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Jan. 11, 2022

Nursing Home Communication

Despite the importance of quick and seamless communication in senior care, the industry is woefully behind in its technology adaptation.

Terry Wall, founder senior-care-centric communication platform Carefeed, explains how his company is innovating a space that's not known to be so innovative.

Fast and efficient communication is vital in senior care, and may often be the difference between life or death.

Even disregarding such dire medical circumstances, a typical facility must constantly interface with numerous parties including residents, their families, employees, and external vendors at all times.

Needless to say, without adequate methods in place to streamline all these fractured lines of interaction, accidents are bound to happen. 

Unfortunately, most senior care facilities still use antiquated means of communication.

Terry has spent his whole career modernizing antiquated processes. With Carefeed, he created an all-in-one system that can bring the communication methods of any facility up to speed. 

The platform provides the most up-to-date technologies for every type of interaction that typically occurs in a facility.

Carefeed identifies and addresses all of the outdated, redundant, and faulty communication methods currently in use by a facility, automating and digitizing them. 

Because of its all-inclusive approach, Carefeed is known as the central place for seamless communication and engagement with residents, family, and staff.

FOLLOW TERRY AND CAREFEED

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Transcript

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Essentially what we do is we digitize and

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automate a lot of the antiquated processes. You know,

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think paper, admission agreements, printed welcome packet folders,

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safety notations, and then we seamlessly distribute that via text, email,

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or voicemail. We like to say we are the central place

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for seamless communication with residents, family, and staff.

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Welcome to the nursing home podcast. Your goto

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source for professional insights in the long term care industry.

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Hear from leaders and experts as they share current and practical

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insights to help make the most of your day. I'm the long term care

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financial specialist. What that means is I help people plan for the

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inevitable. Nobody wants to think about getting old, but it's possible

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that someday we might need a little bit of care. Here's your host. Nursing home

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Administrator Turnpodcaster Schmoel, Septimash.

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Welcome to another live recording

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of The Nursing Home Podcast, the only podcast

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that you need to know what's really going on in

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the nursing home industry. This is such a complex

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industry. This is an industry which is slaughtered and

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beaten and dragged through the mud in the media and coffee shops

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and everywhere in social media because of the misunderstanding

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of what's going on in the facilities. The goal of the

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show is to dispel the murkiness and the

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blurringess and to really help operators understand

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how to best manage their facilities while

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at the same time educating the bystanders.

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In today's episode of the Nursing Home Podcast,

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I'm really happy to introduce the CEO

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and founder of a very innovative company called Carefeed,

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which we will talk about a little bit later in the show today,

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Terry Wall. Terry. Welcome to the nursing home podcast. Thank you.

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Schmell. Terry Wall, founder of Care

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Feed. Really honored to be here. Thanks for having me. Congrats on

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the podcast too. It's great. Thank you so much. I appreciate that.

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I'm actually curious how you discovered the podcast. I know you guys reached out

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directly from it. I'm a big believer in

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being productive, so podcasts are a great way to learn

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whether you're commuting or running or whatever.

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So big believer in podcasts. I just love how you're straight to

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the point. It's cut through the murkiness like you mentioned and just tell it how

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it really is. And so it's great. So we've been a follower.

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Awesome. I appreciate your support. So our audience

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doesn't know who you are yet, and I'm getting to know who you are right

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now. If you don't mind sharing with us the brief professional

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background of what brought you from your career to what you're

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doing today. Yeah, perfect.

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My whole career has really been transforming print to digital.

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So last ten years, prior to Care Feed,

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I worked for the leading patient engagement

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kind of patient technology patient really provider facing

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technology. And so I just saw the cool

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products that the ambulatory space was getting, you know,

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physician offices, for example, instead of those like,

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anatomical posters, now they're iPads.

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3d Anatomicals versus the poster saw the

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cool products in the sub acute space hospitals but I felt like

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this care setting of all the care settings there

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were some antiquated processes and felt like we could help. Awesome.

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So first of all, I just want a little shout out to those who are

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watching us live on Facebook and those are watching us live on

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LinkedIn. I don't know why my son thinks it's LinkedIn and not LinkedIn,

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all that aside. So you're the guy who is innovating

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a very space that's not known to be so innovative.

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I know one of my earlier projects as administrative training was

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going to EHR to get electronic health records and the pushback

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is tremendous. And I don't know exactly why

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it is that people feel that we need to continue working with antiquated

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tools even though technology has exploded and continues to exploit every

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single day. But kudos to you that you're

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doing what you're doing in this industry and that is really amazing.

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So let's talk about the problem,

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the problem on a high level and I

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want to hear from you as well. But the overall problem that

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we're addressing today in this episode is communication.

