Assistive Technology May Help Seniors To Stay At Home
Last week, while taping my once a month segment for WCOJ’s “Legal Talk” program, I had one of those “aha” moments that force me to rethink some basic notions on senior care.
“Legal Talk” will be familiar to West Chester readers as the radio 1420 program hosted by Steve Karp and Peter Hart who are long time respected personal injury lawyers serving the community. Steve and Pete graciously allow me to host the show for the first Saturday of each month. This month my guest was George Flowers, a Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Platinum Independence, LLC in Wayne, a company devoted to using Universal Design concepts to extend the period of time that seniors can safely and comfortably stay in their homes. To accomplish this ambitious goal, they advocate assistive measures using modern technology such as telemedicine, home monitoring, installation of lifts to assist in climbing stairs, custom home design modifications, in short a comprehensive approach to providing everything that would be needed to keep an older parent or spouse in the home and secure.
I have to say from the start that George and I came from opposite ends of the spectrum on the issue of using monitoring devices to observe elderly parents at home. Some readers might recall my column “Smart House Meets the Nanny Cam.” That article appeared in the Daily Local News on February 19, 2007 and can still be accessed at my web site at www.collitonlaw.com under the 2007 columns. It was intended to be a humorous jab at cameras placed in the home. My concern was privacy and still is but there are always two sides to a story.
“Smart House Meets the Nanny Cam” received a lot of attention especially on the Internet. The last commentary I reviewed left me not knowing whether the author agreed or disagreed with my opinions. The article was written in German.
George acknowledged my privacy concerns but raised some practical considerations that even I could not diffuse.
Going back to a time when my mother was at home alone in Philadelphia and I and my brother and sister each lived one hour from her, one major problem we experienced was that she would not turn on the air-conditioning in summer and did not seem to recognize extreme heat. Turning off furnace is advisable during this time, and it’s time to give it a break. As a result, we would have to drive to the house to check whether she kept the air-conditioning on and if the home ac not cold enough. Wouldn’t it have been helpful if the temperature of the areas of the house where she stayed could have been monitored from a distance. A neighbor or friend or even the local police could have been alerted if the temperature rose to unsafe levels and check in on her.
My sister who is a Registered Nurse drove to the house to take my mother’s blood pressure. Suppose my mother’s blood pressure could be registered without my sister needing to make the trip. This is telemedicine. Then my sister might have been able to visit based on her schedule without worry in the intervening periods.
My aunt, who lived near my mother, was mentally alert and active but fell often. After her last fall, she was not discovered for several hours. We alerted the local police when we received no answer to our telephone calls and they broke in. Although the house was old and might have required some major retrofitting, if it could have been reconfigured to prevent her falls, maybe she could have avoided or at least delayed moving to assisted living.
George asserts that assistive technology can be used to reconnect at a distance. Where a son lives across the country and mother lives in Pennsylvania, he describes the situation where they can both “have dinner” with each other by turning on the web cam and discussing the events of the day.
While none of this is what I would call ideal, “assistive” technology being for the purpose of assisting caregivers, not replacing them, it does cause me to give these notions a second look. Our office when using life care planning, works in developing care plans for seniors. Maybe for the future, technological advances should be incorporated into them.
For more direct information, Platinum Independence can be contacted at 175 Stratford Avenue, Suite One, Wayne, Pennsylvania, 877-365-ALIVE (2548) or www.Platinumindependence.com. Telemedicine details can be found at the American Telemedicine Association website at www.americantelemed.org.
About the Author Janet Colliton
Esquire, Colliton Law Associates, P.C. Janet Colliton has practiced law for over 38 years, 37 of them in Chester County, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. Her practice, Colliton Law Associates, PC, is limited to elder law, Medicaid, including advice, applications and appeals, and other benefits planning including Veterans benefits, life care and special needs planning, guardianships, retirement, and estate planning and administration.