Despite their success at keeping seniors safe during the pandemic, PACE (Program for All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly) across the country continues to struggle with staffing shortages, limited day center capacity, and burnout. These “day-in and day-out” issues are commonplace in an increasingly popular model of care that enables skilled nursing eligible individuals to continue to live within their community as long as possible. Growing pains of PACE programs, coupled with enduring pandemic issues, require creative solutions to effectively and efficiently care for their participants. WalkWise continuously grows with PACE across the country because it mitigates care provider challenges in compelling ways.
Just one way WalkWise helps save time…
Even before the pandemic, the lack of constant “eyes on” was a challenge for programs. Now that nurses and therapists are running all over town delivering more home-based care, there’s even less time to make a phone call and check in with participants.
Imagine being able to check in on them with a glance! Many programs use the WalkWise Dashboard in the morning to make sure participants are out of bed and that nothing unexpected happened during the night. Instead of checking in with each participant, they can focus on the ones that may need more attention that day.
Plus, if you know someone is up and moving around, you’ll have a lower chance of missing them on the phone or showing up during a nap!
PACE knows to expect the unexpected!
When disaster strikes, it’s great to have a quick way to check on many participants at once, as shown in this example from a program this summer:
We have been using WalkWise for about 3 months. Recently, it became a tool for us to use in an unexpected way! We had a city-wide power outage and had a group of staff that were meeting to determine which participants we needed to call/check in on. After making calls, there were some participants we weren’t able to get ahold of and were unsure if they were okay or if they had power. I pulled up the WalkWise dashboard and was able to see recent activity and recent “check-ins” with the cellular nodes. Some of the participants we couldn’t get ahold of were showing recent activity and node check ins, so we knew they had power and were doing okay! I have loved WalkWise from day one and this was another example of how we could use it to make sure our participants were safe during a city-wide power outage!
Rehab Services Supervisor, Immanuel Pathways Eastern Nebraska PACE
The PACE model of care serves a vulnerable and costly population with demonstrated efficacy. PACE is an important component in cost-effective long-term care options that offer the elderly and their caregivers access to high-quality care. A critical step in continuing the success of PACE is for care providers to have the necessary tools to save time and focus on priorities. WalkWise is proud to be one of these solutions!