Knowledge is Power, Part 5 – The Best of the Rest

We've spent a few days looking at the PalatiumCare reports, and I hope you've found both the articles and the reports informative.

Today we'll close out our series by taking a look at some PalatiumCare reports that don't necessarily have anything to do with residents calling for assistance but still offer a great deal of useful information.

DETAILED EVENT REPORT

 The detailed event report pulls together all the information in the PalatiumCare server for one quick look. If you want to compare statistics from month to month, pull up a Detailed Event Report for each. Print off this information and keep for your records.

APARTMENT LISTING

If you have a new staff member join your facility, you may want him or her to spend some time learning who your residents are and where they live. Print off this report for an easy-to-understand list of available and occupied apartments.

DEVICE LISTING

Maintenance staff can quickly take stock of what devices you have learned into your PalatiumCare system with a Device Listing. Thinking about replacing old devices? This list will tell you which devices have been in service the longest.

Through the course of this series of articles, I hope you've come to appreciate the wide range of uses for PalatiumCare reporting. And while I'm happy to share with you all the ways I know reporting can be used, I'm certain there are many more ways that you'll find to utilize this wealth of information in your own community.

For more information on PalatiumCare, contact a representative at 888-725-2848.


Kirt Graves
Sales Representative
kgraves@palatiumcare.com

Knowledge is Power, Part 4 – Maintenance Report

So far, we've focused on how PalatiumCare reporting can tell you a lot about your staff and residents. But the information available through reporting isn't just about the people who use the system, it's also about the system itself.

My car has recently reached that age where quite a bit of regular maintenance is due. It seems as though every couple weeks, a new light is going on or a new, unsettling sound is being heard. As someone who doesn't know a lot about cars, I find myself constantly frustrated. Clearly, something is wrong. But what? To find an answer, I have to take my car – and my check book – to the nearest garage and ask an expert. At that point, whether or not it was a simple repair that I could have done myself is irrelevant. I've already spent the time and money finding out what the problem is, so I might as well let them fix it.

If something is amiss with your PalatiumCare system, no such frustration is necessary. A PalatiumCare Maintenance Report can show you in one, easy-to-understand document exactly how well your system is functioning and whether any maintenance is required.

MAINTENANCE REPORT

 At PalatiumCare, we take pride in how reliable our system is for our users. But if any component of the system isn't working, we want you to know about it right away, giving you time to fix the problem before something goes wrong.

As is the case with all of the reports, the Maintenance Report begins with a summary. The summary can tell you right away if there's anything in your PalatiumCare system that requires attention. It's also a great place to start when learning about the Maintenance Report.

Devices with a low battery. PalatiumCare will warn you when your resident devices need a change of battery. If you check your Maintenance Report once a week, you'll have plenty of notice to order or buy new batteries if you're running low. Below the summary is a detailed list of all the events that comprised your summary. If you see that a battery is low, the detailed list will tell you what device it is and to whom it is assigned.

Devices not checked in. The system is constantly monitoring itself and all its components. When a device is "absent", the system will take note. (If a device is absent for a long period of time, you'll be alerted.) This is a good way to see if there are certain residents who are regularly venturing where there is poor coverage by the system. If you notice a location device is consistently not found, then you'll need to address your wireless coverage in that part of the building.

Devices with tamper triggered. You can set your PalatiumCare system to notify you when a device is being tampered with. You can also look back and see if there's a particular resident who likes to take his or her devices apart. In either case, you'll want to make sure the device is restored and your resident can reliably call for help when he or she needs it.

Total restarts. You may choose to restart your PalatiumCare server from time to time. It's a quick and easy process, and often the first step in trouble-shooting problems. Here, you'll be able to look back and see how often you are restarting your system. (NOTE: The Maintenance Report used as an example in the article is taken from a PalatiumCare demonstration kit. A normal server is not restarted at this frequency.)

Unlike my car, PalatiumCare can tell you exactly what's wrong. Is it an easy problem that you can tackle yourself? Or is there a larger issue that needs the attention of a trained technician? With the Maintenance Report, you'll be able to answer that question, take the appropriate action, and ensure that your system stays reliable.

To find out more about PalatiumCare, contact a representative at 888-725-2848.


Kirt Graves
Sales Representative
kgraves@palatiumcare.com

Knowledge is Power, Part 3 – Hourly Summary Report

Your PalatiumCare call system can not only help you improve the care of your residents, but also the efficiency of your staff. Do you know off the top of your head which shift answers more calls at your facility? Or what hour of the day is busiest for your staff? Do you know this because you have a record of the calls or because "everyone knows that"?

Have you ever had staff members say that they are overwhelmed due to the high number of calls they receive? What was your reaction? Do you take their word for it and hire an extra set of hands? Or do you dismiss the complaint?

When you're more interested in the number of calls being registered rather than a specific resident's situation, use an Hourly Summary Report.

HOURLY SUMMARY REPORT

 For most administrators, the overnight shift will always remain a bit of a mystery. What exactly goes on night after night? How reliable is your overnight staff? Are they as responsive and caring as your daytime staff? Do they exceed your expectations? Or fall short? It's difficult to get a realistic picture of what goes on while you're not there. Some facilities resort to purchasing expensive security cameras to monitor staff. But who has the time to watch the tapes? Others have their staff complete detailed work summaries, taking up valuable time and often leading to resentment.