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And we all know that communication is everything and

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many challenges in all areas professionally,

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personally, we can trace to a breakdown

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in communication. And if I knew what you knew when I

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needed to know it and you knew what I knew when you needed to know

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it, lots of times we could have avoided unpleasant situations

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and problems, challenges could be avoided,

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little soapbox. But now, all that aside,

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within a nursing home there are so many different parties. So tell

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me how you've seen this problem,

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where you've seen the problem the most and what has been the impetus

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for you to get involved on this level?

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Well, I started carefully before COVID

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and I think that's what really exasperated the

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problem of communication was COVID.

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As you know, COVID adversely affected or disproportionately

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affected senior communities more than obviously

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they're the most vulnerable population, obviously.

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So the spotlight and

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attention was all on the senior communities as staff

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had to navigate a barrage of ever changing,

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confusing, conflicting regulations,

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updates, guidelines from all these local,

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state, federal entities and communicating

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without every piece of the puzzle obviously difficult.

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So communicating with residents,

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communicating with families, communicating with staff, communicating with

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referral sources and that timely of information

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and being transparent when you don't have all the information. Not easy,

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not easy to do. And yeah, sure, all these senior communities had

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emergency action plans for whether it was like a

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disaster or something like that, but nobody was

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prepared for the scale and size and scope. I mean,

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we're approaching two years of this pandemic and it's

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not easy, the staff at these senior communities, it's not easy.

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I mean in fact, just recently, like within the last month, a CEO told

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me they looked at their phone bill and 2000

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of the 3000 calls were unanswered. You know,

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so I think it was really the COVID that when the families couldn't

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visit, that's when it was like, hey, we need communication. That's where

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the problem was really exasperated.

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Okay, so first of all, thanks for the very full and complete

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answer. And your point is so true.

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When we talk about disaster response,

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emergency response, anything that requires a

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timely response. Specifically. Obviously in nursing homes

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there's a binder, big Red binder and all the nurses station that says emergency

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preparedness. And you can flip to the fire page, you can

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flip to the active shooter page, you can flip to any other page.

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How practical is that in real time? It's a great tool

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for education if it's used. And some people do

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a great job at using them for education. I actually once did an

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active shooter training in the building where I was the administrator

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and our book said Code Black, I think, or something like that.

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And Code Black means guy with a gun in the building.

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So when the local police department was looking

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through it and they were actually in the building doing all sorts of simulations,

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they said, no, don't do that. He said, when there's a guy with a gun

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in the building, you just announced guy with a gun in the building,

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run. Do you think he said don't code Bobby.

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It's a secret from the guy. When Department of Public Health is in the

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building, you know, people have codes. You know,

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Dr, you know, Goldstein line one. And everybody knows DPH is

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here. That can work. But the guy would have gone to the building.

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He doesn't care if everybody knows. But the point is,

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lots of the tools and it's not specific

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to emergency preparedness but lots of the tools

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are done in a very antiquated way,

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which they were the best way that things could be done before

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technology has evolved to where it is today.

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And many times because it works, it ain't broke. And like you said,

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there's so many other pressing needs.

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So we kind of leave things the way that they are and

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don't innovate to the level that we

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should be innovating to make a great point.

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Because first off, how you communicate is amazing,

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trust me. Because we have almost a million messages that have been sent through Care

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feed. And I see some messages good, some messages like I don't

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know if I'd say it like that. So the way how you communicate it to

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that police officer's point is a good point. And then

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the other thing I would say is what also exasperated this is

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a lot of times they'd even have the contact information.

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I think that was really big during COVID They were like holy cow in the

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EMR or EHR we don't even have the families contact email

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or in staff. I mean, this is on the Go workforce.

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They're not sitting at laptops, so they don't have all have company emails like

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other industries. So having all the employees contact information,

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having all the POAs, those family members

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contacts, that was alarming.

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I think people realize, like, wow, we don't even have all these to

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even send them this. So we have a message. We don't even have that.

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So I think that was a big piece of it, too.

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Yeah, a couple of things come to mind, but one thing I just shared

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briefly, an incident which I witnessed actually firsthand of

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somebody who was coding, meaning they needed CPR,

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and it was a question of what their status was.

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Is there someone who wants that? Are they a DNR

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or not? Do not resuscitate. And when

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in doubt, they had to do what they had to do.

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But it was besides for the actual medical crisis,

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the additional crisis was, who is the healthcare proxy?

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How do we get through to that person? What is their phone number? Like this

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type of critical data, it wasn't just letting them know when the holiday

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party is going to be in this drop off, their gifts. This is literally life

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or death. And that

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can be a very serious issue. But just to drill down a

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little bit, there's really three types of communication that

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are happening within a nursing home you're welcome to this

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Week. I'm just thinking now, number one is this communication between the facility

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and the families, and letting the families know there's a changing condition.

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And usually if you're lucky, you have a unit secretary or a nurse if they

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remember the call, that itself is

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a big deal. A family member gets sent out to the hospital, and you don't

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let the person know who you were supposed to let know, or sometimes,

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even worse, you let the wrong person know they weren't supposed to know.

