By Susan Saldibar
Remember in the movie Poltergeist when the little girl in front of the TV says, “They’re baaaack?”
There was something pretty creepy about interacting like that with the TV set. (All I could do was to change channels.)
My, how things have changed.
And Lifespark Senior Living is proof positive, as Tech Tuesday’s Abbie Richie learned when she chatted recently with Katelyn Nowack and Marcus Perry.
You may know Lifespark by their signature “purple bus” philosophy, a cool way of describing their innovative approach to designing better environments and options for seniors to live their best lives. Lifespark consists of independent and assisted living, as well as rehab and memory care. Their 35 communities are located across Minnesota and Wisconsin.
And I have to say they’re rockin’ their Caavo.
By now most people know what Caavo (a Foresight partner) is. For those who don’t, it’s the revolutionary (and I don’t use that term lightly) platform that turns regular old TVs into massive communication/interaction hubs. Since Caavo keeps enhancing the platform, by now there is very little you cannot do using it.
To that point, here are a few of the benefits Lifespark is getting with Caavo …
- Staff are no longer running around knocking on every door for check-ins. Staff now are connecting with residents through their TVs and asking, “Everything okay, Mary? How was your day?” How much time must this be saving?
- They’re no longer getting emergency pendant alerts for nonemergencies. Residents no longer reach for their pendant buttons for everything. Now they’re using their Caavo-enabled TVs to send requests for staff to come and adjust the mini blinds or change a lightbulb. I’ll say it again, how much time is this saving?
- Residents are using their voices to send texts through their TVs to grandkids. Think about how cool this is. Residents are using their voices to turn on the TV and “text” with grandkids and include photos, just as if they were on a phone. But no finger fumbling.
- Family members are “dropping in” on loved ones via the TV. This is a great feature, especially if Mom or Dad isn’t answering their phone. They can turn on the TV plus the camera and look for Mom: “Hey, Mom, are you okay?”
- Leadership is using the Caavo-generated reports to quantify all these benefits. This is helping them gauge the ROI on using Caavo. Time savings, improved care, and so on.
There are at least five or six more tangible benefits Katelyn and Marcus talk about in the Tech Tuesday broadcast, so check it out.
You can have the best platform in the world. But how do you get people to use it?
That’s what Abbie asked Katelyn and Marcus. Here are a few things they did at Lifespark to increase adoption of Caavo in their community:
- Demonstrated how it would make things easier for staff and residents. They took the time to relate it to real situations so that the staff and residents could clearly see how it would benefit them.
- Showed them all the things they could do with it. For Caavo, it was about residents having a single remote and using their voice to activate the TV. For staff it was about time savings and providing better care. For families it was about visibility over their loved ones.
- Talked about the technology often. Katelyn and Marcus were happy when they heard a resident’s family say, “Let’s do the meeting using Caavo.”
- Rewarded staff when they used it. “I just saw that you went in and answered that using the new system; that’s awesome!”
Caavo is now in all 35 of the Lifespark communities, saving staff time and connecting everyone to each other and to things they want and need to know.
As Katelyn and Marcus said, “it’s a game changer” for their community. Maybe it could be for yours as well.
