Two events occurred last week that should interest operators of retirement villages.
Grant Corderoy gave a private presentation to the board of a leading operator on the ‘state of the nation’ of aged care.
His StewartBrown benchmark surveys had identified that across Australia the average age for home care recipients is 84, seniors accommodation (villages) is also 84, and residential aged care is 85.
Home care and village residents the same age. And one year off the average for residential aged care.
This is a surprise perhaps for many operators, still believing the average village age is around 81.
Whatever the case, village residents are getting older and therefore frailer. Increasingly it is difficult for village operators to state that residents are ‘independent’ and therefore the operator does not have a ‘duty of care’.
Operators are now being called before Coroners (as well as the media) to discuss their role when deaths occur, particularly if they are undiscovered. Was there time to intervene before the death?
The second event last week was the launch at the ITAC conference in Adelaide of a new service for village operators by AbiBird.
It works on the KISS principle for movement detector. AbiBird can provide one of their battery driven movement detectors in a village unit (e.g. place it on a bookshelf). You choose a simple activity setting like ‘night’, ‘day’, ‘inactive resident’, ‘active resident’ etc, and the device will send an email to the Manager or the village office if the activity pattern changes significantly.
Set and forget. There are additional options like SMS messages to family mobile phones as well.
The investment is $10 per month per unit to address ‘duty of care’.
The AbiBird offer is simple. There is no Internet, no NBN, no redundancy fears, no complex set up. It works out-of-the-box with the 4AA batteries lasting 12 months. And it’s an Australian invention that is now breaking into European markets.
To receive more information email James Tucker at AbiBird at jamesT@abibird.com.au