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That's the problem. There's also communication between the facility and

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the staff, which is usually that information. If it's done

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correctly, then HR person has that not just different types of communication, but also

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held and managed completely differently. And that's why it's very fragmented

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and segregated. So the HR person, the business office manager,

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who's there only typically during business hours, is the

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one who has all the employee information and relationships and phone

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numbers and knows that Jenna on Tuesdays,

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you call her at the other number and all those other things,

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if it's documented anywhere. But that's usually the person who would know

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in the basement or upstairs, on the third floor, in the back room, or wherever

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it is. Right. That's typically the information, the information about the

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residence. Yeah, a lot of it could be in public

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care or whatever HR you're using. Then there's also information,

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the family's information, I'm sorry, the external

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vendors that you're working with, whether it's the hospitals, whether it's other community

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resources, and those things also can be in either system.

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But many times they don't talk to each other. And I think that

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even with the tools that we do have, that's still something which can be a

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problem and add to that a crisis.

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I hate keeping using COVID.

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Let's talk about a fire in the building. And you have to let everybody know

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that they're okay, or unfortunately, to let them know that some people are not

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okay, or let them know that we evacuated the building. Or we had a more

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simple thing. We moved someone from one room to another room because of this

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reason. Simple things like that to be able to have that

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done in a better way.

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First of all, does that make sense to you? Are there other areas?

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Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right. Family. We always say

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residents, family, staff, and referral sources. Those four,

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and I think you got it hitting on that.

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There residents, family, staff, and referral sources. Okay, so fine.

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That's pretty much the same thing. So now what are

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some tools or some systems that a

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nursing home can implement today which can help

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streamline some of this communication? I'm sure before you

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created your own solution, you did your market research or maybe you

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talk to clients. What are some things that someone can

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implement today? I want to come out of this podcast on my lunch break.

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Maybe still have that take care

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feed out of it. I'll tell you what I find is a

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lot of the communities are calling. They're just manual. Like,

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you call these ten, you call these ten. You call these ten. Or, hey,

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I'm calling, and they call the families. I've had

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communities that mail letters. They're mailing letters,

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weekly updates, or even certified mailers

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to make sure to ensure receipts that they received it.

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Certified mailer is the recipient has to sign it,

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and that's like $7. I'm like, oh, my gosh, you're doing certified

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mailings faxing. I mean, believe it or not, people are

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still faxing. I get that. Hey, can you fax that? To me? It's like,

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wow, what is the facts? Exactly?

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And then there's the school kids, the Robocallers,

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that people can implement that, because I don't think the need

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for mass communication was as big. So there's like, the Robocallers,

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there the updating your Facebook page, updating your website,

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just providing information to all the audiences that

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you mentioned there. Those are other things you can do. I mean, there's WhatsApp

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there are different things you can set up to communicate with

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employees and things like that. It's not easy because,

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as you mentioned, it's fragmented. Some employees are on the shift

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app, some employees aren't. Some audiences

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use this EHR, this hospital uses this communication

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platform. These referral sources are churches

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and home health companies and hospice companies. They do it

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differently than a discharge

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from a hospital and things like that.

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It's fragmented. It's not easy with everything else the staff has going on.

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As you know, the staffing is a real issue.

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So anything that's going to make their lives easier is like top priority

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because they do not have it easy right now. You mentioned that

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nursing communities are under a lot of scrutiny.

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I heard something recently that they said they're the most regulated.

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I think it's like nuclear power plants and then long

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term care kind of nursing. I didn't verify that, but this is what yes,

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that's what I heard. I don't know if that's verify that definitely feels that

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way.

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Just with the staff, everything they've been through.

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I mean, I was just in a community recently. We were based in Ohio

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and this was in northern Ohio. That the community. And like Cedar Point,

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everybody knows Cedar Point is like roller coasters and things like that. I mean,

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they're offering thousand dollars sign on bonuses, $20 an hour

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to clean rooms at Cedar Point. And this is what the staff is competing

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with at a senior community right down the street.

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The staff putting their literally lives at risk,

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right. Fear of the unknown with this invisible enemy that they're dealing

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with. There's a lot of people leaving.

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So any tools you can provide to make their lives easier I think is

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absolutely critical right now. Right. This is an obvious

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opportunity for a shameless plug for quality recruit, which I'm

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going to take the opportunity to do this, which is the recruiting company

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which I manage. What's the name of quality recruit?

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You got a quality recruit. But if people need help

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with this very problem, this is exactly what we do. Like I told everybody,

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we don't have the magic bullet to create people that don't exist,

18:00.027 --> 18:03.642
but we help and support the facilities recruitment efforts.

