My mom has a medAlert pendant. She’s used it three times. Mom is moving to a house close to me. Her current medAlert company doesn’t offer service in my area.
I see ADT offers MedAlert for $40 a month. We had planed on using their security alarm system.
Baptist Health (has several hospitals in my area) offer Medalert for $40 a month. I’m not sure if the hospital runs the program or if they contract with sonebody.
Using a system associated with a hospital is appealing.
ADT is a national company and they handle more calls. They are more experienced.
No one has looked into MedAlert for a family member?
I plan to contact Baptist Health first and find out whether their program is staffed and run locally.
ADT’s MedAlert is probably run at a national level. The people who answer calls may be a thousand miles away. That may be fine if they provide good service. It’s the person’s communication skills that can reassure a eldery person needing assistance.
Don’t buy Philips Lifeline. My mother had one, and lost the pendant. They replaced it, then she found the old one, and used them interchangeably. Then she fell and broke her wrist and tried to use the old pendant, which failed to work. Philips neglected to tell her the old one had been deactivated when she reported it missing. She lay on the floor for four hours until her gardener heard her screaming.
I’ve been reading. Baptist MedAlert and Home Health services are integrated. MedAlert has some medical information and that helps provide personalized service. Especially if the patient is receiving Baptist Home Health services
That seems nore beneficial than an Alert system that makes an emergency call on the client’s behalf.
Looked into it for my mother, but decided to put it off for a few years. The pendant seemed so annoying that we didn’t think she would wear it outside, or that it would work reliably when she was out in the garden or barns.
Eventually got one a few years later, when her health had deteriorated. (And equipment had improved.) Still seemed to be a lot of false alarms. Doing anything strenuous, like kneading bread, etc. would trigger it. And the base station was not in the kitchen, so she wouldn’t hear it when they called. (If she did hear, she’d get into a 20-minute conversation with the operator.)
Frankly, a cell phone on a pendant would have been much cheaper, and more functional.
My mom isn’t as active. Walking to the bathroom is difficult.
She really should move to a condo in an Assisted Living community. But, for now a house near family is the next best choice. At least she won’t be a two hour drive away.
I hope we can delay a nursing home for as long as possible. She’s changed a lot in only two years.
From the perspective of someone who receives the 9-1-1 call from the alarm company…
The single most critical part of the process that is routinely neglected is providing some basic medical information to the alarm company. We get calls where all the alarm company can say is that an ambulance is needed at a particular address. Nothing more. Every company has such faults on certain accounts.
You really should provide the alarm company with an ACCURATE ADDRESS, name, age (d.o.b.), sex, and medical history of significant health conditions* for any loved one getting an alarm. This is the info we provide to the ambulance and at least lets them have a little bit background to go on.
*Any history of cardiac or respiratory conditions or surgeries, stroke, diabetes, falls and related fractures, drug allergies, epilepsy, or major neurological conditions. Also advise if patient is significantly obese so much so that additional assistance lifting the patient may be needed.
Did I mention we need an ACCURATE ADDRESS?! With a basic description of the property would be nice. Across from where ol’ Jimmy Potter used to live before the mill closed is NOT a good address. At 1403 Jones Ave in Littleville; it’s a two-story yellow wooden structure with a line of three pine trees along the side of the driveway IS a great address.
If you are already planning on having an alarm system installed at the house, it will most likely have wireless capability. (Most new residential alarm systems now use wireless door transmitters, motion detectors, and other devices.) Therefore, it will already have the basic capability to handle wireless medical alert/personal assistance devices that you describe.
Adding a transmitter like that to a wireless system is very inexpensive FOR THE INSTALLER. Be careful that you don’t fall for the idea that it should cost you another $40/month just to provide the additional medical alert function. It also adds nothing (really) to the cost or complexity of the overall alarm monitoring. Many companies will literally add it on as a free bonus if you seem reluctant to sign up for a 36-month monitoring contract.
A couple months ago my mother needed a new phone and she bought a Jitterbug flip phone at the drug store. The package said “Plans starting at $14.95 a month.” While trying to set it up for her online I was amazed at how many extras there are to choose from, scrolling through pages of add-ons – the big red Emergency button is $19.95 a month, many items were $4.00 a month, I think the “Talk to a doctor” feature was also $19.95 a month. I got bored with scrolling the list of available extras and just clicked on the basic phone only plan.
After I entered all her info I clicked on the “Activate Phone” button and got a big “Cannot be completed online. Please call 800-xxx-xxxx”
The girl who answered the phone went a long rapid spiel that I couldn’t understand. After asking her to repeat it a few times I finally got that activation was not free but would cost $35 … because I wasn’t doing it online.
