Support in Every Stage of Retirement: 4 Ways Icon’s Technology Improves the Lives of CCRC Residents

The draw of CCRC living is that the communities can support older adults at every conceivable level of acuity. 

These different levels of care often require different forms of technology, as well. That’s why CCRCs may cobble together solutions from different vendors – an assisted living platform and an independent living communication tool, for instance.

But this cobbling method isn’t the right way to go. It can hurt interoperability efforts, for one, which limits your visibility into data. On a more experiential level, though, disparate systems make it harder for your staff and residents to understand and adopt those systems. That’s a huge issue in CCRCs where residents may move to different levels of care over time. An independent living resident, for instance, shouldn’t have to learn about an entirely new platform when they transition to your assisted living option.

CCRCs are better served by vendors (like us!) that have solutions for every level of care. Here, we lay out why Icon is perfectly suited to CCRC living and the ways it can help improve life for your residents – all of your residents.

1. Personalizes Life Enrichment Programming

In a CCRC, you’ll have a variety of residents, each with their own physical fitness regimens. Some may do a morning jog. Others may finish a sit-to-stand exercise. But the larger point is that physical fitness is important and it looks different between residents.

Now there might be certain life enrichment activities that appeal to all of your residents – a Fourth of July cookout for instance. But there will be a lot more activities that appeal to certain residents (e.g., artsy residents will gravitate towards a painting class).

Rather than polling each resident on their special interests or favorite activities and using that info to craft your life enrichment calendar, you can use a Smart Aging™ dashboard. Put simply, a Smart Aging™ dashboard will use resident data – like the events they attend – to offer them tailored activity recommendations. This helps ensure your community’s activities are aligned with your community preferences, which can improve engagement.

Now you might be asking: How does this help residents who may not otherwise be able to use tech platforms? The benefit for them is a downstream one. When staff members don’t have to spend as much time on admin tasks, like data analysis, they can focus more on delivering care that requires a human touch.

In short, with the right life enrichment solutions, your residents get more fulfilling activities and more access to your staff members.

2. Fosters Resident Autonomy via Smart Home Technology

One of the main perks of smart home technology is that virtually everyone can benefit from it. That’s because the devices are designed for easy use. Older adults and children alike can share a voice command on an Alexa device. (Unsurprisingly, this is part of the reason why Amazon has also sold more than half a billion Alexa-enabled devices as of last year).

This accessibility is exactly why smart home technology lines up well with CCRC living. Both independent and assisted living residents can quickly use, for example, a smart light. The underlying reason may vary. An independent living member may view it primarily as a convenience whereas an assisted living resident with mobility issues may view it as a need. But, again, the technology benefits both groups.

What’s more: you don’t need to upend your community to add smart home devices to it. You can do it in steps. Even rolling out something like Echo Dots to a pilot group can help you quickly identify the potential benefits before a full community rollout. From there, you can train residents to use the devices and just make sure you update them on a regular basis.

There’s no larger infrastructural or wiring changes you need to make. Train your residents. Plug the devices into outlets. Leverage the power of smart home tech.

3. Keeps Care Providers in the Loop with All-in-One Communications Tools

Communities recognized the necessity of 24 / 7 communication in 2020. That’s why so many senior living leaders have invested in communication tools that help staff keep track of residents, coordinate with family members, and ensure every stakeholder has visibility into a resident’s day-to-day routine.

Now, this visibility need is lessened in certain contexts, like independent living segments. But there’s still a value in independent living members being able to quickly, for example, contact a staff member – and vice-versa. One big reason: if an independent living resident’s needs are slowly growing more acute, it’s important that they have a way to easily request assistance.

For staff, this all-in-one communication tool can also streamline comms between various groups. If there’s a community-wide emergency message that staff needs to make – a blizzard is coming – staff can draft the message, target various audience members, and send the message in the same place.

4. Improves Wellness Outcomes with Advanced Reporting

When you’re running a CCRC, you need to use different wellness benchmarks. If an independent living member suddenly can’t remember their first name, that would likely warrant a different response than if a resident who’s already in memory care can’t remember their first name.

Crucially, this doesn’t mean you can neglect dimensions of wellness for certain residents. It just means the wellness measurements may change.

For this measurement, staff members can use reporting dashboards from engagement platforms or digital calendars – and leadership can access enterprise reporting. The difference: staff-facing analytics will localize insights to one community. Enterprise reporting shares data from every community that an owner and / or operator oversees.

Your staff might be able to see that assisted living residents are reporting higher levels of satisfaction after a new wellness initiative went into place. But they won’t have visibility into what changes other communities may have seen with that initiative.

With enterprise reporting, you can see how these wellness initiatives stack up between your various CCRCs. From there, you can decide whether to keep the initiative or adjust it further.

This invites the question: how does the resident benefit from this? It’s simple. The more data you have at your fingertips, the more informed your community offerings can become. Residents don’t need to tell you they’re enjoying a cardio class. Their actions will reflect it.

In short, advanced reporting ensures your residents are being listened to – even if they haven’t had the chance to speak directly with you yet.

Senior Living Technology Built with Every Resident in Mind

The best forms of senior living technology are adaptable. They work across various use cases and ensure that every member of a CCRC can benefit.

How? By enabling your staff members to do what they do best: directly engage with residents. In this staffing shortage, CCRCs can’t have team members spending hours on admin work that pulls them away from residents. An all-in-one communication and engagement platform gives time back to your team members while ensuring, with data, that this time is well spent.Want to see firsthand how Icon helps improve resident engagement and streamline community operations? Book a demo!