Do You Have a Program Designed to Reduce Fall Risk?

February 14, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Senior woman in wheelchair with caregiver

How do you use technology to mitigate resident fall-risk & maximize independence?

The risk is real
The awareness related to fall risks over the last few years is staggering. One in five hip fractures results in a death within a year of the incident. One in four seniors that fall and fracture a hip, who used to live independently, spend at least the next year in an assisted living or nursing home environment. It’s also a little concerning how little, as an industry, we’ve done to mitigate the risk. Fall detection is largely a waste, the damage is done, and unless the resident is unconscious automated fall detection devices do little more than let you know the horse is out of the barn.

What can you do?
Fall prevention programs need to be comprehensive and targeted. Do you evaluate the medications your residents are taking and develop specific and targeted prevention programs if their medication puts them at increased risk? If a resident has had a previous fall, do you know the likelihood of them falling again compared to those who have never had a fall? Are you putting technology and processes in place to create an environment which reduces a resident’s risk of a repeat incident? Knowing the precursors of a fall is a critical component to prevent it from happening.

For further reading on the risks related to falls and the possible outcomes, often life threatening, visit the CDC’s Website on Falls for Older Adults .

If you don’t currently employ technology to prevent a fall then contact your sales representative
(sales@tel-tron.com) to talk about what it takes to be successfully implement a fall prevention strategy.

To learn more about the benefits of Tel-Tron’s unique fall management technology, click here.

Filed under Staff Notification, Emergency Call - Life Safety, Resident Wellness, Customer Success and Support, Technology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Maximize the Potential of Your Emergency Call System

January 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Are Senior Living Management Teams Out of Touch? The Senior Care Investor www.seniorcareinvestor.com thinks so. In a year where many strong companies in our market grew at an impressive clip, others faltered. During these periods of growth the challenges of bringing on new buildings in different states of disrepair, staff members from different performance cultures, and resident occupancy varying greatly by geographical market have restricted earning potential for even the industry leaders. To steal a quote from the SeniorCare Investor’s most recent publication, “When someone figures out how to profitably run a large chain but maintain a mom and pop feel, then that company will top the return lists every year.” Whether you are the mom and pop provider or you’re trying to create that feeling within your community, personal attention to detail and a level of concern for the quality of life and security of your residents is what creates the “I’m home” feeling.

Being there when a resident needs you, responding with the same passion you would to your own family, being able to know when you miss and make it right; these are just the first steps to creating the feeling of home. You’ve got dinner, the air conditioning, the community bus, and putting green to worry about. Let us tell you when to worry about a resident’s security and emergency health needs require your attention. Let us take care of the compliance to your internal policies.

There is amazing new and innovative technology being created every day by us and companies like ours that goes under-utilized. Many of you already own it and just aren’t taking advantage of what you’ve already bought. All you have to do is invest the time to better understand how knowing what you don’t know can change the lives of your residents.

Here’s a quick tip to ensure that your key team members are really in touch with what happens at the front lines of your communities. Follow the steps below to enable a notification sent directly to your cell phone every time a resident waits more than ten minutes for assistance. You may think your front line is staffed appropriately and responding with the same passion you would, but this will let you know for sure.

Log into your Auditrak reporting package at www.auditrak.com and select the My Auditrak tab.

Select the Contact Methods link on your My Auditrak page and ensure that your contact information is correct.

 Once your contact information is correct go back to your My Auditrak tab and select the link for Event Notification Setup.

If I were interested in Emergency Call events I would select that option from the list, it’s the last item listed in the above image, then select the option for Report after and change the value to 10 minutes.  If I select SMS as the notification option I will now receive a notification every time an Emergency Call at the selected community reaches 10 minutes without being responded to by the staff onsite.  This will give any executive a real time feel for what’s happening at the community level.  Allowing you to intervene and change the experience of your residents in nearly real time can make the difference between the feeling of home and the feeling that they are alone an uncared for.

If you’re interested in having a discussion or seeing a demonstration about how the systems you already own can allow your team to better focus their time on what matters most and ensure that leaders in your company know when things aren’t right on the front lines send me an email at mgraham@tel-tron.com or give me a call at 386-523-1078 so we can start the changes today.

Filed under Customer Success and Support, Emergency Call - Life Safety, In the Cloud, Staff Notification Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Your residents. They’re why I get up in the morning.

August 15, 2011 by Leave a Comment

As a technical support manager and representative for Tel-Tron, it’s easy for me to feel down some days.  After all, the only clients I talk to regularly are the people that have problems, and are frustrated.  When was the last time you called a product manufacturer’s technical support line to tell them how great their product worked?  See, I don’t get to talk to the 97% of our customers who didn’t call technical support in a given day.

