TechTalks in CMMS

Dan Roberge talks with Sasha Johnston, who is attending the Advantage Conference in downtown Toronto for the first time as a partner of Age Inc., a company that develops educational programs. She is a master coach for Age Inc., where her primary role is to coach other coaches who deliver the Gentle Persuasive Approaches (GPA) and Dementia Care program. This eight-hour in-person, hands-on education is taught across Canada to frontline workers caring for individuals living with dementia, focusing on communication and practical techniques for de-escalation, especially in situations of risk. Age Inc. recently released a new program called GPA Bathing, which addresses the challenges of bathing or showering individuals with cognitive disorders. Sasha, an RN with a background in behavioral nursing, gained her expertise working in a secure unit with major neurocognitive disorders and other complex conditions, finding the work meaningful and impactful in spreading cultural change within the care system.

Dan chats with Melissa, who is attending the Advantage Seniors show for the first time. Melissa, from Clinton, Ontario, works at Huron View Home for the Aged as the manager of IPAC and environmental services, overseeing laundry and housekeeping for about 15 staff members. She finds communication challenges with maintenance regarding room turnovers. With only six months in her current role, Melissa notes the significant differences between long-term care and her prior experience in hospital emergency nursing.

Odelia shares insights into modern care home facility operations. She discussed navigating the "exciting times" of COVID-19, highlighting the significant difficulty in admitting new residents due to lengthy waitlists and a lack of system capacity, which often forces people to move far from family. Odelia details a recent overhaul of their facility's maintenance care system, where the building was divided into areas and assets categorized for better reporting, ultimately aiming to predict future maintenance needs and optimize capital investments. Finally, she touched upon evolving sector regulations, noting that new requirements mandate a social or healthcare background for certain care home administrative positions.

Dan speaks with Tara Morelli, Director of Care at a Long Term Care Home. She shares her experiences at the Avantage Ontario Long-Term Care Conference in Toronto, marking her third year attending. She actively networks, checks out vendors, and has spoken at the conference for the past two years, despite finding public speaking challenging. This year, she presented to an audience of around 120 people. Having started her role in 2020, Tara navigated significant changes in the long-term care sector, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that the industry has learned valuable lessons, and become more responsive. She finds the use of maintenance reports from the Maintenance Care CMMS software across multiple sites incredibly useful for tracking operations and identifying barriers. Tara identifies managing various departments and constant communication as the biggest challenge in her role.

Dan speaks with Katelyn Burns, the acting administrator of Shalom Village in Hamilton. She is currently overseeing the entire long-term care home, managing numerous department heads, and approximately 260 staff across 127 long-term care beds and 81 assisted living rooms. With a background in recreation and leisure services, including experience as a recreation manager, business manager, educator, and an administrator course, she unexpectedly found the biggest challenge in her new role to be the implementation and integration of various software systems, such as Maintenance Care and PointClickCare. While she mainly submits work orders through Maintenance Care CMMS, the maintenance team heavily relies on it for reports and task tracking. Katelyn also highlights the significant stress of ensuring compliance across all departments, which often interlink, necessitating extensive auditing to keep track of all required information for ministry reports.

Dan Roberge and Phil Boone discuss Phil's three-year tenure at Maintenance Care, where he's become a product specialist, completing over 500 demos, and mentoring new staff on strategy and setup. Phil's daily responsibilities include client outreach, customer service, new business acquisition, and live demonstrations.

In this video, host Phil Boone talks with Kinsey Lehigh, a Registered Practical Nurse (RPN) with Stay at Home Nursing, where she's been since 2019. The company provides personal support and in-home care in the Niagara, Hamilton, and greater Toronto areas. Kinsey, who started in the field and worked her way up to management, values her "foot on the ground" experience, which helps her understand the logistics of home care from both the client and administrative perspectives. She also mentions their sister company, CHAH Technologies (CHAH.ai), which focuses on integrating AI programs, wearable devices, cameras, and lidar machines to help individuals stay in their homes longer. Stay at Home Nursing can be found at stayathomenursing.com

Phil Boone interviews Daniel Beard, a representative from Lion Health Care, a staffing agency that provides essential personnel for long-term care and retirement homes across Canada. Daniel, with five years at the company, explains their services range from nurses and housekeeping to dietary staff and security, including unique one-to-one security agents who offer companionship and specialized care for residents, especially those with dementia. He shares his background in security and social work, even mentioning his non-profit, Exercise Success, which promotes physical activity for mental and physical well-being.

At the Together We Care conference, Steve from Evac Chair highlighted his company's evacuation chairs and power stair climbers. These essential devices safely evacuate individuals during emergencies, utilizing friction technology for easy operation. Steve shared compelling stories, including their chairs saving lives during 9/11 and a $26 million lawsuit against a school for not having one during a fire drill, underscoring their critical importance. The company offers free online training and ships worldwide.

