By itself, data doesn't keep anybody safe, but it's what you do with that data to create positive outcomes. - Welcome to season seven of Bridge the Gap, a podcast dedicated to informing, educating, and influencing the future of housing and services for seniors. Powered by sponsors, Accu-Shilled, Align, Nick Map Vision, ProCare HR, Sage, Hamilton Cattell, Service Master, the Bridge Group Construction and Salinity, and produced by Salinity Marketing. - Welcome to Bridge the Gap Podcast, this senior living podcast with Josh and Lucas. We wanna welcome a good friend and one of our great supporter partners back to the program, Alan Barnes of Accu-Shilled. Welcome to the show. - Thanks for having me, excited to be here. - And you know what, we get to always have these great conversations in these really nice places. And here in Dana Point, California is definitely one of them. And I don't know why we didn't just set this up by the pool or the beach today. - We should have done that, maybe later, right? - Yeah. - Lots of sunscreen for me, actually. - That's right, well, maybe an umbrella, right? - Maybe have episode two tomorrow? - There we go, there we go. A little drink with the umbrella, okay. Now, I digress, this actually is a very serious topic that we're gonna go over today. Pretty much everybody in the industry knows of Accu-Shilled and the high commitment to safety and transparency that Accu-Shilled is well known for. And I spend many of my weeks going in and out of communities myself, and I'm a frequent Accu-Shilled user. I should get like a punch card or something, but-- - Pass pass. - That's right, I need a fob, I need a fob to get in now. But safety's a big concern in the industry. And in really any kind of major industry where you have people that are vulnerable, there should be a bigger conversation around safety. And so I'd love for us to kind of do a deep dive today around your thoughts on safety and then what Accu-Shilled is proactively doing to bridge the gap for the industry. - No, I'd love to do that. - Well, and I'll tell you, you know, in line of there's so much going on in the world, right? And I think because of now our connectivity to the internet where everyone has a device and everyone can almost close to real time here of any bad story that happens anywhere, including senior living, it's more important ever to actually have a plan for prevention and safety and the digitization of all that. And so, you know, operators are faced with real challenges, not only just with the daily operations, but families that our industry hasn't changed, that families are still trusting us with their number one asset that they love the most. That's their loved one. And oftentimes it's adult, son or daughter, or it's the resident themselves that's coming to tour and they're asking a lot of really tough questions in light of what's going on in the world and how are we prepared to answer those questions? And I think Accu-Shilled has been leading the way on securing and helping to understand what's happening in the community and who's in our communities. And so kind of tell us how the latest as you're helping be a partner to the industry and equipping operators and owners with the ability to be able to answer those tough questions for families and their loved ones as they enter them, how are we keeping people safe? What's your response to that? - Yeah, you know, I think in the past and for so many years, you had to throw people at a problem like this. And one of the things that we've focused on since our beginnings and actually a decade ago is the digitization of safety. And by itself, data doesn't keep anybody safe, but it's what you do with that data to make to create positive outcomes. And so what we've continued to do is just focus on how we can capture more data but make it usable and actually beneficial to communities so that they know who's in their community at any time and is that person supposed to be in the community? And if they are, what are the limitations around what they should be doing? Who is it and what function are they there to provide? - Sure. These obviously are much different than third party care providers. They're much different than an auditor that comes in or someone like that. So, but it's important to understand that. When you think about, for instance, elementary schools. Elementary schools know exactly who's in the building at any time because they're established procedures around when somebody comes in that single point of access, who are they, you know, they must go to a specific spot and hopefully get their license or verify that they've got their background check done and then proceed from there or not proceed from there. And so senior living, I think, is trying to do the same thing but they're trying to do it as opposed to a school where you've got classrooms that are pretty static and a senior living community, you still gotta make it feel like a residence because it is somebody's home and it's a bit more challenging than even a school, I think, to do that, to give somebody the feeling of home but also keep them safe and have procedures that are pretty defined and rigid. - When you're even talking about that, I mean, it sounds like, okay, well, of course we wanna do that, but it's also a little bit of a challenge and, you know, our industry across the board doesn't really have a nationwide regulation, right? We're all state regulated and so we're relying a lot of times on individual organizations or operators, policies and procedures and systems and tools that they put in place. So I think, you know, one of the opportunities that we have as an industry is take some leading practices, some best practices or leading practices. And it seems, I've loved to hear some of your thoughts on what you guys are already have in place but what you're forward looking actively putting in place that will help operators be able to lead in practice to be in a position to where not only you can have that in place but you have a great story to tell rather than being reactive to something that the news media is gonna tell