What's New with Connect...

When the vast Consumer Electronics Show, underway this week in Las Vegas, adds an exhibition called Silvers Summit, devoted to new products for the aging and their caregivers, brace yourselves. American tech companies, taking notice of the unmistakable demographic trends, have launched a surge.

“When you have a growing market segment, everybody wants a piece of the action,” said Majd Alwan, director of the Center for Aging Services Technologies, itself just six years old.

What’s coming?

An Ohio firm called Connect 4 Healthcare was born when its C.E.O. Neil Moore wanted to stay in touch with his father-in-law’s nursing home. Staffers would tell him “‘nobody’s available right now; we’ll call you back.’ And they’d call back when I was on a plane or in a meeting,” Mr. Moore recalled. “It was just frustrating.”

The Connect for Healthcare system gives family members access to a site where paid caregivers enter regular status updates about how a resident is faring. Families choose the specific matters they want to track, from appetite to socialization, and can also use the service to ask questions and raise concerns; most choose to receive the information by e-mail or text message. A small but growing number of home care agencies, nursing homes and assisted living facilities in Ohio, Texas and California have thus far signed on to provide such updates.

“Problems stemming from poor communications with a resident or family member can be a huge driver of lawsuits or other potential avoidable issues. But keeping in constant contact with the family isn’t always practical or easy.”

“That’s why Lori Storey, general manager of Columbus, OH-based Right At Home, uses the Internet-based communication service ‘Connect for Healthcare’ to keep in touch with her resident’s families. ‘We can type a message to the family into the Web site and send it out at once,’ she explains. ‘It saves so much time.”’ 

“A survey of 200 family members revealed that they want information about how their loved ones are doing in a number of wellness categories (metrics) of the family’s own choosing like feeling, eating, taking medication, etc.”

“Our system allows family members to log in and select up to 10 of the 46 wellness metrics our families have recommended,’ said Craig Gordon, director of business development and strategic alliances at Connect for Healthcare.”

See complete story in “The Voice” - ‘Networking Tools Keep Families In Touch’ - starting on page 12

One of the reasons experiences break down in healthcare is lack of communication. And that lack of communication leads to misinformation, lack of trust and other issues. A new service helps bridge the communication gap between care providers and the families and caregivers of those receiving care.

Connect for Healthcare helps providers communicate with family members via email and text messaging. It is a great customer experience differentiator and a great comfort to families. Not only is it a way to improve communication and experience but you then have a documented communication trail. It has proven to actually reduce family phone calls and the time spent handling those calls for families. And of course increased communication usually means less litigation. That is something we all can agree is a good thing.

Providers can communicate with one or many family members around issues that they specifically choose. The software enables providers to quickly fill out electronic forms tracking patients’ eating, sleeping, temperament and other indicators and send updates to families.

Says co-founder Neil Moore, “Most lawsuits in long-term care are triggered by the failure of the providers to communicate with the family.” Before launching Connect for Healthcare in February, Moore spent 17 years developing information technology systems to improve patient safety in medical facilities. Moore said he was inspired to create Connect for Healthcare after witnessing numerous encounters in which family members would call for patient updates, only to be given little or no information.

With an increasingly mobile society and more people living farther away from parents, grandparents and extended family, this might be something that providers should check out and families should ask about.

At Your Side Home Care announces an exclusive service for their clients…A HIPAA compliant web based Connect4Healthcare informational updates for seniors families anywhere in the world! Call us for details 281-335-4882 or email us at clearlaketx@atyoursidehomecare.com

This service is especially beneficial for home care clients with children want to be kept abreast of changes in their parents condition. Notifications are by email or SMS messaging. We are excited about this innovative new technology!

Connect for Healthcare is a desirable alternative for family members who live long distances from their elderly loved ones. If an aging parent is receiving hospice care or lives in an assisted living or a skilled nursing facility in another city or even another state, family members can feel disconnected from their loved one’s life, health and well-being.

