The position of older adults in society is altering so quickly that many people within the senior dwelling business are continuously striving to maintain up.
Fashionable drugs and more healthy life are leading to extra People dwelling longer and, with the Child Increase technology beginning to come of age, there are extra older adults than ever earlier than. As of 2022, 58 million individuals had been aged 65 or extra years, making up 17.3% of the entire inhabitants. Child boomers are turning 60 to 78 this yr.
It’s been greater than a yr since I took over on the helm of EPOCH Senior Residing after my husband, Larry Gerber, former founder and CEO, handed away unexpectedly. Since I stepped into the corporate, I’ve labored to proceed his mission to offer distinctive care on the 11 Bridges by EPOCH communities and 5 Waterstone Senior Residing communities that we function all through the Northeast.
I’ve discovered so much throughout this time. Despite the fact that I do know we already present glorious care to our seniors, I’m at all times searching for methods to make our senior dwelling communities even higher. And since our seniors reside longer — we not too long ago had three males flip 100 and 101 at simply one in all our Waterstone properties, in Westchester, NY — we’ve to work smarter.
Fortunately, we’ve new applied sciences to assist us. Our Bridges by EPOCH reminiscence care assisted dwelling communities and our Waterstone properties have adopted a brand new service that makes use of telemedicine, in choose areas, to observe the well being and well-being of our residents: Tembo Well being, a telehealth service that focuses on older adults and provides entry to medical professionals 24 hours a day, 7 days per week. Residents are supplied with pill computer systems and may get a digital appointment with a board-certified, emergency-trained physician inside minutes — with out leaving the consolation of their residence.
Tembo Well being additionally provides limitless, on-demand digital dementia care by telephone calls, textual content messages or video. Via this partnership, our senior residents and care groups can use the service for issues comparable to a late-night fall, a persistent cough or a health-related dementia complication.
This service is predicted to cut back emergency division visits by rapidly figuring out and addressing a variety of health-related points. The Tembo physician additionally will assist put households’ minds comfortable as they, our care staff members and first care physicians can work collectively to coordinate seamless take care of residents at our EPOCH communities.
In line with the AARP, an increasing number of older adults are embracing expertise — utilizing smartphones, getting on-line and utilizing streaming providers. But, though 69% of adults aged greater than 50 have a number of power or critical well being situations, solely 13% make the most of expertise to handle their state of affairs, and solely 15% of caregivers aged greater than 50 years use telemedicine.
By adopting new applied sciences comparable to Tembo and serving to our residents to embrace telemedicine, we are able to be certain that we meet the healthcare challenges that lie forward for older adults.
Laurie Gerber is the chairperson of EPOCH Senior Residing.
The opinions expressed in every McKnight’s Senior Residing visitor column are these of the creator and usually are not essentially these of McKnight’s Senior Residing.
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