Or “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up”
My Mom is 84 and lives alone. I’m going to get her something that can call for help. Currently, she tries to always carry a cell phone, but I don’t feel it’s enough.
Has anyone had any experience with these systems? Any recommendations?
Thanks
I am in the UK, so no recommendation, but my mother had one, a pendant that she hung round her neck, after her leg was amputated. She was in her 90s and lived alone. She got around fairly well, but if she fell, she was unable to get up. I think she only used it two or three times, but was most grateful for the assistance it bought her. Without it she might have been on the floor for many hours.
My mom and I like the 5 Star Urgent Response, particularly because it’s an “anywhere” system, not limited to her home. She’s still active and goes out a lot, but had a series of “mini-strokes” last year and lives alone, so we felt it was time for an alert system.
I like that I can go onto the website and track the location of the unit. Ostensibly, it’s to find wandering folks who might get lost and confused, but it’s come in handy for us when she calls and says she can’t find the unit and thinks maybe she left it at a restaurant or something. So far, I’ve been able to look it up and say, “Nope, it’s somewhere in your house or within 200 feet of it.” (She could do this herself, except the website intimidates her. And frankly, I kind of like knowing how often she’s losing the thing and getting confused about it; that lets me know important things about her inevitable Alzheimer’s decline and safety.)
I believe they also have a nurse’s line where you can call for medical advice that can’t wait until morning but may not be an actual emergency.
They also have a real time translation service, which if your loved one doesn’t speak the dominant language in her community, I highly recommend. If paramedics need to understand something important (eg, “I took my medicine but then I threw up”), she can push the button and they will find a translator for her. I haven’t used that service, so I don’t know how efficient it is, but it’s a great idea.
Make sure to get whatever you choose before she goes crackers with dementia or alzheimers - my mom slid into alzheimers and never ‘remembered’ to use her cane, or learn how to use her recliner and would have never remembered to hit the button. The only reason she remembered to take her meds was because our family has always been in the habit of setting out meds to be taken so she remembered to look by her coffee mug in the morning for her pills. Now she is in managed care and the staffing make sure she eats, bathes, dresses and takes her meds. [she fell for the second time and we deemed that it was wiser to put her into managed care instead of trying to get someone in to babysit her.
I guess we were lucky - my mother kept all her marbles right to the end. We took her out to lunch a few weeks before she died, and she sat beside me in the car directing me to a pub someone had recommended, down twisty country lanes to some village that none of us had ever been to before.
The lunch was great too:)
Moderator Action
Since the OP is asking for experiences and recommendations, this is more of an IMHO thing than a GQ thing.
Moving thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
I’ll second this advice. My Grandmother had fairly mild dementia, and she tended to forget to use her emergency device. That said, she did remember it at least once, but it took her a while - she had broken her hip and laid on the floor for 30-60 minutes or so before remembering to use it. So it was good she had it, but it’s not foolproof at all.
I think nowadays I would tend to do something like set up Internet cameras in her small apartment that I could use to check on her periodically. Once again, not foolproof, but at least someone could check on her every hour or so.
As an Emergency responder, we see these devices a lot. They are very effect for summoning help.
The ones i am familiar with, when the button is pushed a representative for that device (who may be over 1,000 miles away) tries to make voice contact with the person via a speaker phone in the home. Upon making contact the help requested will be called. If no contact is made via voice there is usually a list of people to call to make a welfare check of the person. If there is no contact with anyone on the list emergency services are called and they make a red lights visit. If everything is ok, emergency services returns to their base and here there are no charges at all.
Also if numerous calls are made and this person becomes a nuisance there may be charges for responding or social services is called.
When we as emergency services are on scene we will reset the device and many times the agency will ask questions about what the disposition will be and to where.
The one my mom has is supposed to be able to detect a fall and send a help call on its own. This is really important because it doesn’t rely on the person to have the wherewithal to press a button. It first tries to alert the wearer, but if the operators get no audible response from the speakerphone device, they call for help. We’ve had one false positive, and one where she fell and it didn’t call because she was wearing the pendant inside her shirt and the fall didn’t jolt it enough. Luckily, no other falls so far.
