Friday, April 29, 2011

Help Your Elderly Parent Stay in their Home with Remote Monitoring

When you begin noticing behavior that is worrisome when in charge of caring for the elderly parent or loved one then you may be concerned with their safety in the home. There are options for those trying to figure out a way to check up on them.  Some options you may have are to move them into your home or hire a home health-care aid to help watch over them or you can look into non-intrusive remote monitoring systems.  These are also called passive monitoring systems to monitor elderly parents.

The home health-care option can be very expensive.  Another alternative to drastic home changes for your elderly parent would be to use a remote home monitoring service that some companies offer.  How it works is you buy the equipment and plug it in the home where your loved one lives.  Then you plug it in and there are sensors on it that report out to the base station which then sends that information out to a site where you can access your loved ones information.  The equipment typically costs around $200-$300 to purchase and then the monthly monitoring account costs around $79.

The advantage to this kind of service which a Beclose.com offers is that it allows elderly to stay in their home instead of having to move out or have someone move in with them and intrude on their life.  The cost to them both financially and the cost of freedom and some sense of independence is tremendous.  Especially when the alternative is moving the elderly parents into an assisted living facility or a nursing home. 

Remote elderly monitoring keeps track of the elderly parent or disabled loved one either from a remote location or simply when the caregiver is outside.  The way this works is alerts are sent to a cell phone if the elderly or disabled moves out of their bed, or returns, plus any movements are recognized around the house.  These systems also can monitor when the refrigerator opens and for how long and even when medicine cabinet openings.

If no activity is detected for a certain amount of time then the system sends out an alert via text and/or email to the caregiver or loved one that is in charge of caring for the elderly parent.

These types of inexpensive monitoring systems can help out when you are caring for the elderly parent or loved one.  Especially if the elderly parent needs to be watched over but only at a low level.  If it isn't time for a nursing home then there are other options other than moving the elderly or disabled out of their home.  In the home they are most comfortable and relaxed and that equates to happiness.

There are a number of these monitoring services available.  These systems help you watch over your elderly parents to ensure that nothing odd is going on in their activities that would raise a red flag to you.  If something is out of the norm an alert is sent to your email, cell phone, or a caregiver is called.

Most of these systems will work in an integrated way with their current PERS device.  These systems can detect if the garage door was left open at 3am, if the house is too cold or too hot or if the shower is too hot.  This tracking information is stored on a website in a dashboard interface.  You can look at this and gauge how the elderly parents are doing and what if anything is out of the ordinary.

Your elderly parents may love the idea of staying independent longer in their home, but they may not care for some fancy  new computer software being plugged in and monitoring their activities.  So if you are caring for the elderly parent then just let them know that all you are trying to do help them stay safe in the home.  Most likely that is much less an intrusion of privacy than sharing a room in an assisted living facility or nursing home.

All the information you may need when caring for the elderly parent can be obtained using a simple remote monitoring system for your elderly parents.  Just sign in to the website and you will be able to do some get a good sense of how they are doing.  And if you get a text alert you may need to call or send someone over to check up with them in person.  If you decide to go with beclose I can provide you with a discount for those caring for the elderly parent.  I will update the site with a discount code soon.