Over the last few years, technology has played a necessary role in meeting Baby Boomer’s lifestyle expectations while filling in some of the gaps caused by staffing shortages throughout the healthcare industry. Holland Home’s Vibrant Living team has been focused on finding the right platforms, tools, and resources to help ensure current and future residents can thrive. To help optimize social engagement, Holland Home partnered with platform Welbi in early 2022. Now, a year and a half into the partnership, we’re taking a look at the benefits it has had for our community.
Who is Welbi?
The goal of Welbi is to improve the quality of life of older adults and transform the way that senior living communities care for them. Welbi seeks to support older adults to live life to the fullest by empowering them and those who care for them to deliver personalized care that brings them health and happiness. Their calendar development and resident tracking tool help facilitate consistency and organization in the production of resident programming calendars. In addition, Welbi offers resident insight functionalities that allow staff to track program attendance and engagement levels to see what programming is and isn’t working.
Utilizing Welbi
We’ve noticed numerous benefits to utilizing a resident engagement platform like Welbi, including: 
  1. Resident Preference Analysis:

The “life story” feature of Welbi feeds directly into the platform's suggestions. For example, it can tell us if we have five former doctors and twelve former professors in our memory care unit so we can quickly and efficiently plan around their interests and preferences for programming that increases their quality of life. This is incredibly beneficial when the resident can no longer express their interests to us. We are able to tailor programming to every individual, meeting them where they are on their aging journey.

  1. Programming Planning:

Our Life Enrichment team can take the preference data gained from the platform and design our programming calendar around it to fit the interests, wants, and needs of our residents.

  1. Measurable Engagement:

Welbi can easily create PDFs of resident engagement and activity, which can be quickly sent to their loved ones who want to stay informed on what they’re doing and when they’re doing it. Before Welbi, it would take around a half hour to pull and analyze this data—now it takes just 5 minutes. 

Resident Engagement
The three plagues of aging—loneliness, helplessness, and boredom account for the bulk of challenges among seniors. Having a well-rounded wellness program is essential to the physical, mental, and emotional health of our residents. According to the International Council on Active Aging ®, the average increase in length of stay for residents participating in wellness programs is 2.7 years. Research also suggests that the more a resident is engaged based on need and preference, there are fewer falls and less need for prescription drugs. Adopting a resident engagement tool has allowed staff to efficiently analyze and advance resident engagement for those living in our community. With Welbi, our Vibrant Living teams are able to:
  • Better anticipate resident needs and deliver personalized experiences. 
  • Stay attuned to changing resident needs with real-time insights and reporting. 
  • Provide top-tier resident experiences based on Welbi’s recommendations 
  • Facilitate data-driven decisions that boost engagement and wellness
___

Adopting a resident engagement tool has allowed staff to efficiently analyze and advance resident engagement for those living in our community.

   

Staff and Operations
Investing in Welbi’s resident engagement platform has increased efficiency around program planning and shaved 25 hours a month off our Vibrant Living team’s administrative time, allowing us to complete calendars 6x faster than before. Calendars now have a consistent, branded look and are done in a fraction of the time. Staff efforts are supported through data-driven technology, including:
  • Real-time data reporting: Allows us to quickly intervene and ward off potential isolation and its consequences.
  • Paperless system: We’re still balancing the paper-preference and electronic-preference adults. However, this platform reduces paper use and eliminates the risk of having personal information about residents out in the open. 
  • Streamlined: Everyone from our Vibrant Living team to physical therapists to nurses has the ability to access to this information, which helps improve the quality of care they are able to provide. 
  • Noticeable trends to capitalize on:
    • Who has declined to participate more frequently?
    • What times of programming are residents most likely to attend?
    • What component of wellness speaks to them the most?
When asked how confident the team feels that they have easy access to the information they need to offer personalized experiences and programming to residents on a scale of 1-10, they saw their confidence rise from 3 to an average of 7.5.
When asked whether teams felt there was a good balance between the time they spend on administrative tasks vs. time working directly with residents on a scale of 1-10, it jumped from an average of 5 to an average of 9.
What It All Means
Having all this data at our disposal ultimately helps us improve whole-person wellness and safety. If an individual is specifically engaged based on their unique preferences and needs, there will ideally be fewer negative consequences that lead to more medication, injuries, or illness. 
For even more information and insight into how Welbi plays an important role in optimizing social engagement and life enrichment for Holland Home residents, listen to our This Day & Age podcast episode featuring Holland Home Director of Resident Life, Marenta Klinger, and Welbi CEO, Elizabeth Audette-Bourdeau.

____

LISTEN NOW