VeroSource’s Healthy Seniors Pilot Project partner, the University of New Brunswick’s Dr. Erik Scheme, recently gave a presentation about the importance of tools like Wellness Check to proactively assess seniors’ health, make predictive analysis regarding changes needed to their care, and ensure seniors are healthy in their homes.
Hospitalizations and other negative health events are detrimental to seniors’ health and costly to the healthcare system. Proactive health monitoring using tools like Wellness Check may help seniors avoid negative health events and remain safely in their homes for longer. Many seniors do not have the skills, knowledge, or technology to regularly monitor their health at their own at home. Without regular, proactive health monitoring, we cannot identify seniors at risk of negative health outcomes (like hospitalizations) before such events occur. Having trained home support workers (caregivers) use their skills and technology to monitor seniors’ health makes proactive health monitoring more accessible to seniors receiving home care.
In this project, trained caregivers from Kindred Home Care use the Wellness Check application to proactively monitor seniors’ health for risk factors that could predict hospitalizations or other negative health outcomes. Seniors’ complete regular health assessments with their caregivers. Caregivers enter the results into a mobile app for analysis. The assessments involve physical health (like weight and blood pressure) and cognitive/mental health (like word recall and quality of life).
More information about Wellness Check and the Healthy Seniors Pilot Project can be found in the presentation video here.