Skilled nursing facilities and senior living communities are faced with the challenge of how to maintain high levels of resident engagement and quality care while enforcing necessary restrictions on visits from family and friends as well as some partnering healthcare professionals. Vivage Senior Living, a leading provider of skilled nursing and senior care services, is incorporating new technologies and care innovations to help overcome these challenges.

One of the main objectives is to help reduce or prevent feelings of fear, isolation and loneliness—something many of us have also recently experienced to some degree due to social distancing. As Innovations Specialist, Hope Carwile, says, “Each and every one of us thrives in a world where we feel safe and calm, have hope, can self-express and connect. Social distancing and the treat of COVID-19 pose the risk of the exact opposite—fear, boredom, stress, helplessness and loneliness.”

At Vivage Senior Living, we are using social media and technology to help residents stay connected engaged and informed. Additional tablets and mobile phones have been purchased for each community so that residents can connect with friends and family through FaceTime, Facebook Messenger, Google Hangouts, Google Duo and Marco Polo. Also, families are invited to join scheduled conference calls with nursing home administrators, owners and leadership team members to receive updates on the most recent developments. CEO, Jay Moskowitz, and CFO, John Brammeier, are committed to doing the right thing for employees, residents and their family members which includes clear and transparent communication even when the topic of conversation is not easy to discuss. These regular calls and other forms of outreach are considered a top priority for the company.

In addition to using mobile phones and tablets for resident engagement, these devices are used so that physicians and other medical providers can communicate and treat patients remotely through TeleHealth. While some partnering medical professionals, such as Rocky Mountain Senior Care and Summit Medical Consultants, typically use their own remote platforms, the federal government is now allowing TeleHealth visits via FaceTime as part of the national emergency response to COVID-19.

This is an extraordinary time with immense challenges and the long-term care profession is considering all options to support resident health and engagement. Leveraging resources and technological advancements is key in helping keep residents and families informed and connected today, and there is hope that some of the new care practices being applied now will become best practices for enhanced service delivery in the future.

For more information about Vivage Senior Living and what we are doing in response to COVID-19, please check out our website at www.vivage.com or reach out to Daphne Bernstein, SVP Business Development by phone at 303-877-7675 or by email at dbernstein@vivage.com.