Due to the nature of my position, I like to get out in the field from time to time to remind me of the reason for my career choice.  Recently, I took a trip to the New Orleans area and visited a couple communities.  I was there to fix a few problems, and make soe requested programming changes, at each.  The weather was hot (nearing 100 degrees) and humid. I was often working in a non-air-conditioned room and was literally dripping with sweat.  I was not in the best of moods.  However, something inevitably cheered me up.

I was sitting in the community’s lobby and trying to cool off.  Soft instrumental music was playing overhead, as it often does in a community like this.  Suddenly, from my right, I heard singing.  The song was “Someone to Watch Over Me” and an elderly lady was singing along with it.  Her voice was wonderful and I couldn’t help wondering if she had been a professional singer at some point in her life.  I immediately smiled and enjoyed her rendition.  She is why I continue to do technical support for Tel-Tron.

At another community, I was sitting in the lobby awaiting the manager after a long days’ work.  I was ready to call it a day after sitting in an uncomfortable chair for hours on end, watching data fly by on my computer.  An elderly gentleman sat next to me and we had an interesting conversation about his time in World War II.  He is why I love to do this.

I get up in the morning for these residents.  Helping you keep  your residents protected is the reason I can’t sleep some nights.  I know that my job is important to their quality of life and well-being.  I know that they are all individuals that have different needs.  It’s up to me to understand the wireless and life safety technology behind those needs and ensure it stays operational.    It bothers me to think about someone living in a community where there isn’t a well functioning emergency call system.  If anyone at Tel-Tron didn’t feel this same way, they wouldn’t work here.  It’s just part of who we are.

Filed under Customer Success and Support, Now You Know, Resident Wellness Tagged with , , , ,

“What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say. “

September 22, 2010 by 1 Comment

“What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say. “

Ralph Waldo Emerson

turn·key / ˈtərnˌkē/• n. (pl. -keys) archaic a jailer.• adj. of or involving the provision of a complete product or service that is ready for immediate use.

We’re not big on talk here at Tel-Tron, we sell turnkey solutions and actually provide the same.  Every project that Tel-Tron partners in embodies the idea that the whole truly is greater than the sum of its parts.  Tel-Tron has been the leading manufacturer of emergency call systems for decades but we don’t stop participating at the end of the production line.  Tel-Tron provides the highest quality and most consistent turnkey solutions because we ensure that the equipment we took so much care to design and manufacture actually gets implemented in the way it was designed.  Tel-Tron project managers, trainers and support staff are with your team from the moment you buy the system to ensure that shortcuts aren’t taken, steps aren’t missed and that you always get the same consistent quality that allows you to concentrate on providing the best care to your residents.

I’m sure many of you have been involved in projects where fingers get pointed, excuses are made and it’s nearly impossible to find anyone who assumes responsibility for anything, the Tel-Tron turnkey solution for emergency call systems couldn’t be more different.  Many of our competitors use dealers, electricians, general contractors or maybe even the subcontractor doing the fire alarm system to act as the responsible entity for their emergency call system needs.  That subcontractor may then subcontract the job out to someone else when they get busy installing fire alarms.  The end result is layers of incompetence.  Tel-Tron project managers only manage projects that include Tel-Tron emergency call systems, they test every device, they ensure your staff is properly trained; they coordinate integrations with other vendors and are at your community ensuring that the transition to your new system is as seamless and unobtrusive as possible.

Our project management team ensures that everything from system design drawings, pre-requisite installation requirements, training, reporting and every other aspect of the system installation and operation are all handled by the same team of experts that are always accountable to you.  We’ll provide you with updates, project schedules, integration documentation and even coordinate the meetings with any other technical partners that need to be involved.  With decades of experience, industry certifications and an ownership mentality regarding your investment there is no need to look any further than your team at Tel-Tron.

Put us to the test..  Let us know what’s important to you, how you wish it worked, or just paint us a picture of the destination and then turn us loose to ensure your vision gets fulfilled.  We let our actions do our talking and can’t wait to show you how different things can be when Tel-Tron provides a true turn-key solution for your senior living community emergency notification needs and more.  Look for our blog next month on the advantage of Tel-Tron’s distributed regional presence and how we leverage those resources to manage your installation with Tel-Tron factory certified project managers for less than many of our bloated competitors while still providing services they can’t or won’t.