18:03.702 --> 18:07.192
They can be as successful as they can be moving

18:07.240 --> 18:10.325
right along. Yeah, so census is down, obviously.

18:10.837 --> 18:14.277
And so obviously expenses have to go down if the census

18:14.307 --> 18:18.757
is down and it puts them in a difficult

18:18.835 --> 18:21.727
predicament. So any tools that make it easier. But then I feel like at the

18:21.745 --> 18:25.342
same time you have these family expectations that

18:25.390 --> 18:28.612
have evolved and grown because of everything

18:28.675 --> 18:33.162
that's been going on. And even employee expectations

18:33.312 --> 18:36.652
are higher now, as you can

18:36.670 --> 18:39.472
see all over the media today. Right.

18:39.580 --> 18:43.712
So at the same time we have staffing

18:44.512 --> 18:48.962
shortages or that kind of workplace

18:49.387 --> 18:53.227
difficulty. You got to have like raising expectations to

18:53.245 --> 18:56.525
make it easier to communicate is just,

18:56.962 --> 19:00.442
it's crucial to the trust and that

19:00.490 --> 19:04.207
transparency and your brand to be able to

19:04.285 --> 19:07.627
be marketable and get the referrals and things like

19:07.645 --> 19:11.227
that. Really important. Amazing. This is

19:11.245 --> 19:14.997
definitely very true. And like I said, there certainly are many tools

19:15.042 --> 19:19.002
out there WhatsApp can be very helpful for internal communications

19:19.107 --> 19:22.342
and for those who are busy with that app. You probably have a million different

19:22.390 --> 19:25.852
groups already with different parts of your life. You have the

19:25.870 --> 19:29.832
option of separating business WhatsApp and personal WhatsApp with two different apps,

19:29.922 --> 19:33.547
not just different groups. So that can help a little bit. That's also good for

19:33.580 --> 19:36.747
timely communication, even simple texting groups.

19:36.792 --> 19:40.537
And even if your old fashioned email groups are all effective ways

19:40.600 --> 19:44.197
of communicating and separately, they can each help

19:44.230 --> 19:47.525
resolve the issue, meaning that they can help.

19:48.037 --> 19:51.112
You can have an email group to the families, you can have a Facebook group.

19:51.175 --> 19:54.877
The main thing is not the tool, I'll talk about

19:54.895 --> 19:58.257
a different tool in a minute, but the truth is actually it applies

19:58.272 --> 20:03.952
to everything and any tool that you use. And if

20:03.970 --> 20:07.602
you've had the opportunity to implement tools in your business, you'll know that it's

20:07.632 --> 20:10.957
true. It's true that there are differences in

20:10.960 --> 20:13.882
the tools that you use and we'll get to that in a minute. But at

20:13.885 --> 20:17.317
the end of the day, whatever tool you choose you've got

20:17.515 --> 20:21.862
with that tool, use it the way it was designed to be used and

20:21.925 --> 20:25.372
let everybody know that this is the tool. Like for example, when we were going

20:25.405 --> 20:28.912
to electronic health records, even not even before that.

20:28.975 --> 20:31.902
It's just harder to cheat these days. If it's not documented,

20:31.932 --> 20:35.292
it didn't happen, right? And if it's not documented

20:35.352 --> 20:39.267
here in this way in a very precise

20:39.402 --> 20:43.482
system, so it didn't happen. So the same thing if our communication

20:43.647 --> 20:47.352
internally is through WhatsApp? So if you didn't put it there, then it didn't

20:47.382 --> 20:50.407
happen. If you did put it there, then there's a responsibility for whoever needs to

20:50.410 --> 20:53.872
know about it, you know that this is what happened. And with these

20:53.905 --> 20:57.277
changing, ever changing regulations, that's what makes it

20:57.295 --> 21:01.467
cumbersome to the staff when they have to duplicate processes

21:01.527 --> 21:05.277
like, okay, so we called everybody, now we have to chart

21:05.307 --> 21:08.812
it in the EHR. So it's like duplicative and

21:08.875 --> 21:12.672
you know, cumbersome and back to just need to make the staff slide

21:12.717 --> 21:16.342
easier. That is the most important

21:16.390 --> 21:19.567
thing right now. So let's talk about Care

21:19.615 --> 21:22.972
feed. So you created Care feed. Tell us a little bit of what it

21:23.005 --> 21:26.017
does and how it further helps solve this problem.

