ needs are consistently being met in a reasonable timeframe. Having an objective performance record also gives the staff some peace of mind because it verifies, they are working to the high standards set by the retirement home.

The COVID lockdown was particularly hard on the residents of Casa Dolce Casa because they were often confined to their rooms or segregated on their respective floors. “The only kind of lifeline they had for any outside contact—outside of their room—was really by using the pendant,” recalls Alvarez. “If a resident was feeling lonely, they could press the button and the staff would come. That helped reassure the residents that they weren't alone.”

Whether residents are in need of a glass of water, a helping hand, some reassuring conversation, or life-saving medical assistance, every call is important. With its proven reliability and productivity-enhancing features, the full Nurse Call solution available by Panasonic has made it easier for Casa Dolce Casa’s care team to answer those calls and deliver peace of mind to residents and their families.