for you. - Yeah, when you think about operators and senior living, there's not an operator in the US that any of us know about who doesn't care about safety. You don't get into this business because it's purely financial. You get in because it's a fundamental or the base you wanna be in a business that cares for people 'cause you're sort of a that mindset. And so everybody wants to keep residents and staff safe. It's they don't know how a lot of times. And so there are certain things like our kiosk where you sign in and you have established procedures there. You can limit and have a single point of access which is very difficult for a lot of communities. But again, you go back to the school example, sometimes it's just you gotta take a tough tack and do that. But other things that we've done over the past year, year and a half is we've added a license scan. So that somebody can coming in can't say, "Well, I'm Charles Mann and when it's really Alan Barnes." And so you've got a license scan to just validate that that person is who they say they are. We've added facial recognition and there are all kinds of different statutes depending on the state you're in, but typically in senior living because of the vulnerable population, there is pretty much an acceptance that facial recognition is something that can be utilized and utilized effectively for to, because there is a vulnerable population. And so we continue to do things like that and bring in technologies, again, digitization that can take out just having a human element and just having human judgment and hopefully add additional filters to go through. One of the areas that we're focused on right now are very heavily and this is really core of a lot of development that we're doing is we're adding cameras to our product. Because when you think going back 15 years, you have the nest, right? And you had cameras like that that are now pretty ubiquitous in homes. But cameras like that are pretty static in what they can do. They'll show you who's there, they'll alert you who's there, but they won't do anything really more than that. But with the technology behind cameras now, the software has gotten so sophisticated that cameras can in a sense think for you. And so we're integrating cameras with our product because cameras by themselves can't do what you need to do. You gotta teach them to do what they need to do. Once you do that, they can do amazing things. You look at what's happening with fall management right now with camera applications, pretty incredible. And so what the kiosk does, the advantage we have we think with our technology is the kiosk captures information and can teach the camera what the camera needs to know in order to teach us. And so it's a great, it's a great melding of technologies but that may again, take that risk fence and continue to make it narrower and narrower. And our goal is one day you don't have a fence. It's completely safe. But until we get there, we're gonna continue to bring on additional technologies like cameras. - Well, in a couple of things you said and I wholeheartedly believe it would be hard, very difficult to find an operator that as they're listening to you talk would not be cheerleading and saying amen, yes. But the challenges depending on the type of community have, the age of it. Also, the iron industry gets hit with so much tech over the last several years. So a lot of folks have made decisions and brought in a lot of different tech that is not integrated and spent a lot of money and they may be listening and thinking, well, I love that, but how do I bring it all together? How do I create standard operating procedures on top of that after I've integrated to ensure that we've got the right flow and that we've created this sort of digitized safety net, so to speak, for lack of a better term. What would you say to those operators that are wanting to take the next step in evaluating that? And even a lot of your larger regional operators, they don't have a huge tech team to even help them understand how to integrate all of that. So what would your coaching be because you're in this world? - Yeah, I think the first coaching I'd have would be to bring in a consultant, a safety security consultant. It might be through your insurance company, then we know a number, anybody can reach out to us for contact information there. We would recommend to come into the community. And it's not tremendously expensive, but it's very good to get people who understand the broad parameters of risk and what can happen within those parameters and who can help you tighten those down. So the biggest thing I think would be to bring in someone who's an expert and just lay the foundation there and then build a plan around what we can do. 'Cause you can't overnight invest in everything maybe that you need to do, but you can do certain things again, to continue to mitigate risk and cut it down and cut it down and cut it down. - Lucas, you've been in so many communities, you get the opportunity to work with operators, big, small, across the country. You go into, as you said, a lot of AccuShield buildings 'cause we've done such a great job protecting our industry and growing with our industry. What are some of the biggest differences you're seeing when you go into communities that maybe don't have a system like that integrated versus walking into the AccuShield properties? - Yeah, this is an emerging conversation that I think is really, really important. And I like the contrast between an elementary school and a senior living community 'cause I have two children in elementary school and I've gone into those elementary schools and it's not easy to get in, but it's also not terribly challenging to get in so much so that you'd dread it. And so there's gotta be some boundary lines there. And just like a school, and probably even more so out of senior living community, there's a lot of services that come in. These are active buildings. There's vendor partners that are in and out. Every day there's home health, there's service technicians, heating, electrical, plumbers. I