21:26.215 --> 21:29.562
Yeah, so we have four core solutions. Communication,

21:29.712 --> 21:33.432
obviously, so we have templates for clinical

21:33.522 --> 21:36.772
and non clinicals communications. So we can

21:36.805 --> 21:40.672
seamlessly send, broadcast or secure one on one

21:40.705 --> 21:44.012
messages. We can do text, email, voicemail,

21:44.512 --> 21:48.442
we can automate communications. So based on

21:48.490 --> 21:52.057
ADT triggers and in your EHR, all our communications can

21:52.060 --> 21:55.897
be automatically translated, by the way, in like 109 languages and

21:55.930 --> 21:59.512
they're automatically charted. So if you do send that message to

21:59.575 --> 22:03.147
families, it automatically will chart and PCC,

22:03.267 --> 22:06.532
Matrix, Care, etc. Or but then you could automate some of

22:06.535 --> 22:10.197
these messages like, okay, someone's admitted here's the essential next steps,

22:10.242 --> 22:14.017
or here's the facts about your stay and what to bring and things

22:14.065 --> 22:17.377
like that. So automation and the

22:17.395 --> 22:20.667
kind of the communication we do calendar, so automating

22:20.727 --> 22:23.637
communication with care, conference scheduling,

22:23.787 --> 22:27.742
visitation, offsite, doctor's appointment, all different

22:27.790 --> 22:31.850
types of things like that. Communicating with staff. So of course,

22:32.212 --> 22:35.900
digitizing in service is big. Sending videos.

22:36.337 --> 22:40.252
These communities are bringing in employees on their off days

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to have minimum to watch a zoom, sign a piece of paper that

22:43.630 --> 22:47.527
they watched video, or some policy,

22:47.620 --> 22:50.542
updated policy. We could text that out,

22:50.665 --> 22:54.277
they sign and have a digital record of the

22:54.295 --> 22:58.387
consent and things like that. You know, resident admission agreement, hard to believe,

22:58.525 --> 23:01.522
but people are still doing paper admission agreements. I get it,

23:01.555 --> 23:04.387
it's kind of the process you're used to,

23:04.450 --> 23:07.702
but having to meet people outside because

23:07.720 --> 23:11.382
they can't come in, signing documents on the hood. But really it's

23:11.397 --> 23:14.762
about the data today. Well hey, what's my payer mix?

23:16.537 --> 23:20.067
How many people accepted arbitration or agree to arbitration,

23:20.127 --> 23:24.022
things like that. It's about the data really on those admissions. So all

23:24.055 --> 23:27.832
different types of solutions like that. We like to say we are the central place

23:27.910 --> 23:31.937
for seamless communication with residents, family and staff.

23:32.512 --> 23:35.782
It's kind of our tagline. Okay, that was my next question is, if you had

23:35.785 --> 23:39.237
to put it into one sentence, what is Care feed?

23:39.387 --> 23:42.927
So first of all, thanks for sponsoring today's podcast.

23:42.957 --> 23:46.327
We definitely appreciate sharing your knowledge and expertise with us

23:46.345 --> 23:49.722
today. But if you want to understand what it is, you said it's a seamless

23:49.767 --> 23:54.125
communication between, what is it? Resident, staff, your central place

23:54.487 --> 23:58.122
for seamless communication and engagement with residents,

23:58.167 --> 23:59.387
family and staff.

24:01.462 --> 24:04.597
So basically what it seems like to me is that you're looking through

24:04.630 --> 24:07.927
all the broken communication pieces that are part of

24:07.945 --> 24:12.142
the daily or whatever part of the operations of a nursing home

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and saying, where can we come in and fix this? And as opposed

24:15.942 --> 24:19.917
to being there are companies that just do one piece, they just do two pieces

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like, OK, let's get rid of paper. And my

24:23.920 --> 24:26.917
administrative is, I would tell people if you gave me a paper, it didn't happen.

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Because what would happen? I'm walking around the building, I'm in one unit, someone handed

24:30.447 --> 24:33.942
me something to sign and the next place somebody gives me an invoice.

24:34.002 --> 24:37.222
And by the time I get back to my office, the invoices and the other

24:37.255 --> 24:40.477
units and other things on the floor, whatever, and I

24:40.495 --> 24:43.447
have nothing. Like everything, if you wanted to go to me,

24:43.480 --> 24:47.317
has to be emailed to me. Otherwise I never got it because

24:47.515 --> 24:51.082
it's just for me personally that doesn't work. But basically it

24:51.085 --> 24:54.822
looks like what you're doing is you have this big machine, this digital

24:55.017 --> 24:58.552
machine that you're almost like a vacuum cleaner that's sucking up

24:58.570 --> 25:01.507
all the broken processes, the broken paper,

25:01.660 --> 25:05.422
fragmented processes within the nursing home and just like care feed. Put it in,

25:05.455 --> 25:09.342
put it in, put it in. And as you go into the vacuuming,

25:09.402 --> 25:12.892
that facility, every process has been worked out

25:12.940 --> 25:16.152
in a way that it's digital, it's clear, everybody knows

25:16.182 --> 25:18.997
where it is. The communication is seamless. Like you said,

25:19.180 --> 25:23.107
documentation is shared in the way that needs to be shared. And like I said,

25:23.260 --> 25:26.797
it's absurd that we make a CNA come in on their

25:26.830 --> 25:30.097
off day to an empty conference room to watch a video, to sign

25:30.130 --> 25:33.547
a paper that hopefully ends up in the right binder and that you could find

25:33.580 --> 25:36.607
it when DPH is in asking if they were ever in service.

