I recently paid the Annual renewal for my mom’s Emergency pendant. $550 with taxes. $46 a month to link her to a 24/7 call center. She’s with Medical Guardian.That’s one of the bigger national companies.
We were concerned my mom might fall and not have her cell phone. The pendant is always around her neck. We originally had a pendant that auto-dialed if it felt a shock. That was a bad idea. Sitting down hard on the toilet triggered it. She changed to a pendant with a panic button.
The piece of mind is worth paying a company. But I can’t help but feel they’re overcharging because they can.
I guess this isn’t much different than a Alarm Service? Your paying for a link to their call center. Do they charge $46 a month for the service?
I cannot comment on the value of this device or the service for you mother. My FIL is close to moving to a senior care facility, and I understand they do not want the residents there to have these pendants. In my FIL’s case, he has dementia, and he’d be pressing it all the time, wasting resources. At the facility he may be moving to, they just keep close eye on him all the time.
For your mom, if she is living alone, and still has a healthy mental capacity for the foreseeable future, it may be worth it, but if she is likely to be pressing the panic button all the time, that may cause other problems. My 2¢.
We (sis&i) recently set up such a system for my mum - after she had a fall.
The service costs GBP20 / month (~$26.18), but the village in which she lives has a
scheme whereby she only pays GBP10. She has a pendant switch and fall detecting
bracelet. We think it’s worth it - 'specially as she pays for it ! (but she can afford it.)
Would she wear a smart watch? If she could reach the pendant she could reach the watch? Some of them (the new Apple ones do, and possibly others) also have fall detection that will auto-dial 911 if you don’t respond and turn it off within a certain time period. No monthly cost for the watch.
My aunt isn’t quite yet 70 but lives alone and has advanced MS. She lives on the same block as her son. He still insisted on her having an emergency alert necklace. I see it as a very wise investment.
I think she’s used it once for an emergency, but two or three times her dogs have jumped up and set it off. It didn’t seem like that was a big problem for whatever service she uses. They are probably used to it.
I pay a tad over $46/mo for crap pet insurance for my dog (double that as I have two dogs). It gives me very little peace of mind to have this insurance. The peace of mind I’d have for an aging parent to have 24/7 on-person access to emergency service (and me) is worth WAY more than $46/mo.
This was what I was going to mention as well, with one possible additional mention. If she uses an Apple Watch (or some versions of Wear OS if she uses an android phone) which are linked to her cellphone, you can make 2-way calls from the watch via bluetooth connection to the paired phone. Or with a month cost depending on carrier, you can have LTE enabled smartwatches that do the same without a paired phone.
None of which helps if she doesn’t wear and/or charge the watch ever other day or so, but… even with the stand alone function, she has more stand alone health features, and probably a lower overall cost.
I don’t see her doing that. She doesn’t like the tiny little 1/10th of an ounce pendant on a lanyard around her neck. And, well, she has macular degeneration, and is losing her eyesight. She would never be able to see it at all. I guess the fall detection would be good.
I read somewhere that seniors rarely use the device when they are in actual distress, such as when they’ve fallen and can’t get up. The reason is that they fear being permanently removed from their home, and institutionalized. This is a pretty good reason!
As a senior, this seems a bit silly to me!
If I fall downstairs, I would like some help pronto, than you.
Also I am fine on my own at present, but I have researched nearby care homes in case my health declines.
I think it best to face up to the inevitable consequences of old age.
If I do go into a care home, I shall enjoy:
meals being cooked for me (and of course there’s always a takeaway order)
I think for the price you could buy a dozen google home minis, to always be within shouting distance.
(I also misread the topic as “emergency pedant service”. $550/year is pretty cheap to have someone come with sirens blazing to correct you every time you say something that’s only 99% correct.)
It is, unfortunately, not an uncommon reaction, however. Wearing such a device also is an acknowledgement that you’re older and less physically able.
My 88-year-old father has had three bad falls in the past three years, including one where he was walking down the driveway to get the morning newspaper (he was the only one awake in the house at the time), slipped and fell on black ice, and laid there for a half-hour, shouting, before my mom finally woke up.
My sister got him an emergency alert device; he often won’t carry it with him. “Oh, I don’t need it, I’m just going out to the garage for five minutes.” (His last fall was as he was heading out to the garage, where there’s a step down from the house.)
I realise that is how many folk think. But it’s just a sensible precaution!
I own my house and every year I renew my house insurance. There’s enough on the policy to rebuild the whole thing. Of course I don’t expect such a disaster - it’s the same as using my pendant.
I’m sorry to hear about your father and I hope he will come round to using the device. (maybe he could see it as a ‘trophy’?)
A friend of mine (also retired like me) refused to even consider an alarm pendant.
Then he fell over at home and couldn’t reach the phone.
He lay there for hours … until luckily he had an unexpected visitor.
Oh, absolutely. And it’s a conversation that my sister (who lives with our parents) has had with him over and over. Not everyone always makes rational decisions, after all.
Thank you. He’s gotten a lot better and stronger since his last fall (right before Christmas, in which he suffered a hairline fracture in his lower leg), but my sister and I have been gently trying to help both him and my mom realize that, even once he’s “better,” he’s still 88, and still may need some additional help that he didn’t used to need. Both of them truly want things to be “fine now,” and are struggling with coping with the fact that things aren’t going to be like they were five years ago.
This is what I’m planning on doing when my roommate moves out and I am once again living alone and need the peace of mind (and my kids need it about me). I had a monthly subscription emergency pendant when I first was home alone after my TBI and I got rid of it (and the monthly charge) after less than a year because it was so prone to false alarms which were very annoying to my contacts. They’d get phone calls in the middle of the night because I had rolled over in bed with the damn thing on.
An Apple Watch will be less intrusive and I’m far more likely to actually wear one 24/7. I’ll just snag a watch when one of my kids is upgrading.