Intelligent exit management saves costs and resources
Aging people often have a habit of peeking out of the front door of their apartment. This is especially frequent among dementia patients. Peeking seems like an insignificant matter. However, it’s costly and causes unnecessary work to safety service providers. Every door opening sends an alarm and triggers a safety helper’s visit to the resident.
9Solutions Oy has developed a solution to this problem. The intelligent exit management with patented sensor technology knows if the resident has remained home or gone out after opening the door. If the system knows that the resident is still at home, it doesn’t send an alarm at all. This eliminates unnecessary alarms and safety helper’s visits to the resident caused by peeking out of the door.
Hoiva Mehiläinen Oy (formerly Mainio Vire Oy) produces care phone and call centre services to the city of Joensuu. Safety helper visits are provided by Med-Group Oy. Care phone service development chief at Hoiva Mehiläinen, Kimmo Karhu, is satisfied with the operation of the 9Solutions intelligent exit management. “Based on our experiences, the system eliminates ca. 80-90 per cent of unnecessary visits”, Kimmo Karhu calculates.
Intelligent exit management eliminates unnecessary alarms
With a traditional care phone and door monitoring solution, the call centre of Hoiva Mehiläinen always receives an alarm when an elderly person opens the front door. Then the call centre contacts the person through the care phone. A Med-Group safety helper is always dispatched to the place at the same time.
The check visit has to be made even if the resident says that he/she is at home and everything is in order. It’s not always possible to figure out the real situation through a phone connection.
You can get an idea of the number of visits made as a precaution when you think that there are about a thousand customers using a care phone in the Joensuu area alone. A single customer can cause up to ten check visits a day by peeking. The call centre of Hoiva Mehiläinen receives a total of ca. 400 alarms per month and well over half of them are unnecessary. False door alarms and subsequent safety helper’s visits to elderly people are costly, because there’s a price tag on every visit. They also encumber the call centre and safety helpers. At the same time, check visits take time and resources from more important tasks. Elderly people themselves dislike safety helpers disturbing them unnecessarily.
More safety and independence to elderly people living at home
The 9Solutions system also allows customer-specific customisation of exit management. Exit management can currently be configured to send an alarm immediately or in 15 minutes after the door opening, unless the customer has returned in that time.
”The resident can freely go to the mailbox or get some fresh air, for example. Relatives and home helpers visiting elderly people have been instructed how to override the exit management. Their visits don’t therefore cause an alarm”, explains development chief Karhu.
