An investment in technology should create room for employees to focus on what matters. For caregivers and other frontline employees that interact with seniors, they are given an opportunity to deepen their relationship with the seniors they serve without the distraction of tracking the minutiae of health changes.
Conrad Pereira, owner of Senior Helpers New Mexico, while on the Growth Operator podcast, suggests you only add to your tech stack if you can answer questions such as, “What does this save us? And, what does that free us up to do instead?”
In senior care, caregiver shortage, burnout, and retention is what grabs headlines. As Dave Bean, owner of three Amada Senior Care franchises in Ogden, Salt Lake City, and Park City, Utah with roughly 170 caregivers, says. “It doesn’t matter how many caregivers you hire if you have just as many quitting on the back side.”
It’s no wonder using technology to solve for the caregiver experience is top of mind for senior operators. Innovations in agetech have risen to meet these challenges over the last few years. It is now possible to find solutions that run the gamut from automated caregiver scheduling solutions to using a television to monitor loved ones to audio care intelligence for proactive care.
The right tech stack improves workflows for every person in your organization, whether directly or via a downstream effect. Whatever agetech you use, the impact is felt by everyone in the org.
Here’s how the right agetech improves the experience for your caregivers and frontline staff, and how that makes space for leaning into the best care for how well the seniors in your care.
For caregivers, care intelligence provides context
With the right technology, a professional caregiver who knows what happened overnight doesn’t have to spend the first fifteen minutes of a visit figuring out how the client is doing. Beyond giving caregivers context, the Sensi Care Intelligence (Cally) integrates training content from dementia expert Teepa Snow to provide immediate, context-aware coaching to caregivers in the field. It also ensures accountability for overnight shifts and provides tools for caregiver recognition.
Conrad and his wife Elizabeth immediately saw how Sensi could help with their mission to provide value to both his clients and his caregivers in their New Mexico home care agency, so he placed care intelligence in clients’ homes as a standard of care. “One thing we really prioritize above everything else is operating ethically and being someone who’s going to provide genuine value for the community. That means having (Sensi) CarePods in clients’ homes to make sure they’re safe. So, we know when falls are happening, when there are changes in condition that we wouldn’t otherwise catch when our caregivers aren’t in the home.”
Conrad knows that when a caregiver doesn’t have to be hypervigilant to ensure every cough or change in behavior is tracked, they can prioritize their time with the senior and the interaction can move beyond what Kunu Kaushal, owner of Senior Solutions in Tennessee and Georgia, calls a “sitter service.”
For family caregivers, care intelligence and the data it provides in the Cally dashboard delivers peace of mind without the need to track the minutiae of health changes in real time. It’s an added layer of information that enhances quality of life for both the family caregiver and the senior, so they can enjoy the time they spend together.
The distinct challenges seniors who are veterans face means care that includes audio monitoring and a professional caregiver, in addition to the support of a family caregiver means that those who have served our country are able to stay comfortable in their home.
For care and health service staff working in senior communities
Care intelligence helps frontline staff at senior communities do their job better. This includes care staff, RNs and CNAs to physical, occupational, recreational, and speech therapists and medication care managers. The Sensi platform provides them with context to do three things.
1. Catch health changes before they become emergencies
Seniors often don’t notice a health change until it’s already a problem, and recall is rarely accurate. Cally picks up the trend itself: when the bathroom trips increased, when a cough turned chronic. That makes it possible to catch a UTI or bronchitis before a hospitalization is needed, and before a resident tells a nurse that something is wrong. It’s how Resthaven tries to provide proactive care, even if the resident isn’t as forthcoming.
2. Personalize the activities of daily life
The same data can improve how residents spend their day. Calysta Bailey, recreational therapy manager at Resthaven, uses Sensi insights to build programs around what each resident is ready for that day: active or restful, creative or routine, social or quiet. The result is an individualized experience that goes beyond generic activity calendars. Seniors can keep living independently, with support that meets them where they are.
3. Prioritize time with residents over coordination
Care at a senior community involves many hands. That roster includes other therapists, families, doctors, and the community vendors and visitors around a resident. A single source of truth keeps everyone aligned on schedules, changes, and diminished capacity or energy, so staff can be present with residents without worrying they’ll miss a crucial change.
Healthier seniors are easier to care for
Whether you run a home care agency or a senior living community, healthier seniors make direct care easier. They stay in your care longer, need fewer emergency interventions, and leave your team more time for the experience itself. Keeping the clients you already serve is also easier than constantly replacing onboarding new ones. This allows your team to spend more time on client experience and cultivating community; less time on marketing and business development for new accounts.
This is where the time-saving argument becomes a business argument. Direct care providers using Sensi have reported a 22% reduction in hospitalizations across their client base. Fewer emergency room visits mean fewer crisis calls pulling staff and seniors off their schedules. For home care agencies, that means steadier caregiver schedules. For communities, it means fewer disruptions to shifts, therapy programs, and daily routines.
Susan Kahlau, who owns Visiting Angels locations in Forty Fort, Scranton, and Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, sees it in her own numbers: “If you’re doing the right thing for the client, those additional hours will come. And Sensi is just a great way to do the right thing for the client. We’ve reduced hospitalizations for our senior clients by 80%.” That figure is specific to Visiting Angels, not a company-wide average, but it shows Sensi’s potential impact.
That calm shows up in retention. Direct care providers using Sensi have seen a 34%* drop in caregiver turnover which means more continuity for the people receiving care. When seniors stay healthier, the whole operation improves, as does everyone’s experience in the elder care ecosystem.
Takeaway
Supporting your caregivers and frontline senior community employees will create better senior experiences. Just ask Colby Bechtold of Hummingbird Care Services in Florida, who treats quality of service as a growth lever. Bechtold comes from a nursing background and will turn away clients rather than take them on understaffed. His agency was recently voted Best Home Health Agency in West Palm Beach in the WFLX FOX 29 Viewers’ Choice Awards. “My job is to build a safety net around them that makes them feel safe and cared for,” he says.
Ultimately, what changes for an agency or senior community when they start using agetech with care intelligence is more proactive care, fewer blindspots, more time with the people the job is actually about.
See how Sensi helps support your direct care team, so they can concentrate on providing a great care experience for seniors. Book a demo
*Sensi internal data