She then went on another rapid spiel, talking so fast I couldn’t understand her, only vaguely hearing about more additional charges. I said “You are talking so fast I can’t understand your questions.” She came back with “If … I … talk … like … this … can … you … understand?” spacing out each word extremely slowly and with the snottiest tone and attitude I have ever heard from a customer service rep.
I hung up and returned the Jitterbug – no interest in doing business with a company with reps like that.
I ended up getting Mom a Doro flip phone from Consumer Cellular. It has a button on the outside of the phone you can set up to dial a number in an emergency – not an emergency service kind of thing but can dial a friend / relative / neighbor. The customer service rep at Consumer Cellular was great, the phone works very well, and no surprise extra charges.
Another 9-1-1 dispatcher here. Iggy is spot on, but I would like to add one other thing. Emergency access into the house. Contact your local FD/EMS and see if they use a lock box system called “Knox Box” ( www.knoxbox.com). That is a pretty common one, but there are several others out there too and the FD/EMS may have a preferred company they use or have a community program that will get a lock box cheaper than retail. Either way, the alternative is Mom falls, the door is locked and they have to force their way into the house to render aid. A new exterior door can run $300+. I have a Knox Box on my house that I purchased for around $100. It’s a heck of a lot cheaper than a new door. I don’t have health problems and I still considered it a sound investment.
How are these things not a massive security hole? Open the box, and now you have access to the building.
I assume there’s a master key that opens Knox Boxes, otherwise the FD has dozens and dozens of keys to sort through to find the right one for your address. So why can’t I buy a KnoxBox, decode the master key, and suddenly have access to any building with a box?
KnoxBox does have a master key setup and that is a potential weakness. No idea if or how they might control the distribution of master keys.
There are several similar options, such as those used by realtors, that use some sort of combination lock. The combination can be stored with your medical alert company and/or the local 9-1-1 centre. The same goes for gate codes to individual residences, private roads, or gated neighborhoods.
If you aren’t going to trust that information to 9-1-1 or your alarm company then there might not be much we can do to help in certain situations… at least not without breaking things to gain entry.
And BTW, keep your alarm company or 9-1-1 updated if you change the combination. Please.
Knox boxes are heavy duty steel boxes that can be installed in various ways to a building. I have seen them built into brick columns, bolted to walls and everything in between. The local fire department usually sets up an account with the Knox box company which allows people in their area to get a box keyed to the FD’s keys. Whomever sets the account up is the only person that will ever be given keys for that area. The keys are proprietary to knox box and are quite unique. I’m sure someone savvy could duplicate it if they tried hard enough, but obtaining a key to compare would be extremely difficult.
Every FD is different, but these keys are always kept in a secure location. My department has a password protected box and each firefighter has their own unique code to get the key out, while the key is out, there is a bright strobe light that will flash until the key is replaced. As an extra security measure, any time someone removes the key from the secure box, it must be on a call and dispatch has to be notified to log the key being out. We run a report every month that shows who took the key out, what time it came out and what time it was replaced. This report is checked against the report from dispatch. Any inconsistencies are investigated quickly. To date, the only times the key was taken out not on a call, it was while training a new person and the key was out for less than 10 seconds.
If you have a door code, some 911 centers can set up what’s called a “location alert” or “premise alert” and put that door code into CAD, which can then be relayed to responders if a call comes in for that address. The hard part here is to remember to call and change that alert if you change the code.
And as a security tip… your code to provide emergency responders access to a gate or door should probably not be 0911. Really. That is like using 1234 as your ATM card code or PASSWORD as your email password. Just pick 4 random digits.
The box on some trucks can only be opened by a radioed signal from the dispatch console. This automatically logs time the box is opened, elapsed time before the key was replaced, the specific call or training session.
May I add a plea NOT to rely on a cell phone for emergency assistance? Mom was on Lifeline. When we moved her into an independent living facility, she argued she wouldn’t need the pendant any longer because A) There was an emergency button in the bathroom and B) she’d have her phone with her. Phones are not worn; they’re carried. Mom fell in the bathroom and couldn’t reach the emergency button. She did not have her phone on her. Had she not had her pendant, she would have been stuck on the bathroom floor for a lot longer than she was.
What about alerts when you’re away from home (I’ve seen this advertised lately)? What do these systems have that the other ones don’t, if anything?
My father couldn’t walk well in the last few years of his life, but he could navigate around the sidewalks and into stores on his Segway pretty well. But in the last few months he fell off of it a few times. He was never hurt (tough old bird) but he just didn’t have the strength to get himself off the ground. So he relied on his cell phone, which he carried in his shirt pocket, to call 911. If he’d had osteoporosis he might not have been so lucky, and might have needed one of these away-from-home alert systems.