Over 12,000 caregivers use our CaraSolva cloud based caregiver system. These dedicated caregivers help individuals, with challenging health conditions, live in the community. They use our system, because, without it, there is a befuddling pile of paper instructions, progress charts to complete, medications to give, care tasks to administer, and doctor visits to make. Following and completing all this paperwork detracts from the primary objective, to improve the life, and health outcomes of the individual being cared for.
The individuals being cared for do not live in institutions, nursing homes or hospitals. We’re talking about people living on your street, or in your apartment building. People with: Developmental Disabilities, Mental Health issues, Traumatic Brain Injuries, Alzheimers, post hospital recovery trauma, etc. We’re talking about the future of healthcare, where technology supports community care, allowing people to stay in a home in the community. Technology that is secure, mobile and relatively (compared to institutional care) inexpensive.
If you think about it, in the era of the smartphone, it is immensely easier to have care events presented, on our system, as a clear electronic checklist, than a scattered, frequently changing, and error prone pile of 3 ring binders. Plus try having a nurse or doctor, from their office, often miles away, see what is going on in that pile of paper. However, a secure electronic system, allows the remote healthcare team visibility to trends, and can alert when care events, such as blood pressure, are outside of an acceptable range, so pro-active, often life-saving action can be taken.
If you do not have a family member, or friend, who needs care you will be surprised by the challenges, and complexity, of health conditions handled in a home near you.
This type of care is provided by an estimated 65.7 million caregivers in the U.S.A. Many work with family members, but others are professional caregivers, who unfortunately are compensated lowly for the important work they do.
When you visit a person in community care and meet with their caregivers, as I have around the country, you cannot help but be impressed by the compassion, and difficult work of the caregivers. It takes a special kind of person. However the reality is that until compensation for these caregivers can be addressed, in an economy of high employment, there will be high turnover. In many geographies there is turnover of, literally, 50%.
This turnover is sad for the individuals to whom care is being given. Constantly changing their care lifeline introduces disruption, risk and loneliness. So again, an electronic point of care checklist, like that provided by CaraSolva, reduces stress on caregivers, reducing the chance for error and turnover, and when turnover happens, helps facilitate the rapid onboarding of a new caregiver with a consistent vocabulary of the care requirements of an individual.
Caregivers are awesome people, with a lot of responsibility, and we should provide them with tools, like our CaraSolva applications, to make their job less paperwork intensive, and more fulfilling. So they can spend more time improving the lives and health outcomes of the persons they care for. Help is on the way!