25:36.685 --> 25:40.492
Hopefully you can find that piece of paper there. It makes good

25:40.615 --> 25:43.777
people good. And there's no more sticking in a paper when

25:43.795 --> 25:47.497
the BHS there either. This is why people are scared about electronic health

25:47.530 --> 25:50.752
records. It used to be that you can pull out a paper or stick in

25:50.770 --> 25:54.217
a paper or modify something. There's none of that, which is fine,

25:54.265 --> 25:57.742
which just means that people are not scared of the

25:57.940 --> 26:01.297
Department of Public Health Inspection when they know that they're doing the right thing every

26:01.330 --> 26:04.372
day, the thing that people say. But in some places you can just

26:04.405 --> 26:06.727
feel, yeah, all right, they're here, they're going to watch what we do. We know

26:06.745 --> 26:10.072
what we do. To your point is that we like to say the

26:10.105 --> 26:13.272
kind of like the whole central place for seamless

26:13.317 --> 26:16.567
communication engagement. Essentially what we do is we

26:16.615 --> 26:21.287
digitize and automate a lot of the antiquated processes,

26:22.087 --> 26:26.547
paper admission agreements, printed welcome packet folders, safety notifications,

26:26.592 --> 26:30.432
and then we seamlessly distribute that via text, email, or voicemail.

26:30.597 --> 26:33.942
So I know it sounds like a vacuum is because we're in a building downtown

26:34.002 --> 26:36.802
and the building next door is getting a new roof. So I don't know if

26:36.820 --> 26:40.775
it normally sound like a vacuum, but yeah, I want to be

26:41.212 --> 26:44.752
those operational efficiencies that we can create.

26:44.920 --> 26:48.397
It's a SaaS model. So it's a simple monthly fee, I mean,

26:48.505 --> 26:52.317
very inexpensive, and it just makes staff lives easier,

26:52.452 --> 26:55.902
decrease costs, and actually can help boost the census.

26:55.932 --> 26:58.775
We have some solutions that can even help boost the census as well.

26:59.812 --> 27:03.642
Let's talk about those. What do you have that specifically for census related?

27:03.777 --> 27:06.877
Then I want to talk about staffing related. Let's start with saying yeah, exactly.

27:06.970 --> 27:10.487
We don't do any staffing. Oh goodness. So we're a core queue

27:11.062 --> 27:14.622
vendor for surveys and questionnaires. So getting that resident

27:14.667 --> 27:18.807
we can automate the resident family satisfaction surveys

27:18.897 --> 27:22.407
so really be able to get real time feedback to influence

27:22.422 --> 27:26.517
the outcome. But then we can also do boost and steer positive

27:26.577 --> 27:29.952
reviews. So if someone's discharged, it could be automatically

27:29.982 --> 27:33.277
get a positive view. If they get one, two or three stars, feedback just goes

27:33.295 --> 27:36.322
to the community. But if they get four or five stars, we can take that

27:36.355 --> 27:40.162
to Yelp, we can take that to Facebook, etc. Or and Google.

27:40.225 --> 27:43.767
And so obviously the more recent positive reviews,

27:43.827 --> 27:46.175
really the ability to steer it.

27:47.362 --> 27:51.362
People are looking at that today. Do you do check in kiosks?

27:52.087 --> 27:55.712
We do not do check in kiosks. We do have a visitation.

27:56.062 --> 28:00.425
Visitation. So families can set

28:00.862 --> 28:04.222
their visit, they can be pre screened before they get there and things

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like that. But we don't do the hardware.

28:07.912 --> 28:11.407
So you're sticking to the SaaS model. Okay, very interesting.

28:11.485 --> 28:14.037
Now as far as staffing recruitment,

28:14.112 --> 28:17.167
retention, is there anything yet built into

28:17.215 --> 28:20.762
Care Feed that deals with that? If not, then we have to have a conversation.

28:21.187 --> 28:24.252
Yeah, just the really thing is digitizing

28:24.282 --> 28:27.997
the in service with the electronic consent and building that

28:28.030 --> 28:31.192
library to help. Outside of that, no,

28:31.240 --> 28:35.227
nothing for recruitment. Okay, so I don't even mean recruitment. I do

28:35.245 --> 28:39.512
recruitment, but there's also retention. For recruitment,

28:40.312 --> 28:43.587
here's some free feedback.