mean, landscaping crews, I mean, it's just, there's a lot of people on campus, onsite. And I think thinking through this and building these standards of practices are super important. And I love this commitment to saying, "Look, we may not have all of the tools "that you need in the toolbox, "but we're gonna help you build out this toolbox "with some procedures and protocols." I think it's a great concept. - Well, you know, also another important thing to think about, too, is safety. When we think about safety, you think about the bad guy coming in and doing something horrible, but safety goes well beyond that. And again, with cameras, one of our initial products is, we're going to try to help with a lotement, because a lotement's an issue that every operator, every AL operator, every memory care, worries about. And so, but cameras are smart enough to be able to, you know, position in the right place to say, this person should not be going through that door by themselves. Or this person should be signing out with someone before they leave the community. So there's a lot that you can do there, and then there are operational efficiencies that lead to safety. - You know, let's say it's a care notes from a home health provider. They're leaving without leaving care notes, and you digitize those care notes. Well, you can marry those two together. And again, that's safety, because it's part of care coordination. It's part of a plan to keep a resident healthy, which really is safety in the end of the day. There's a lot you can do. - And you just touched on even one thing, and the idea of a lotement, and you look at how much the industry has changed with the different property types. And now you're seeing more and more of a Q&A being pushed downstream into more independent living settings. And I think oftentimes, as independent living developer and our operators, we think, well, we're not really set up, and we're not really caring for a population that has Alzheimer's dementia, but how exposed potentially are we with the rising cognitive impairments and disorders and with dementias and with one out of every two, going to have some form of dementias they're telling us, when is the moment that we go from one day a resident not being confused and having no impairment to that moment that triggers and being able to save just one bad incident, one bad press moment that not only could negatively impact that community and their operation and their ability to even continue to operate, but what that does to the entire industry. So a little dose of prevention and being preemptive because there's one thing that's for sure is people are aging where they are longer. And they're doing that through technology, but what a great tool to be able to integrate the safety net to even be able to prevent that type of situation in a more independent setting, which oftentimes our guard's a little bit down in those type of settings as well. - Yeah, and to your point, you want that independent living resident to still feel as independent as they can. But for take it, my mother-in-law, for instance, she's 93 in an independent living community. She still would want and we would want for her to be accounted for, and she would say that, but she's also, it's her home, she's going to go in and out. And yet, if you have smart technology, you can know she's gone, you can know when she left, and there's just a lot of, I guess, a piece of mind for families and for residents if we're able to do that. - Yeah, and maybe that means she doesn't need to be in a lockdown community, but we need to put measures in place to just be able to care for them adequately where they are. - Yeah, I just think, when you think about what's happened in the media over the last year, unfortunately, there's sort of this ubiquitous social media as well, and it takes, because it's so widespread, it takes the very few bad incidents and makes them the norm. And so, I think what we've got to do, I think we've got a real opportunity, and that is, take safety as a differentiator. When you're bringing in families, talk about it, and talk about what you're doing, and talk about why your community has taken steps above and beyond to make sure that you're limiting risk as much as you can. You can't completely limit risk, but you're doing something, we think it's just a great selling point because it's always one of the top two or three things that's on the priority list for particularly families, and but also for rest. - Sure, well, and if we wait until the regulators jump in and do it for us, there's gonna be, for sure, a much higher cost to pay for that. So, what a great opportunity to partner with groups like AccuShield to implement proactively a leading practice before bad things happen. So, Lucas, another great conversation from our friends at AccuShield. - That's right, helping set the standards and bridging that gap. And you know, there's other conversations. Alan was on episode 314 talking about technology and safety. And so, if you'd like to learn more about this, go to btgvoice.com. You may or may not know if you've been a listener or a bridge of gap for a while. We've got an awesome search feature on our BTG voice. You can actually hit the search and type in any key word or phrase that you are looking for. It could be sales and marketing, it could be safety. It could be anything that you're thinking of. Type that in and every episode that we have ever talked about, those topics on will come up for your choices. And so, 314, Alan was on to discuss more technology. And this is another great episode for continuing to talk about safety. Thank you so much for your time today. - Thanks for having me. - And thanks so much to AccuShield because they're a great supporter partner. They are helping us bring this content to you. So, go to btgvoice.com. Hit us up on LinkedIn and thanks for listening to another great episode of Bridge to Gap. Thanks for listening to Bridge the Gap podcast with Josh and Lucas. Connect with the BTG Network team and use your voice to influence the industry by connecting with us at btgvoice.com.