In this video, Dan Roberge interviews Tenzin Woser, an Executive Director at REKAI, a long-term care home with two current locations, and a third under construction. Tenzin discusses the challenges of managing an older facility. She shares her 17-year journey with REKAI, starting as a nurse and progressing through various roles to her current leadership position, emphasizing the importance of dedication alongside formal courses. Tenzin also talks about REKAI's decade-long use of Maintenance Care software, explaining how she now uses it to monitor the completion of tasks and work orders, either by logging in directly, or reviewing scheduled reports.

In this video, Dan Roberge interviews Mark Seidenfeld, the representative for BCI Networks, a company focused on an "AI-driven care ecosystem." Seidenfeld explains that the elder care industry has traditionally relied on residents to signal when they need help, which is inefficient given that residents are there because they can no longer fully care for themselves. BCI Networks offers a solution that moves beyond the traditional "nurse call" system by automatically collecting comprehensive data on residents' daily activities and health metrics, such as sleep quality, movement within the facility, and activity levels. This proactive approach allows caregivers to identify potential health issues, and provide care before a resident experiences a problem, significantly improving the quality and efficiency of care.

In this video, Dan Roberge interviews Dylan Conley about Life Loop, a resident engagement and staff operations platform designed for senior living communities. Dylan explains that Life Loop streamlines workflows, saving staff time and improving the resident experience. He details how the platform is used by staff, residents, and family members, with features like daily updates via an app for families and AI-powered resident bios for personalized care. Dylan emphasizes the platform's adaptability to communities of all sizes, and discusses the impact of generative AI on simplifying complex tasks like activity scheduling and promoting value-based care, by proactively engaging residents, and addressing social determinants of health.

Antoine Karachekhlian talks about VTech, a Hong Kong-based company with three main divisions: contract manufacturing, educational toys (under VTech and LeapFrog brands), and telecom. At the "Together We Care" event, VTech is showcasing how their multi-cell SIP cordless phones integrate with nurse call systems in senior and extended care facilities, allowing alerts from pull cords to be sent directly to practitioners' phones, with the ability to build a mesh network for improved connectivity.

Dan was surprised to learn that Niklas isn't just testing, but soon implementing robotics technology in senior care homes. Niklas elaborated, explaining that these "helping robots" will take on fundamental tasks like food delivery and environmental cleaning. The core benefit, he stressed, is to free up human caregivers, allowing them more time for genuine "touches and interactions" with residents, which directly translates to better overall care.Beyond day-to-day assistance, Niklas also highlighted the crucial role of robotic sensors in maintenance care, emphasizing their ability to provide live, real-time data. Dan conveyed considerable excitement about these advancements and expressed a keen interest in collaborating with Niklas on similar future projects.

This video features an interview with Edward Robeznieks about Surge, a company that provides an integrated platform for compliance-focused learning management, policy management, and quality and risk management. Robeznieks highlights Surge's significant brand recognition in Ontario, its growing presence in Western and Eastern Canada, and its commitment to creating content that helps organizations adhere to strict provincial regulations. He also discusses the company's strategy for expanding beyond Ontario, targeting rural hospitals and long-term care facilities in other provinces, while acknowledging the unique challenges of markets like Quebec due to government-provided training.

In this podcast, Dan talks with our special guest, Eric Igbokwe from Zephyr Staffing Solutions, a fully digital staffing platform that leverages AI to efficiently match healthcare facilities with qualified nurses and personal support workers (PSWs). When a healthcare professional registers, the platform uses APIs to verify their credentials, conduct digital ID verification, and perform interviews to ensure their information is genuine, and they meet all necessary requirements, including police and vulnerable sector checks. This thorough vetting process, handled by the platform, ensures that only the best candidates are presented to agencies. When a facility requests staff, the AI matches their specific criteria with registered professionals, and the system automatically notifies the best-matched candidate, moving to the next qualified individual if the first one declines.

As the administrator of an aging 151-bed Extendicare senior care home in Scarborough, Toby oversees a small maintenance team and utilizes the "Maintenance Care" software. A core policy mandates that all non-urgent maintenance requests be logged in the system; otherwise, they won't be addressed. However, significant issues such as severe leaks or structural failures are handled immediately and directly, bypassing the digital logging system. As one of the youngest administrators, Toby's main challenge is earning the trust of his more experienced team and securing their acceptance of his decisions, often needing to rely on logic rather rather than extensive personal experience.

In our continuing series of energy-saving solutions, we're joined by Neil Horne from Gold Leaf Energy. He's here to talk to us about a common but often overlooked issue: water scaling in your pipes. Let's dive in and check out what Neil has to say.

In this interview, we chat with Nicole Belanger from Marquise Hospitality, a division of Compass Group that partners with over 200 long-term care and retirement communities in Canada. Nicole explains how Marquise helps organizations focus on care by handling food service, hospitality, and environmental needs. We also dive into the evolving landscape of senior care, Marquise's innovative "Marquise Diner" booth, and the power of DISC assessment in improving team communication. Finally, get a sneak peek at their brand new podcast, "Marquise Moments," featuring diverse guests and thought leadership in the long-term care sector.

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