28:43.737 --> 28:48.062
It might be worth the price that you pay for it. But for recruitment,

28:48.862 --> 28:52.925
is there a way to automatically post things on social media through

28:53.437 --> 28:57.202
Care Feed? We're close. We're close on

28:57.220 --> 29:00.022
that, yes. So if they send a message out to the families, they can also

29:00.055 --> 29:03.547
simultaneously put on the Facebook page and things

29:03.580 --> 29:06.922
like that. Or if someone takes a picture on their phone, they can use Care

29:06.955 --> 29:09.522
Feed to push it out to all the social channels.

29:09.717 --> 29:12.937
Again, maybe you may want to have a built in approval process

29:13.000 --> 29:16.632
for that because there's liability involved here as well. So there's

29:16.647 --> 29:19.177
a lot of things that can be done with that too. And that could be

29:19.195 --> 29:23.127
for census development, and it could also be for recruitment, but specifically

29:23.157 --> 29:27.217
for attention, checking in with staff members, giving them

29:27.340 --> 29:31.242
an opportunity to have communication. We send the beginning, everything is communication

29:31.377 --> 29:34.972
many times. And we're basically using technology,

29:35.080 --> 29:39.142
not just the vacuum cleaner, like we said before, but also

29:39.340 --> 29:43.392
using it to replace some redundant

29:43.527 --> 29:47.247
human processes, especially in a nursing way. We don't

29:47.292 --> 29:51.217
have that luxury anymore because it was just working

29:51.265 --> 29:54.897
with such a tight staff. So, for example, it would be wonderful

29:54.942 --> 29:58.527
if HR could sit down with all the new staff

29:58.557 --> 30:02.017
members, with all the nurses, all the new CNAs for the first week

30:02.065 --> 30:05.347
and the second week, and maybe once a week for a month and then

30:05.455 --> 30:09.367
every month and then every quarter and to really get feedback and to share

30:09.415 --> 30:13.327
information and to give them resources and all that. What about automating some

30:13.345 --> 30:16.777
of that? You know what? You're dead on. We actually do that.

30:16.795 --> 30:20.450
We can do onboarding employees or signing the

30:21.412 --> 30:24.772
I 90, W, four S, all that. And then

30:24.880 --> 30:28.417
we could automate things like, okay, on the 90th

30:28.465 --> 30:32.377
day of their hire, let's send them this. It could be

30:32.395 --> 30:35.497
a survey, it could be a video to watch and things

30:35.530 --> 30:39.232
like that. So we have some of that. But I like kind

30:39.235 --> 30:42.652
of where you're going with that as well, though there's definitely some more we could

30:42.670 --> 30:45.575
do there. It's important.

30:46.312 --> 30:49.972
It's different from other companies. The one thing

30:50.005 --> 30:53.872
in common, they all have a phone and that's where we can send it right

30:54.055 --> 30:57.712
to the mobile phone. Right. I'll just tell you, just from our experience

30:57.850 --> 31:01.477
as a recruitment company, sometimes the recruitment problem could

31:01.495 --> 31:05.397
be solved and then the retention problem exacerbates

31:05.442 --> 31:08.842
the recruitment problem. So they come, but they're leaving after two weeks.

31:08.890 --> 31:11.902
The reason why I'm leaving after two weeks is because. They still don't have a

31:11.920 --> 31:16.072
parking spot and they still don't know where to keep their bag. And the

31:16.105 --> 31:19.582
paycheck was late because information was never gone to the right person.

31:19.660 --> 31:22.787
And stupid things that technology could have solved,

31:23.362 --> 31:26.982
boiling down to communication. I don't know if this is the right form. I'll throw

31:26.997 --> 31:30.112
it out there and you'll tell me if you're comfortable talking about it.

31:30.175 --> 31:33.817
Is there a standard monthly package that you can talk about or is this

31:33.865 --> 31:37.252
a conversation? Check out the website and we'll talk to you. Yeah, check out the

31:37.270 --> 31:39.650
website, but it's based on the size of the community.

31:41.587 --> 31:45.362
It's a per bed, per month kind of format.

31:45.862 --> 31:49.537
Go to carefeed.com. There's a scheduled demo up on the right hand side

31:49.600 --> 31:52.342
and we work with communities across the country,

31:52.465 --> 31:56.032
so we're in a full sprint. Like I said, this started

31:56.110 --> 31:59.967
before COVID right at the beginning of COVID I think it was January

32:00.027 --> 32:03.697
1. Gosh, that's been a full sprint. And we really

32:03.730 --> 32:07.317
just want to make staff, administrators and their staff's lives easier.

