Safety and security for residents and staff is priority for community leaders. President and CEO/Co-founder at Accushield, Allen Barnes shares the importance of monitoring guests and earning Google reviews.

This episode was recorded at the NIC Fall Conference.
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Produced by Solinity Marketing.
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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 Accushield, Aline, NIC MAP Vision, ProCare HR, Sage, Hamilton CapTel, Service Master, Patriot Angels, The Bridge Group Construction and Solinity. And produced by Solinity Marketing.

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Lucas 00:51

Welcome to Bridge The Gap podcast, the senior living podcast with Josh and Lucas here in Chicago. Kind of a cool, not too bad of a day here in the city at the NIC Conference Fall 2023. And today we have Allen Barnes, the CEO and Co-founder at Accushield. Welcome to the show.

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Allen 1:09

Great. Thanks for having me.

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Lucas 1:10

It's so good to have you on the program. We were kidding beforehand. And we're like, finally somebody other than Charles is on the show for Accushield.

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Allen 1:19

Absolutely. We need a new face here.

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Lucas 1:21

He's waved that banner so well for Accushield in such an authentic way. Gosh, I've known Charles for 15 plus years and it's incredible to see what you and your team have been able to accomplish with Accushield in providing a service to the senior living industry that's never been available before and has such an impact on safety.

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Allen 1:43

Yeah, so much of it comes from Charles is the way he grew up, and he grew up with a father who was an assisted living developer. He jokes that his friends growing up were the residents. And so we've gotten a deep sort of association with the industry and, you know, Charles has sort of helped us create a culture and understand the industry in a way that allows us to take this mission forward and hopefully do a great job with it.

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Josh 2:06

I don't know how long ago it was that I first came in contact with Accushield and Charles, but I mean, it was years and years ago and it's been quite an evolution of product services and what you guys offer. So where are we now in the current days? You guys are such thought leaders in this space and you continue to evolve. So if you could give us a little bit of what's cutting edge now and where you guys are going.

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Allen 2:29

Sure, I'd love to do that. You know the core of everything we do in our mission is safety and security. And so that's sort of the premise that we sort of filter everything through. But at the same time, that marriage, well, what we do with safety and security with other products and a more informed community that can do more with that information we collect. So at the base, we want to know who's in the community at any time. We want the management and the community to know who's there and should they be there and who they're seeing. And so that information by itself is critical, we think, because when you think about, let's say an elementary school, elementary schools, we all know what's happened in elementary schools and those, a lot of those things break our heart and continue to break our hearts. Really, a senior living community is very similar to an elementary school as opposed to a individual that you are responsible for who has not yet matured enough to take care of themselves. Really, in senior living, you've almost got the other thing. They've really matured beyond many times being able to take care of themselves. We want to make sure that whoever is in that community is supposed to be there, but when they do that, when they sign into the kiosk, into the mobile app, they provide information that allows us to then take that data and do more things with it.

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Josh 3:46

Just expand on that a little bit. Because some of the things you guys are doing probably not all of our listeners know about. And it would be cool for them to kind of understand that.

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Allen 3:56

There some tools, again, back to safety and security, like our evacuation management tool. When you think about what happens in Florida and California and with wildfires, you need to be prepared for an evacuation. And the only way you can be prepared for an evacuation is to know who's in your community and make sure that everybody is accounted for. And on the other side, there's care coordination. And that care coordination allows the community to know, when you think about the amount of third party care provided in a community, you need to know resident by resident who's seen them and what service was provided. And so our data allows us to do that as well. So that's really more on the sort of safety, security, care coordination, healthcare side. But then we also have a new product, I say "new" now, it's a year and a half old.

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Allen 4:43

It has been a great success for us called Reputation Accelerator. And Reputation Accelerator allows communities to take surveys and create reviews from the kiosk. And so to date, I think in the sort of 18 months we've been out there, we've created over a million reviews. I think 1,000,001 reviews. A lot of those then are pushed to a review source like a Google. I would make a pretty bold statement that we create more Google reviews for senior living than anybody else.

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Josh 5:12

Wow.

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Allen 5:12

And interestingly, and it says something about our great industry, there's a fear, "Oh my gosh, what if somebody gives a bad review?" And all those reviews, 93% are a four or a five. And so for all, we think our industry a lot of times is maligned because it doesn't meet expectations. Well, 93, 94% of the time. So we ought to celebrate that.

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Josh 5:34

So you said 93%?

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Allen 5:36

93% are fours or fives.

