On a mission to better the resident’s social experience in senior living. Charles Mann, Accushield Founder and CSO, discusses the importance of resident engagement and how data and technology tracking assist communities in ensuring residents receive frequent touchpoints.
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Love Meter
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This episode was recorded at the ASHA Annual Meeting. 

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 00:54

Welcome to Bridge The Gap podcast, the senior living podcast with Josh and Lucas at the ASHA Winter meeting, the first start of the year here in Miami, Florida with a great friend of ours, Charles Mann of Accushield. Welcome to the show.
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Charles 01:07

Thank you. Thanks for having me.
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Lucas 01:08

It's great to have you back. Our listeners know you for many, many reasons, your groundbreaking technology, your kiosks for making sure that your residents and staff are safe in the building. Y'all have a scheduling platform, and now you're about to roll out something that you lovingly refer to as the love meter. And I'm seeing you post about it on LinkedIn and we've talked a little bit off mic about it. I'm fascinated by it. Would you let our listeners know what this is?
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Charles 01:34

Yeah, so it's an initiative called hashtag Project Love Meter. And one of the things that we've tracked for a long time at the front entry kiosk is the residents that don't get visited. The residents that may not have families, they may not have friends, they get very few social visits. And so we've seen this data, we put this data front and center for our operators to see, to discuss on Monday morning standups, what are the residents that could potentially be disconnected. And so we've taken that data. We've really taken that as our start. There's a lot more to resident isolation and disconnectedness, but we're taking that data point and then leveraging volunteers and taking those volunteers. Currently in our system, we've got about 1.4 million volunteers that have signed in and then we set out to talk with different organizations. There is an incredible amount of volunteers that are willing and able to participate in the lives of seniors and want to give back to those individuals that took care of us growing up. And so I think there's this huge disconnect and this huge opportunity for senior living to leverage volunteers in an intentional way to develop relationships with seniors, especially those that, again, may have a loved one that lives in another state.
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Charles 02:53

The idea is, can we take volunteers that are sitting there on the sidelines not knowing how to participate in the lives of seniors and create intentional opportunities? And so a volunteer that is in the Navy and loves woodworking and likes old cars to match that volunteer with a resident in the community that has similar interests and create this connection. And so that's what we're doing right now and that's sort of a, an initiative that we're kicking off. And actually February 14th, we're going to do a big press release and we're going to go live with communities and really flood communities with volunteer opportunities. It's the biggest thing I think that we've done. The most exciting thing that I have been a part of since we started Accushield. It's something that's meaningful.
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Josh 03:43

So there's no coincidence around February 14th and the love meter date. Your launch is there.
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Charles 03:48

You know, There could be, there could very well be.
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Josh 03:50

Well, I'll tell you through the years some of the best community, I would just call 'em life enriching programs that I've seen have been the communities that understand the importance of a very involved robust volunteer program in the community. I'm curious, as you have all this data, I have to imagine that probably what you're seeing is this is a major under utilization of even communities realizing how many people they have in the system that would fall in the volunteer capacity that they're not even tapping into. Correct.
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Charles 04:23

Somewhere between 30 and 40%, depending upon the community, have a residence with less than one social visit per month. And that ranges from skilled nursing to senior to independent living.
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Josh 04:35

I've never heard a senior community that did not as part of the reason why someone should move to the community is socialization. Right. But when you see that or hear that stat, it lets us know that while that is one of the greatest reasons to move to the community, we are all as an industry on average, very much under utilizing the opportunity that lies in front of us. So essentially what your tool's going to do is essentially give them the data and empower them to be able to better leverage what they have at their disposal. Is that correct?
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Charles 05:10

Yeah, so as you alluded to, we've rolled out a scheduling platform for CNAs and, and really everyone within the community. And what we're doing with that is we're taking that scheduling platform but then also creating a part of this that can help schedule volunteers. So instead of a CNA picking up a shift, that volunteer could download the app, they could upload all their credentials, you have criminal background, check, immunizations, whatever that community needs, and then they can pick up visits and visit opportunities based on their likes and based on their interests. Then that coincides with our scheduling platform and then also gives the ability to, to schedule volunteers to residents within communities.
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Josh 05:52

Wow. So Charles, I gotta ask you, since we have just a few of your precious minutes here, ever since I've known you, which I don't even know, it's, it's a lot of years your software and your team seems to always be out there in front with delivering something that everybody's like, oh, why is nobody already doing this yet? But y'all seem to have a very strategic mind, and I know that stems from your leadership, but as you guys are constantly evolving and adding more things, how does your team constantly be like understanding what the needs are and deploying these different strategies? Like from a leadership standpoint, how, how have you created that kind of culture where y'all just continue to do this?
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Charles 06:33

I think it's helpful to be from the industry. I think it's helpful to have run a community, listened to a dad that had a lot of questions. You know, we have a lot more questions than we have answers and we do a lot of things that fail, but we run hard. And when something doesn't work then we shelf it. But, you know, we've tried a lot of things underneath the Accushield name and had a microcosm of failures, but we had a lot of big wins too. And I think this is one of them.
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Josh 07:02

People that have never been in the industry don't really understand the industry. Maybe they're in another vertical and, and see an opportunity to capitalize on the growth of senior living. Your ability to, to be committed to the industry has been one of those kind of things to where people are willing to try things and you guys just stay the course. And so I applaud you guys for the growth and the foresight, the vision. And it's fun to see, I can't wait Lucas to hear and see all these communities that are taking advantage of the love meter.
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Charles 07:31

Yeah. We want it to be air traffic control. Think about 40 volunteers with personal relationships with residents, whether they're sitting at the dining room table and they're talking with them and eating with them, or maybe they're in their room, one-on-one, or maybe they're helping them with activities. Imagine how much value that could bring to an activities director when they have 40 additional activity directors. Wow. That are helping them with connection. Yeah.
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Josh 07:57

Quality of care. Lucas, you've heard me say this a million times about our teams and our communities. It's our goal to fill the love tanks.
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Charles 08:04

Yeah.
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Josh 08:04

Of our residents, of our team members. And now we've got a love meter. So.
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Charles 08:08

Got a love meter.
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Josh 08:09

So we can, gauge how how we're doing now.
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Charles 08:10

Project Love Meter, yeah.
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Josh 08:11

What an exciting time for our industry and for Accushield.
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Lucas 08:14

It is, it's a great way to leverage modern technology to be able to address one of the most basic needs. To have meaning, to be loved and to share with others, which is what the senior living industry does so well. Congregate care. And that engagement, social isolation and engagement has never been as prevalent. So thank you Charles and Accushield for taking your technology and adapting it specifically to this industry. I think it's going to make a big impact.
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Charles 08:46

We came up with this tagline a couple weeks ago and it's technology with a heartbeat. And so that's what we're going to put on everything.
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Josh 08:53

That's so cool, man. Well thanks for taking time. Very busy schedule here at Asha and so for you to sit down with us means a lot. We appreciate it.
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Lucas 09:01

Absolutely. Thanks guys. And we also appreciate your support to our listeners. The way that we're able to even bring you this content is because of great supporters and sponsors like Charles and Accushield. And thank you for that. And for our listeners that want to know more about Accushield and this great love meter that's coming out, check your show notes, go to btgvoice.com, download this content and so much more. And thanks for listening to another great episode of Bridge the Gap.
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09:25

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.