I like the webcamera idea, and the medicalert button that detects falls. You could combine them with cameras in the ‘public’ areas and the button for bathroom/uncameraed areas.
Also from the responder’s perspective, as a 9-1-1 operator…
I am surprised that a significant portion of the 9-1-1 calls we get related to these unit activations do not have any medical information on file with the alarm company.
In those cases all we get is that an ambulance is requested and the alert monitoring center has zero information about the patient or medical history.
IMHO, they should be able to provide age and sex of the patient and any major medical history particularly if the history may be a cause of unconsciousness (diabetes, TIA or stroke, cardiac history, etc…). If the patient has dementia then we would like to send police to stand by to assist the medics.
Very good point. I entered all that information - age, previous health history, recent multiple TIAs and her medication list, and I’m pretty sure even her primary doctor’s contact info - into a website when setting up my mother’s 5Star device. Whether the alert monitoring center can view it, I could not say. I hope they can. That’s why I entered it.
Bumping this, and want to say thanks for all the responses. Sorry I never replied. Got lost in the clutter that can be life.
My Wife and I will be getting mom one for Christmas (and will pay the monthly fees). We still haven’t picked out a provider. Most of them look pretty good. We have been looking at reviews. If anyone has had extra good/bad experiences, I’d love to still hear them.
We saw her over Thanksgiving, and she was talking about having me call/email her every day to make sure everything was OK. So, it’s time.
Good point to get it while she can understand it, get used to it and have it part of her daily routine.
I pay for a unit for my mother, and have been doing so for a couple of years.
It’s a Life Station and we’re very pleased with their responsiveness and the quality of the equipment. It’s easy to set up. The Life Station alarm company has the password to a key lock device hanging on her door, in case she can’t get to it to open it. Responders won’t have to break the door down.
She wears a little plastic square button on a soft cord necklace. It’s waterproof, so she can wear it in the shower. She tests the unit once a month, and it’s surprisingly sensitive, It can hear her when she’s at the opposite end of the house.
It’s a free unit, with a $29.95 monthly fee. Well worth it.
I must add that we did have a different setup previously, but their call center was not in the US and my mother (who has moderate hearing loss) could not understand the accents of the people she interacted with. Life Station is based in New Jersey and the only “accent” is the occasional Jersey Shore sound-alike. (And I say that in the most loving way)
I want to stress again that I feel it’s of the utmost importance to get a pendant that senses a fall all on its own and doesn’t rely on the wearer having to push the button to summon help. In many falls, there’s mental disorientation or even loss of consciousness from the fall (indeed, it could be the reason for the fall itself). Relying on the wearer having the wherewithal to push the button is nonsensical. My mother was found on the floor without even remembering how she’d gotten there, not knowing how long she’d been down, and not even realizing that she had fallen (multi-infarct dementia).
I like the idea too. But… My Mom (and I) are worried about false alarms. I’ve read that 90% of the users of those systems get a false alarm every month.
The fall sensing ones are great in theory, but yes, they do false alarm quite often, and most of my patients who have tried those systems end up unhappy with them and either switching or refusing to use an alert system at all. I think within a few years, we’ll have better technology that can better sense a true fall from a person bending over to reach something under the sink and whacking the device on the cabinet. Then I’ll recommend them, because it really is a great idea.
Something I thought was very interesting is that the senior living place my parents moved into, which is VERY nice, has a motion sensor in every apartment and cottage (they have a new cottage), I believe usually in the kitchen? Anyway, if it doesn’t sense you moving around in there for more than a day somebody comes by and checks on you. (I assume you have to tell them if you’re going out of town.) I don’t know if there’s such a thing for independent living elderly people but I like the idea.
My mom had only 1 false alarm in a year. When it happens, all you do is call over to the speakerphone operator that you’re fine. I’d rather have false alarms than no alarm when the person is not in a position to push the button.
I have a LifeLine pendant that is paid for by Medicare/aid… They call every 30 days for me to press my “Panic Button” so they can be sure it’s working properly. I haven’t had to use it for real yet,but I’m alone 90% of the time,so it makes me feel safer.