32:07.377 --> 32:11.047
I mean, that really is our goal is to kind of

32:11.080 --> 32:14.862
digitize those antiquated processes, automate some of the redundancies

32:14.937 --> 32:19.102
and duplicative work. And just from

32:19.120 --> 32:22.102
what we have found, we decreased costs in a lot of cases, so people end

32:22.120 --> 32:26.000
up spending less. So really appreciate the opportunity

32:26.437 --> 32:30.352
to be on the show. And anything else for me? Yeah, I'm not

32:30.370 --> 32:34.207
throwing you off yet, but very soon. The one last point I've been talking about,

32:34.360 --> 32:38.032
cost savings. I'm sure you

32:38.035 --> 32:41.392
run into this, but a lot of operators probably have maybe three or four different

32:41.440 --> 32:44.692
systems that are each doing a piece of what you're doing,

32:44.815 --> 32:48.127
but you're being like the one system. I know there are systems for

32:48.145 --> 32:52.250
automated phone and email and texting messaging to go out.

32:52.762 --> 32:56.077
I'm thinking of specific systems and they're all great at what they do.

32:56.095 --> 32:59.977
There's another system that all they do is the admission paperwork, another one

32:59.995 --> 33:03.962
just for onboarding, another one just for family communication. I think literally

33:05.887 --> 33:09.177
sometimes you may have multiple systems

33:09.207 --> 33:12.597
raised. If this is one system that is kind of the endall

33:12.642 --> 33:16.372
beal and it does everything that you're saying, it really sounds like

33:16.480 --> 33:20.272
very interesting opportunity and I would definitely encourage operators to go check out

33:20.380 --> 33:23.602
Carefree.com and schedule a demo with

33:23.620 --> 33:26.032
your team. Terry, before we let you go, first of all, thank you for being

33:26.035 --> 33:30.202
an excellent guest. Thank you for sharing everything that

33:30.370 --> 33:33.125
you've shared. Yes,

33:33.637 --> 33:37.057
I'm going to share one comment over here from Schmull. Krisher, first of

33:37.060 --> 33:40.475
all, great name and it definitely is huge.

33:40.837 --> 33:43.962
This is definitely can be a game changer.

33:44.037 --> 33:47.632
But moving right along, any final words you want to leave

33:47.785 --> 33:51.652
with our listeners before we let you go? We have had a

33:51.670 --> 33:54.877
lot of big healthcare organizations, 50,

33:54.970 --> 33:58.237
60 communities, do exactly what you just mentioned,

33:58.375 --> 34:01.902
consolidate employees, have all these different usernames

34:01.932 --> 34:06.575
and passwords to get in all these different places. And you can consolidate and

34:07.687 --> 34:11.277
just make it easier for the staff from training and onboarding.

34:11.382 --> 34:15.217
We have a client success team that does all the training, so just

34:15.340 --> 34:18.772
helping from that regard. But no, we'd be honored to assist with

34:18.805 --> 34:22.192
anyone. We feel like we have a lot of raving fans out there where

34:22.240 --> 34:25.897
we are integrated with a lot of EHRs. So point click

34:25.930 --> 34:29.617
care, matrix care epic, et cetera. And yeah,

34:29.665 --> 34:33.097
it's like, save your team time. I feel like his owner, operators and

34:33.130 --> 34:36.577
management groups doing that is really important right now.

34:36.595 --> 34:39.442
And that's what we're trying to do is just make administrators and their staff's lives

34:39.490 --> 34:43.282
easier. Awesome. Checking out the website

34:43.360 --> 34:47.527
right now. It definitely looks beautiful. Thank you so much for coming

34:47.695 --> 34:50.652
on the show, Terry. We really appreciate you sharing up your knowledge.

34:50.757 --> 34:54.172
And again, if anyone's interested in this, you go to Carefew.com. And like we said

34:54.205 --> 34:57.350
earlier, even before you're ready to make that step,

34:58.312 --> 35:02.497
some people may not be a good prospect yet. These are people,

35:02.605 --> 35:06.007
there's still the paper people, and you would start

35:06.085 --> 35:09.972
implementing I think this is the takeaway, start implementing processes

35:10.092 --> 35:13.627
to streamline the way that you're doing all the

35:13.645 --> 35:16.732
different systems within the nursing home facility and the way

35:16.735 --> 35:19.227
that makes sense for you. So thank you so much for coming on the nursing

35:19.257 --> 35:22.702
home podcast and we look forward to staying in touch. I really think

35:22.720 --> 35:26.287
that you guys are doing some amazing stuff. Thank you. Right back at you.

35:26.425 --> 35:27.425
Thanks so much.

35:38.137 --> 35:42.657
Now that you've enjoyed this episode of the nursing home podcast,

35:42.822 --> 35:46.192
I'd really appreciate if you'd rate this podcast and

35:46.240 --> 35:49.392
let everyone else know what an amazing resource

35:49.452 --> 35:53.892
this is for those wanting to learn anything and everything about the nursing home industry.

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So head on over to ratethispodcast.com

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nursinghome. Again,

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Ratethispodcast.com Nursinghome,

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leave me a review and let the world know what an amazing show

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this truly is. Thank you so much for listening and make sure to stay

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tuned and subscribe so you don't miss any other episodes.

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Thanks for

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watching.