With its scalability and adaptability, Vigil gives providers of senior care the freedom to customize the system to address their specific operations.

By Pam McDonald

“Our journey toward evaluation and implementation of silent wireless technology in all of our communities (independent living and assisted living, including household and cottage models from memory care and skilled nursing and rehabilitation centers) has been a wonderful story of a partner relationship with Vigil Health Solutions [a Senior Housing Forum partner],“ said Denise Rabidoux, President and CEO of Evangelical Homes of Michigan. “It is a significant care technology tool and has worked well for our clients, residents, patients and our team members.”

Evangelical Homes of Michigan owns and operates multiple communities and home-based subsidiaries in southeast Michigan. It offers a wide array of services for older adults; wherever they call home from independent living, affordable housing, assisted living, memory care, adult day programming, hospice care and skilled nursing and rehabilitation.

The organization serves nearly 4500 seniors annually and also provides a variety home-based services and solutions such as home-delivered meals, home care, care management, wellness and health services, home adaptation services and wireless technologies that provide home monitoring, medication management, fall prevention/monitoring and such in an older adult’s home.

Wireless Technology

Explaining how their journey with Vigil began, Denise said, “We started with Vigil technologies by asking one of our skilled nursing and rehabilitation centers to pilot the Vigil system to determine its effectiveness in achieving goals while we were in construction for our new Memory Support Center in Saline, Michigan.

“The employees in the skilled nursing and rehabilitation center established a desired set of outcomes in order to determine if Vigil was the right system for our new community. The outcomes we measured were related to decreasing call light noise in our communities, quick and effective response by care staff in order to address resident and patient needs, and finally a desire for a sequential call response system that would alert management staff if calls were not being answered in accordance with our customer-first standard of ‘Radical Hospitality.’”

Ms. Rabidoux continued, “The employees committed to working with the Vigil system alongside the Vigil staff and we were so pleased with their attentiveness and our results that we have implemented the system in all of our communities including our Memory Support Center, our retirement community campuses, and in our condos and cottages.”

“It’s totally wireless and interfaced with wireless pagers,” Ms. Rabidoux stated. “We’ve added all of our emergency numbers for fire, etc. because of the inter-operability or integration of the pagers.

Geo-Fencing

“On our campuses, Vigil has worked to establish geo-fencing,” Rabidoux said, “so even as elder adults age in place and are not ready for the memory support center or cottages, they can still feel safe in their independent or assisted living apartments. Because we’ve set a geo-fence, we can monitor them and it all goes through the pagers as well.”

Looking toward the future, Ms. Rabidoux said, “If I were asked I would suggest that Vigil continue to be an active partner with us, constantly looking toward the next level for their technology. We’ve been encouraging them to think about adapting their system to home and community-based services.

“Could Vigil be that answer in someone’s home?” Ms. Rabidoux asked. “Right now we’ve got a couple of other devices and platforms we use. But a single platform would mesh well with the older adults we’re taking care of at home through our private duties product line. I’m confident we will be able to figure this out,” she concluded.

With its scalability and adaptability, Vigil gives providers of senior care the freedom to customize the system to address their specific operations. As Ms. Rabidoux said, “We are a big proponent of Vigil. It is technology that we’ve been able to grow with in all of our communities.”

Visit www.vigil.com to view videos, case studies, and system demonstrations.