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Josh 5:38

Wow. And, you know, I would argue also we lack taking the opportunity to, anytime you have a what could be perceived as a negative comment, that's an opportunity to have a great service recovery. Because the fact is, if you don't know it, they're going to tell somebody that. But at least if you know about it, you can do something about it.

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Allen 5:57

Well, interestingly, if you get a one, two or three, the Executive Director or whomever will get a text immediately that says, "You've got a review that's a one." You've got an opportunity to do something about it. And my guess is most of the time they can address it and they can do something about it and create a good experience and an advocate instead of a detractor.

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Josh 6:17

What a huge value add. Just for taking good care of your residents and your community.

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Allen 6:22

Gotta love it. Another one you asked about other tools. We've got another one called the Love Meter. And you may have heard about that. I know Charles likes to talk about it a lot. He may have talked about it on a previous podcast, but the Love Meter identifies the least visited residents in a senior living community. And when you think about the Surgeon General has just put out a notice that says, we've got an epidemic of loneliness in this country. When you think about the elderly, particularly those in their homes, but even in senior living communities, a lot of elderly don't get visitors. And so what the love meter allows us to do is take that information, identifying a resident who is lonely and either via staff or volunteers or other means, send some love to 'em.

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Josh 7:07

Wow.

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Allen 7:07

Have somebody spend time with them. And not only is it ethically what we should do and what our industry does want to do, but it also is very smart because I guess from a move out standpoint, you can again, take a potential detractor into and make them a fan of your community. So it's just a, it's a great, great tool.

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Josh 7:27

That is an amazing tool. And Lucas, I want to implement that at Bridge The Gap because I, you know, I've got a love tank a little bit low right now. I need you to send me some love over here.

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Allen 7:36

We can do it. Yeah, we can even get volunteers to come and take care.

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Lucas 7:40

We do. We do. We need the Love Meter for old Josh over here. Well, that's good. So a lot of these new initiatives coming out, there's so much momentum. I mean, I'm in and out of these communities very, very frequently and I feel like I need like a fast pass to get past, you know, to get in and out of the Accushield. Hopefully maybe I get upgraded one day. I'd get a little fast pass.

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Allen 7:58

We might be able to work that. The Platinum Accushield.

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Lucas 8:01

I know. Yeah. Frequent flyer, you know, kind of a deal, you know, I could get these.

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Josh 8:06

It sounds like a thing. It sounds like it should be a thing.

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Lucas 8:09

So many ideas. Right? So in 2024, are there any other things that you're able to discuss? I mean, you guys are always innovating.

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Allen 8:18

Ultimately, what we believe in senior living is the consolidators of technology are going to be the winners. Because when you have 50 different systems with 50 different implementations, upgrades, retraining, that's hard. And so much of what we're trying to do is, in our world, when you think about a visitor coming in, a visitor could be a volunteer, it could be a third-party caregiver, it could be contract staffer, it could be family, it can be all kinds of things. You need to either push to that visitor, certain things based on their visitor category or pull from them certain things. And so we've got a document management system and other tools to do that. But going forward, what we want to do is, when you think about that continuum, that continuum is families, it's the resident, it's the staff, but it's also third-party care providers and others.

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Allen 9:07

And so really a big initiative for us in 24 and 25 is connecting that whole group, creating a communication loop for that whole group where you don't have so many islands that you have to send messages from. Those islands are connected. And so that's a big one for us. And the second one and this is early on a term that's sort of thrown about and we're all figuring out what it is for senior living, but value-based care. Value-based care, at least in our estimation, is going to have, you know, some big impact in senior living. I don't think anybody's figured out exactly what it looks like, but we think we have a big role to play in value-based care. And so that's another initiative in 24 and 25 that we're going to be spending a lot of time on.

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Josh 9:51

Well, Lucas Accushield has been leading the way for a long time and it's a great opportunity for us to, once again thank Accushield, because so many things that we do at Bridge The Gap and so much content that we're able to provide to our listeners growing group is because you guys invest in partnerships to help move the industry forward. So we really appreciate you taking time out of a busy schedule at NIC.

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Allen 10:14

Hey, great. Thanks for having me on and thanks for what you guys do as well.

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Lucas 10:18

Thank you, Allen, so much. And for our listeners that want to learn more about Accushield and their great team there, mostly out of Atlanta, we'll connect in the show notes. They're actually in every show note. You can see a link right there. Just scroll down, hit the notes. You can see Accushield, click that, go to btgvoice.com. You can download this episode. Check out all of our content there. Won't you hit us on LinkedIn, give us a comment and a like there, and we'll see you next time on another great episode of Bridge The Gap.

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10:43

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.