Kevin Potts has worked in senior living for more than two decades. Today, he serves as Executive Director of The Wellington at North Bend Crossing in Cincinnati, Ohio, which is a Sonida senior living community.
In January, Sage went live at The Wellington. We gave Kevin a call to hear how implementing Sage has changed things at his senior living community.
The biggest issue when it came to risk management was getting the details that we needed regarding the nurse calls. With our old nurse call system, we could see that someone had pressed their button for help, and we could see that it was responded to, but that's it. So, I could look at Jane Doe and see that she had 37 pendant calls last month, or that John Doe had 150, but I never knew what they were for. Knowing what the person needed and helping take that information and apply it to level-of-care assessments was non-existent.
Risk management was very tough. A lot of times, we were acting retroactively on data that we got in our monthly review a month after it had happened. So it was taking us 60 days, sometimes 90 days, to correct an issue that we did identify because we didn't know all the information. That was pre-Sage.
Now, with Sage, one of the nice things is that, every day, we can go in and look at a resident that is a safety concern — because they've had a couple recent falls, or a medication change, a blood pressure change — and see the number of calls. We can see the details of what the caregiver helped them with, which is a huge, huge difference.
An issue I used to have pre-Sage was when a family would call me and say, “We were here this weekend and it took too long for a call to get answered,” or, “Mom isn’t getting the help she needs,” or “Mom was agitated.” I used to have to say, “Okay, let me get some information. Let me give you a call back.” Then, I’d go to the computer and run a report on that person, which took 10 or 15 minutes. Then I’d get with the nursing staff and try to find who was on shift, and then get a hold of them and ask them questions.
Six hours of work later, I could give the family a call back just to say, “I'm sorry. Here's what we're going to do to fix it.” Now, I can go into Hex, and within five minutes, while I'm on the phone with them, I can pull up the information.
I can say, “Here's what happened this weekend. It looks like Mom had to use the toilet more times than usual. We know she's got a UTI. That's probably part of the agitation and confusion.” It's so much nicer to actually have an educated conversation with the family and have the data right there. It helps me provide better customer service back to families. I'm able to actually speak intelligently regarding their loved one. I can see all the information.
For the nursing staff, it's helpful because we now are using Sage when we look at our level-of-care assessments. When my Director of Nursing goes in on a quarterly or biannual basis depending on the person's needs, they're able to pull these reports and see that X number of pushes were for assistance with toileting, or this many were erroneous, or this many were for meal trades. With Sage, right away they can see: are we providing the right level of care? Do we need to increase our level of care? Is there something we're missing with the individual?
One instance we've had: a person who is pushing their pendant a lot, and when we go in, it's just because they want someone to be there with them, because they're confused or disoriented. With our old system, we would have just seen that this person is pushing their pendant 300 times this month. We wouldn't know what was going on. Now, we're getting more detail, and we're able to talk to the family and say, “Hey, we may need to get a private sitter in here,” or “Maybe you guys should come hang out with him during the day, because that helps reduce that agitation and confusion and improves quality of life.”
The documentation that Sage provides directly helps with the level of care.
From a staff management aspect, if I have staff complaining that other people aren't doing the work, I'm able to see who's answering the calls and what they're doing and how long they're spending in the rooms and more.That helps me identify the people not doing their job. But one thing that's nice is that it also allows me to give praise to the people who did a great job.
The old nurse call system literally was just an alert. Sage does so much more for us.
