This August, the Eldermark Client Advisory Board (CAB) joined us in Stillwater, MN for our 2023 Eldermark All Together event. This was an incredible week for us to reconnect in real life as a team and with our customers.
Our three-day agenda was packed with thought leadership sessions from our customers, updates from Eldermark on our company and product roadmap, and an innovation lab with live demos of Eldermark Next and some of our technology partners’ solutions.
While the entire week was invaluable, one of the sessions that really stood out was an open-discussion panel with our CAB members, facilitated by Isaac Scott, Founder and CEO of Anthem Memory Care.
We discussed a wide array of topics from tactical tips to improve daily work to what we believe the future will look like for our industry. Here’s a brief overview of that discussion:
Fall Management Challenges
Senior living community operators aim to be proactive in preventing falls by assessing potential risks for each resident. However, despite their efforts, falls can still occur. Identifying ways to further reduce fall risk and implementing technology solutions that can assist in fall prevention will make a substantial improvement in quality of life for residents and financial performance for the community.
Technology Adoption and Integration
Communities use various software systems for different purposes, such as medication management, CRM, billing, point of sale, payment tools, marketing, and risk assessment. However, a significant challenge arises when these software systems do not integrate seamlessly with each other.
Manual data entry between systems can be time-consuming, prone to errors, and may lead to outdated information which can adversely affect staff productivity and the quality of care. Given the workforce instability issues and increasing resident acuity, providers need integrated systems more than ever to be efficient and responsive to the needs of their resident customers.
Understanding the challenges our customers face day-to-day is the major reason we’ve developed a comprehensive solution built for the entire business of senior living instead of providing point solutions to specific challenges. Our platform supports every process at your community and our industry-leading analytics and data management solution, ElderSmarts, can aggregate information from any source – even if it’s not an Eldermark solution!
Impact of Data Integration Challenges
The lack of efficient data integration impacts operators' workflows and overall operational efficiency. It can result in increased workload for staff, leading to more hours worked and potential negative effects on resident care or employee satisfaction.
To ensure optimal data management and prevent disruptions, operators need streamlined solutions that enable data sharing between different software systems. Access to data and analytics is increasingly important in monitoring systems performance and remaining accountable to constituents.
Manage your Mavericks with Better Communication
Operators may encounter challenges related to resistance to change, hindering the implementation and acceptance of new processes or technologies. Addressing communication barriers and fostering a positive attitude towards change management can be vital in overcoming this challenge.
Patti Kreuger, Corporate Director of Health and Wellbeing, and Mary Dahl, Revenue Adherence Operations Manager, at The Waters Senior Living presented on this topic in more detail and how they achieved some incredible results in accountability and staff retention. It was such an impressive session, we’ve convinced them to do it again as an upcoming webinar so they can share their best practices with a broader audience! We’ll provide more information on this when we have it.
Enhanced Fall Prevention Features
Fall prevention is a major challenge in our industry and sometimes prevention won’t be possible. There was a lot of discussion about various wearable devices that can complement the proactive measures taken by operators and help alert care staff when a resident moves or acts in unusual ways.
There are also some interesting innovations being made for professional athletes that leverage AI to help identify when injuries are likely to occur and recommend preventative action that we’d love to see made available for senior care.
Training and Support
Providing comprehensive training and ongoing support helps ensure that communities and care staff are efficient and effective. This is just as important for vendors like Eldermark to provide these resources to our community customers as it is for communities to provide to their staff.
Some of our CAB members shared that by providing a weekly review for all employees, they’ve created shared accountability across the organization and reduced their staff turnover dramatically. These examples also described how they went from 1,300 agency hours each week to just 200 across 13 buildings!
All but 2 of their buildings are now agency free because of their work to train and support their employees!
Data and Reports Aren’t Enough
Well organized and planned out dashboards used to be the pinnacle of data management. But dashboards and reports can’t tell you what’s going to happen at your community in the next 3 or 6 months. Our CAB discussed the importance of actionable analytics or solutions that can interpret the data in your dashboards and provide a course of action to improve your business or prevent incidents before they even occur.
One member summed this up concisely, “We don’t need more dashboards. We need fewer dashboards that create new and more valuable insights into our business.”
The 2023 Eldermark All Together was an incredible three days of learning and networking with our peers and we’re already looking forward to the next one!
