‘Transformational models’ needed, says Buckley
New thinking and new transformational models of service delivery are critical to providing aged care services in the future, says Jennene Buckley, whose organisation, Feros Care, won the top award at the HESTA Aged Care Awards last night.
New thinking and new transformational models of service delivery are critical to providing aged care services in the future, says Jennene Buckley, whose organisation, Feros Care, won the top award at the HESTA Aged Care Awards last night.
Feros was one of the first aged care providers in Australia to establish telehealthcare services and is widely seen as a pioneer in adopting enabling technologies to help seniors stay at home and live independent lives.
Last night Feros won the Outstanding Organisation Award in recognition of its innovative delivery of smart and virtual technologies for aged care in four eastern states.
Speaking this morning, Ms Buckley said her organisation believed that Australia’s greatest challenge and hope in meeting the needs of its rapidly ageing population was keeping seniors “as healthy, independent, living at home, socially connected to their family, friends and community for as long as possible.”
She said:
“Both government and industry knows that the way we provide services today cannot be the way we need to provide services in future.”
Ms Buckley said she was thrilled to accept the award that recognised Feros Care’s contribution to aged care through development and provision of new technology enabled service models and solutions for seniors.
Feros supports seniors through the use of telehealth and smart technologies including group and individual video calls, senior friendly personal computers and tablets, virtual case management and smart home technology and monitoring safety.
Ms Buckley said Feros Care’s NBN-enabled My Health Clinic At Home (MHCAH) program was an exciting pilot that opened minds to what was possible with high speed broadband and shaped a number of exciting initiatives moving forward.
“My Health Clinic at Home uses telehealth technologies to monitor hundreds of clients with chronic diseases in their homes. Clients connect to Feros’s telehealth nurses, GP and other health professionals via video call and are able to have their vital signs monitored to enable more timely and effective health care,” she said.
In addition to health monitoring, the MHCAH was used to connect seniors virtually to family, friends, community case managers and significant others in their lives, to help reduce their social isolation using a easy touch screen interface that Feros Care’s IT team developed.
Ms Buckley said faster and more reliable internet was helping future proof a sustainable telehealth experience and social connectiveness for clients.
“Pilots like the MHCAH are showing how the federal government’s $36 billion NBN network – delivering a super fast cable network to nearly every home – is helping provide in home care technologies to suburbs too far from telecommunications exchanges without the speed or bandwidth to access telehealth services,” she said.
Ms Buckley said Feros had recently installed gigabyte wireless networks in its residential aged care villages and a secure video conferencing platform to enable high quality video calls to assist clients living at home and in residential villages to access health services and to tackle social isolation. Feros has facilitated over 5,000 video conferencing sessions from one-on-on interactions with its clients and a family member or GP, to group multi-party sessions such as online bingo (involving over 50 seniors), group chat clubs and healthy literacy classes.
Feros adds the $10,000 HESTA award to a growing list of industry awards including the 2014 ACSA NSW &ACT State Awards for Excellence, an International Award for Excellence in Ageing Services, the 2012 Australian Institute of Management Award and a finalist in both the 2014 CIO of the Year and 2014 LASA Queensland Awards.
Feros said it hoped to use the prize funds to develop information videos for seniors on the benefits of enabling technologies.
Don’t miss the forthcoming issue of AAA Technology Review, which will feature Jennene Buckley in the regular ‘My Online Life’ section. AAA Technology Review is distributed with AAA magazine.