Filed under Customer Success and Support, Emergency Call - Life Safety, Integration Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Online ordering….Easy and Free Shipping

July 29, 2010 by Leave a Comment

A few years ago we had an initiative around Tel-Tron to “Make it Easy.”  It incorporated everything from posting all of our operations guides on our website for customers to easily access to improving manufacturing processes to maximize efficiency.  One of the customer-oriented results was an online store, allowing communities and dealers to order over the internet.  This meant they could order at their convenience and not have to send a fax, wait on hold over the telephone, only call during our business hours, etc.

According to our customers this was a convenient and welcome tool.  Internally, though, we were still manually entering the order into our accounting/inventory software, which unfortunately led to entry errors on our part on occasion.

As technology advances, thankfully so does accounting software.  Our current software has an e-Business module that integrates the online store directly into the sales order module!  When a customer places an order online all we have to do is approve or deny it and it becomes an order, automatically setting it up for same-day shipping.  (For the curious…the only reason an order would be denied is if your account is inactive due to non-payment…fair enough, right?)

Step One

Easy for us for sure.  How easy is it for you?  Check this out…

1. Go to my.tel-tron.com and login

2. Search by item or click on a category to display all products within that category (wireless, room equipment, most popular, etc.) and click “Go”

3. Enter the desired quantity for each item and click “Buy”

4. After you’ve selected all your items, click “View Cart” and complete the check-out process.  Be sure to click Accept after you’ve reviewed the order so that it sends it to us.

5. You’ll receive an email confirmation stating that we have received your order and that it will be processed as soon as possible unless you hear from us otherwise.

Steps Two and Three

That’s it!  Easy as pie…or child’s play…or tan fácil como 1-2-3 (as easy as 123) as the Spanish say…but I digress.

If you’re already using the online store we thank you!  And we hope you’re enjoying the FREE ground shipping.  If you don’t have access yet please contact Leah Hughes at lhughes@tel-tron.com  and she’d be happy to provide one for you.

Happy Shopping!

Filed under Customer Success and Support Tagged with , , , ,

Training the Trainer – It’s As Easy as Staying at a Holiday Inn Express

June 18, 2010 by Leave a Comment

All of the latest and greatest technology, coolest software and state of the art reporting capabilities are nothing more than really expensive paper weights without proper training.  I’m always amazed at how many people think that just because they use something they are somehow now an expert on how to teach other people how to use the product.  The fact that I watch the Daytona 500 every year, drive a car to work, have seven speeding tickets to my name and look great in a fire suit and helmet doesn’t make me a race car driver and it certainly doesn’t make me capable of teaching someone how to drive a race car.  We often get familiar with the products that we use daily, even comfortable.  Our understanding of those products grows the more we use them.  That’s great; we all need to learn more about the tools we use.  The problems start when our confidence exceeds our knowledge.  Knowing how to use a product in a limited scope is far different than understanding a product well enough to teach any user how to use it in any application.  Remember, just because you stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night doesn’t make you a trainer.

One of the traps that non-professional trainers fall into is that they assume everyone uses the product just like they do.  The person that trained them probably felt the same way.  The conclusion of this informal passing down of knowledge is that things get distorted through perceived experience rather than fact.  Observation can be a great tool in understanding something but often a misinterpretation of some coincidental event gets wrapped up into the “myth of operation” that is passed down from person to person until what new employees are learning barely resembles the information that was originally introduced with the new product.  Things get lost in translation, people hear what they want to hear, short cuts are taken and people without a passion or interest in training treat the endeavor accordingly diminishing the product delivered to the people that need it most, the newest members of your team.

How do we combat this?  How can we ensure integrity of the information being disseminated and confirm that the people that need it most not only comprehended what we taught them but also can implement it now?  How can we continue to reinforce these lessons?  How do we keep that base of knowledge growing?  All relative questions that operators deal with everyday, turnover isn’t going away.  Tel-Tron Technologies has a training program called “Train the Trainer” that addresses all of these problems and more.  It’s free to you and our involvement with your team NEVER ends.  We are always there to help you grow and continue to support your onsite trainer provide the best professional training practices to your staff the day they start and reinforce those lessons throughout their careers.  Let’s get down to the details and see how it’s done.

