Today in Truro, Nova Scotia, Breton SmarTek presented an innovative approach to emergency management for special care facilities. The Special Care Emergency Preparedness Association of Nova Scotia (SCEPA) held an annual conference in which some of the very best in special care professionals gather to focus on emergency preparedness and management for the Continuing Care sector of the Nova Scotia health system. CAREQ provides long term care facilities with unprecedented control and speed over communications in an emergency situation.
In its role as an education and resource group, SCEPA hosted leaders in the field of special care in forum for the exchange of emergency planning information. As the only association of its kind in Canada, SCEPA is dedicated to presenting its members with the most current information on emergency planning and management.
SCEPA President, Jacob Hillier, said, “SCEPA Is a members driven organization where one of our mandates is to seek out solutions to issues that affect us all and the residents we serve.
A high risk common issue we all struggle with is being able to get staff to return to our facilities, as quickly as possible, in an emergency situation. The safety of our clients depends on this quick response. The issues we all face are limited staff resources to physically call numerous staff and their responses and availability.
CareQ offers a solution by providing a tool that will contact all staff in a matter of minutes and allow them the opportunity to provide an immediate response.
We were very pleased to have Ian McVicar of Breton SmarTek present this potential solution to the members in attendance at the conference today. Innovations like CareQ help us to use current technology to improve safety for staff and residents.”
At the SCEPA meeting, Breton SmarTek conducted a live demonstration of the CAREQ Enhanced Notification System: a two-way communication system that dramatically improves emergency communications and response times. It is comprised of voice, text and email technologies. It will allow care facilities to communicate with staff and families via text, phone, email or all three — depending on which mode of communications is most convenient for each contact. With CAREQ, care facilities can contact staff quickly and efficiently in an emergency situation, with the ability to reply to acknowledge receipt of messages and availability to participate in an emergency. CAREQ can also be used to send families information about any facility-based emergencies that could affect their loved ones.
With CAREQ, care facilities can significantly reduce the time it takes to notify staff and the time it takes for staff to respond. These reductions ensure more people are deployed more efficiently. A recent full test of the CAREQ system at a large Nova Scotia care facility resulted in communications that were successfully completed more than 15 times faster than traditional methods. Facility staff regularly drill and practice emergency response and coordination protocols. The use of the CAREQ communication system improved staff notification and staff acknowledgement of a potential emergency by more than 1500%.
As a Nova Scotia – based company that shares the vision of the SCEPA organization, Breton Smartek was proud to be included in the agenda of their annual conference.