Connect for Healthcare allows for the long-distance family members to receive weekly or twice-weekly updates about their senior loved one. By sending written updates rather than oral updates, the facility is likely to pay closer attention to the care of the senior individual. By using Connect for Healthcare, family members can choose the wellness criterion that they wish to be updates on (i.e. eating, sleeping, medication, etc.) and can choose their desired medium of communication (i.e. web page, e-mail, text message, etc.).

When family members live far away, it is difficult to know whether or not their elderly relative is receiving the proper care and attention that they (or you!) are paying for and that they need. By using Connect for Healthcare, family members can be assured that their loved one is well taken care of.

For more information, visit Connect for Healthcare.

My mother lives in San Diego. I live about an hour north in Orange County. One sister lives an hour north of Los Angeles. My other sister lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

As one might imagine, long distance caregiving is an issue with which my family continuously grapples. It’s the peace of mind and communication that always seems to be the toughest to maintain. Who calls the community? Who calls the family? How do you maintain any consistency in the update you get on her care? The questions can be endless.

That’s why I was so excited when I started following Neil Moore and Connect 4 Healthcare more than 6 months ago. Neil’s brought the company from a great idea and a prototype to a service enormously valuable to families like me.

In this Leaders in Elder Care interview, I had the chance to catch up with Neil was really excited to hear that Connect 4 Healthcare was living up to its potential.  I am glad to be able to call Neil a Leader in Elder Care and hope you enjoy the interview.

About Neil Moore

With over twenty years of successful health care business experience, Neil Moore has spent the last 16 years on the management teams of health information technology companies in roles that include management of application development, marketing, sales, clinical consulting and strategic partnerships. Before starting Connect 4 Healthcare, he was Executive Vice President of Evention Healthcare, Inc., a long-term-care software start-up, where he was responsible for Strategy, Marketing, Sales and Business Development. In 2007, Evention Healthcare was purchased by the largest long-term care pharmacy services provider in the US (Omnicare, Inc).

How Neil Describes Connect 4 Healthcare

Founded in 2008 by Neil Moore, Connect 4 Healthcare, LLC provides an easy-to-use, inexpensive web service (Connect for Healthcare™) that enables long-term care providers to improve resident/client care, the family experience, operational efficiency and differentiate themselves in the market place by dramatically improving and documenting their communication with families using modern technologies. In just a few minutes per week, the Connect service enables care providers to deliver regular, proactive updates to the entire family through the Internet, Email and Text Messaging – no matter where they might be – in 70% less time than it takes them to answer a typical update call from just 1 family member.

Contact Information

www.connect4healthcare.com

- also featured in Basic American Comfort, published by GF Health Products, Inc.

Connect for Healthcare is a web-based company that allows professional caregivers to send out weekly or twice weekly notifications via text, email or post updates on a website to family members of a person that is receiving care either at home or in a senior care community. This service is great for adult children, who either due to distance or circumstance, are unable to visit or check in with a parent who lives in a nursing home, assisted living, rehab facility or is receiving care in the home.

Watch our step-by-step video tour of how this service is easy for both caregivers and family members to use—while also eliminating the need for one family member to be the point-person that has to call all other relatives to provide updates. You can learn exactly how to set up your account and establish which parameters you want updates on. You can get updates on 10 variables of your choosing from the available 40, which cover everything from health to wellness, such as eating, sleeping, taking medication, physical therapy, energy, weight and cancer treatment. The families of Alzheimer’s patients can also benefit from the service as it allows them to know how their relative is doing, both health and mood wise, without having to ask questions that could be difficult or impossible to answer due to memory loss. Instead caregivers can provide updates on how well a person is eating, sleeping, coping with a slight cold or a host of other issues.

Messages can be received either once or twice a week. Accounts can service one person ($15-30/month) or Family Plans ($22-37/month) can accommodate up to 10 people. If your parent’s caregiver or community is not enrolled in Connect for Healthcare but you would like to use their service, all you need to do is simply contact Connect for Healthcare for information and they will talk to your relative’s caregiver or community about setting up the program. Everyone on Family Plans must have legal documentation that they have a right to know the patient’s personal medical information via a power of attorney document. Read Laurie Orlov’s, our Aging in Place Technology Expert, opinion on Connect for Healthcare.