We help identify a trainer at your community if you haven’t already.  Trainers are a special breed and not everyone is right for the job, we can make sure you get the right person in the right spot.  Once we have identified the right person we make sure they have the right material and ensure they use the right process.  We start out by ensuring that five basic concepts are put into practice:

  1. There is a difference between listening and learning!  I see people paying attention almost every time I teach a technical class.  If I’m not on my game, continuously involving the learners then it is almost a guarantee that many won’t be able to retain or use the information I provided in as short a time as an hour later.
  2. Not everybody learns the same way.  Unless you have years of experience and a lot of familiarity with your students your probably won’t be able to figure out how your students learn in enough time to be effective.  Do your students learn better through visual examples, auditory examples or tactile examples?  We teach you to provide examples in all formats and ensure that you have the material, produced and provided by us, the manufacturer, to meet your employees’ needs.
  3. Asking good questions is more important than providing all of the answers.  We help your employees use the Socratic method of critical thinking to ensure that these are lessons truly learned not just taught.  Using a dialectical method that involves discussion and logic rather than a recitation of facts is always more effective for long term retention.
  4. Keep the lectures to an absolute minimum.  Slides too.  We provide you talking points and PowerPoint presentations but more importantly we teach you why you should use them sparingly and how to teach your employees using other medium that are more effective.  Interactive learning, games, role playing and other techniques are at your fingertips and provide a much richer experience for the learner.
  5. It isn’t about what you know but what your students learn.  Proving how smart you are to your audience is not conductive to a great learning environment.  You don’t have to be a college professor with a PhD in a given subject to be a great teacher.  In fact many “teachers” with those credentials are awful.  Focusing on the needs of your students, understanding how they learn and keeping them engaged are far more relevant than your technical base of knowledge.  We help you develop those skills throughout our partnership.

By providing your onsite trainer with the tools they need to be successful and self-reliant your life gets much easier.  Cost of ownership goes down.  Over 80% of all calls to our technical support center are related to operational instruction.  Over half of our onsite service is related to operational misinformation.  Imagine saving 70% of your employees time related to technical issues and 50% of your annual cost on service.  Remember, we provide this service free with every new installation or upgrade.  Consistency of delivery is no longer a problem, we provide you the training materials, hands on tools, DVDs, quick guides, testing materials and online learning services that ensure the technical materials you need to do your job are current and consistent.  We’re with you every step of the way, you’ll have a personal “Train the Trainer” mentor that guides you through the process for as long as you need and is standing right by your side the first time you’re in front of a class.  That’s what a partnership is about and that’s what you get every time you do business with Tel-Tron, your partner for life.  Don’t just take our word for it, listen to what our partners and training participants have to say.

Filed under Emergency Call - Life Safety, Training Tagged with , , , , ,

Introducing the Tel-Tron Training Channel!

June 9, 2010 by Leave a Comment

At Tel-Tron, we understand that not everyone learns the same way.  For example, I prefer regimented, strict courses with a syllabus and clear goals. Other people prefer to just get a manual and a cup of coffee, curl up in a corner, and read at their own pace. Whatever your style, we can meet it.

Recently, Technical Support received a request from a community to explain why their pagers function a certain way. While we were able to explain exactly why to this person over the phone, we decided to make a video that might illustrate the situation better. (It’s a fairly common question.) So, we whipped up a training video, posted it on our YouTube channel, and sent it along. The customer was incredibly pleased and responded:

Yes definitely that was great!  Addressed our exact issue.  Maybe send out an email notice when new videos are posted.


And there’s more where that came from. Plus, there are many more already in the works, but if you have a training question, and would like to see a video made about it, we can probably work that in. Visit our training channel on YouTube and let us know.

Filed under Emergency Call - Life Safety, Training

We’ve got you covered – an equipment replacement plan that works

June 8, 2010 by Leave a Comment

You’re not aware of Tel-Tron’s Warranty Plus program?  For $2 per month per apartment, all of your Tel-Tron equipment is covered.  If you take a lightning hit and every last piece of equipment is fried, you get all new equipment at no additional cost.  A staff member dropped a pager in the toilet?  Covered.  A resident ran over a pendant with a car?  Covered.  A technician from a different company dropped a pipe on your console?  Covered.  Your electrical closet flooded and your power supply exploded?  Covered.

It’s my busiest time of year in technical support.  The storms are rolling in, and so are the calls to my after-hours support phone.  Every week, another community falls victim to a lightning strike.  Some get off easy with only a call station or two affected.  Others aren’t so fortunate and require thousands of dollars to repair.  Most of these customers had turned down the opportunity to sign up for Tel-Tron’s Warranty Plus program, which could have saved them thousands in repairs.

I’m also getting a lot of calls from other customers who are having to replace pendants simply because their emergency call system is aging.  Pendants are hypersonically welded shut to make them water resistant, which means that the batteries cannot be replaced.  After a certain amount of time, the pendants will need to be replaced altogether, which can amount to thousands of dollars in replacements.  Again, most of these customers passed on the opportunity to sign up for the Warranty Plus program.

Of course, we don’t leave these customers without options.  We work with them and allow them sign up for the Warranty Plus program, but there is a signup fee.  However, if they had opted to sign up for the Warranty Plus program before their first year of warranty had expired, they would not have had to pay for the signup fee.