PalatiumCare allows you to get a "snap shot" of what happens at night – or any hour of the day – with an Hourly Summary Report. The summary will break down how many calls were received during any given hour of the day. You can instantly see what the longest, shortest and average response times were. Do you see your average response time going up during a particular time of day? How can your staff work together to make sure that response time is shorter in the future?

Is one shift truly answering more calls than another? Now you know.

Is response time lacking because of the number of events happening at one time? Now you know.

Is there really more going on than your current staff can handle? Now you know.

Use the Hourly Summary Report as a motivational tool. Have the different shifts compete to have the quickest response times. Reward a shift if their response times go down across the board. Recognize a hard-working staff member who always seems to be working when response times are the shortest. There's no limit to the ways you can use the information.

To find out more about PalatiumCare, contact a representative at 888-725-2848.


Kirt Graves
Sales Representative
kgraves@palatiumcare.com

Knowledge is Power, Part 2 -- Location Event Report

Today I’ll continue my series on PalatiumCare reports. Last time, we discussed how a Resident Event Report can help you address the care of a specific resident, especially if your care giver response is being called into question.

Location devices are defined as any device that is in a fixed position. Pull cords, motion sensors, door & window contacts are all considered location devices. If a location device is assigned to a resident, like a pull cord in a resident’s bathroom, then that location device’s activity will also appear in a resident report. But there may be times when you need to check the report of a device that is assigned to a common area. Other times, it may just be more helpful to see the breakdown of information for just the device, rather than all the resident’s activity.

If you’re using these devices to monitor a specific area, you would access a Location Event Report.

LOCATION EVENT REPORT

I often share the story of a resident in one of our facilities. The administration was concerned that a man, we’ll call him John, was falling during the night on a regular basis. At least once a week care givers would check on John in the morning and find him lying on the floor in the middle of the room, unable to reach the call cords located by his bed or bathroom. Obviously, the administrators and John’s family were concerned. They decided to monitor John’s movement during the night using a motion sensor.

The motion sensor was mounted in John’s room and set to only record events that happened after his regular bed time. After a few nights, they checked the Location Event Report for John’s motion sensor. It turns out that John was getting up many times every night. John would fall only a fraction of the times he would get up, and care givers had no idea. The administration and family now knew the scope of the problem was wider than just regular falls, and they worked together to discover the reason for John’s restlessness at night.

Location Event Reports can also be used to monitor activity in stair wells, outdoor areas or common rooms. You can use door contacts to monitor one resident’s movements, or you can monitor the traffic in and out of your building. However you wish to use the information, it is available to you at any time.

To find out more about PalatiumCare, contact a representative at 888-725-2848.

Kirt Graves

Sales Representative

kgraves@palatiumcare.com

Knowledge is Power – Resident Event Report

My next series of posts are exclusively about PalatiumCare Reports. What are they? How do they work? And how can they be used to improve the quality of life for your residents and the work environment for your staff?

You can see when a resident is calling for assistance on your Alerts screen. When a call is placed, the alert pops up, and the clock starts counting from the time of origination. When a care giver arrives to assist the resident and resets the device in alert, the notification disappears. Did you know that PalatiumCare is also recording every time a resident calls for help and the time it takes for a care giver to respond? From the moment your system is installed, PalatiumCare is recording. And that information doesn't get deleted . . . ever.

Accessing this information is easy. Thanks to PalatiumCare's unique, server-based system, you can access the PalatiumCare system from any PC on your network. When signed in as an administrator, you can simply select the Reports icon in the menu at the top of your PalatiumCare screen. You will be presented with several different ways to interpret the information. Each interpretation tells a different story about your facility.

You can also choose to have PalatiumCare generate a report automatically. If you'd like to know what happened while you were out of the office, a Detailed Event Report can be e-mailed to you every morning. Or your head of maintenance can receive a Maintenance Report once a week without ever having to sign in the system. You choose the report and the frequency with which you'd like to receive it. PalatiumCare reporting is designed for unparalleled ease and convenience.

Let's go over each of the different reports in more detail.

RESIDENT EVENT REPORT

 "My dad says that he will push his call button 20 times before someone responds. He says it takes forever to get help when he needs it. What is going on in this place?"

I'm sure you've all experienced a similar accusation from a resident or resident's family member. Even when they can see that your attention is always available to their loved ones when they visit, family members can still wonder (and worry) about the care a parent, spouse or sibling receives when no one is watching. And when it comes to a battle of he-said, she-said, they'll rightly side with their relative. Avoid that argument with a Resident Event Report.

A Resident Event Report will sort all the alerts for an individual resident. You can look up a single event or every call the resident has placed since he or she moved in. The top of the report will give you a summary of the calls placed by that resident, including the total number of calls and the maximum, minimum and average response times. You can then browse a detailed listing of every call from that resident within the designated time period. In this way, you'll be able to show family members that a loved one may press his or her call button 20 times, but the care giver responds in five minutes. Or perhaps there was one time when a care giver took ten minutes to respond, but the average response time is three minutes. This is concrete information to help calm the nerves of an anxious resident or defend your facility against charges of neglect from a family member.

Conversely, you may find that a resident's claims are true. Perhaps there are too many times when a resident is left waiting more than five or ten minutes. The PalatiumCare Resident Event Report will detail when these events occurred, and you can see if the pattern of lengthy wait times corresponds to a certain shift or staff member. You can print this report and present it as a learning tool to your staff. We'll go over more ways PalatiumCare Reports can help your staff in a future post.

To find out more about PalatiumCare, contact a representative at 888-725-2848.

Kirt Graves
Sales Representative
kgraves@palatiumcare.com