Bear with me as we do some math.  Let’s assume you have 60 apartments and 100 pendants:

  • $60/apartment  x  $2/month = $120/month x 12 months  =  $1,440/year
  • 3 years (the estimated life of a pendant)  x  $1,440/year  =  $4,320
  • New pendant cost  =  $100  x  100 pendants  =  $10,000
  • $10,000  -  $4,320  =  $5,680 in savings

This scenario doesn’t include the pagers, batteries for pull cord stations, forces of nature, etc, that might increase these

Complimentary spares kit included with Warranty Plus

savings.  Oh, as an added bonus, you get 30% off of Tel-Tron’s list price for new purchases.  And you get a free spares kit to get you back up and running as soon as possible in the event of equipment failure (see image).  And you are allowed free end-user training for up to two of your staff members.  And we automatically send you replacement batteries for your fixed wireless transmitters at three-year intervals.  And we automatically send you back-up batteries for your main Tel-Tron life safety equipment every five years.  Do I need to keep going?

I’ve only talked about wireless nurse call systems so far.  Maybe you have a hardwired emergency call system.  How does this apply to you?  We recommend that your Tel-Tron manufactured smoke detectors be replaced every 4-5 years.  Under the warranty plus program, they’re covered, too.

I’m an employee of Tel-Tron and I’m biased.  Don’t simply take my word for it.  We’ve had many customers sign up for the program since its inception.  One hundred percent (yes, that’s 100%) of those customers are still enrolled in the program.

If you want the full skinny of the program, including how to sign up, click here for a link to a brochure.  If you just want to sign up, click here to email Brooke Moffett, who will contact you and write up a contract.

Filed under Emergency Call - Life Safety, Training Tagged with , , , , ,

Training. Just Do It!

June 4, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Like most of you, I wear several hats at work. The one that sits upon my brow most often is that of the Technical Support Analyst. Each day, I speak with people to help them fix whatever problems they’re having with their emergency call systems. This ranges from full-fledged, lightning-induced system outages to issues with printing daily reports. Not surprisingly, both of the aforementioned problems are held to the same level of importance — mostly because, from a user standpoint, they are both problems with “The System.”

In my experience, when people think about their Tel-Tron CompanionOne system, they generally think of a complicated and somewhat mystifying machine (“The System”) that, when all the cogs are in place, performs an automated task which thus makes their lives and jobs simpler. The System has several stages of redundancy — like our alarming console and also paging, staff phones and radios — that help keep it running, even if individual components may have failed.

Unfortunately, a user’s perception of The System often excludes a very important component: said User. As automated as our CompanionOne system may be, it still requires a human component. That’s why Tel-Tron focuses so much on training: developing new training, making videos, producing manuals and user’s guides, and more. (That’s the other hat I wear.)

Training is vital to performing any job well. Not a single one of us in born knowing how,  for example, to reset a pendant emergency call using a staff reset pendant. (Which, by the way, is done as follows: press the staff reset pendant first, then press the alarming resident’s pendant.) We have to learn, but there has to be a reason. People need to see why something is useful and relevant.

So, let me offer a couple of practical, real-world reasons why training your staff to use your CompanionOne system should be a regular investment.

  • Training builds confidence. Our training courses let you see a CompanionOne system in action and teach you how to use it more effectively. It’s your tool after all. Make it do what you want.
  • Training saves you money. Would you rather wire up a new station yourself, or pay someone else to do it? With training, there’s nothing you can’t maintain yourself. Furthermore, those individuals who attend our training seminars and become certified receive free technical support — for life.
  • Training saves lives. Learning to use The System effectively will decrease response times, creating a safer environment for your residents. Furthermore, improperly using or maintaining The System, like any powerful tool, can lead to unexpected consequences. In the life-safety industry, unexpected consequences can be devastating.

We offer many options for training. I and my colleagues fly all over the country and offer training seminars to every one of our senior living community partners. Very often, we can come right to your community. Or you can come here to sunny Daytona Beach; we’re very flexible. For those customers who have recently installed a Tel-Tron system, training is actually free for the first two attendees. Even if you can’t attend a class, all of our user’s manuals are available online in easy-to-use, illustrated PDFs. And since I make them, I also take requests. Need a guide to something and don’t see that it exists? Let me know. It’s a safe bet if you need it, so does someone else.

There’s a training option available for everyone. We can work it out to make sure you get the most from your CompanionOne system. Call me up. Get trained. Get certified. And add another feather to one of your many caps.

For more information and training material, or to sign up
for an upcoming training class, click the image to the right:

Filed under Emergency Call - Life Safety, Training

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