Emergency Call Buttons; do they work? Which are the best / worst?

[jrodgers]

Recently an emergency call button system was recalled because the button could not communicate with the receiver. My Dad wears a button that has a “fall” alert. He has had to stop wearing it at night because if he rolls from his right side back over to his left side it will register a “fall” and summon the EMT’s.

When he was wearing it we would have 4-5 false alarms every month. Since he is deaf he cannot respond to the paging unit.

Recently he visited an assisted living facility for respite care, they have a button system that pages the employees on call for his room. It seems like a pretty good system, and Dad had no false alarms, however it does not receive the message if the employee goes to the tornado shelter.

The employee knocked on a resident’s door and told him to go to the tornado shelter and then left the area. The resident needed to use the bathroom first and fell from his wheelchair and was stuck on the floor for several hours. After two hours of repeated button pressing his battery was gone, so it was another resident who found him and called the emt’s.

my aunt has a button that has a microphone in it so she does not have to be in the proximity of the base unit to speak to someone. some buttons have gps locators and work using cell phone towers to locate the senior.

communication, battery life, reliability, and features are all important considerations beyond the pricing of the unit.

have you tried any help buttons?

what have you learned about which are the best or worst choices for your particular senior?

are these buttons helpful or are they a ripoff that targets seniors?

[FreebieQueen]

i think this is an excellent question to pose, we went through a time period where we were researching these for my grandmother who had fallen, smashed her face, broken her hip and laid on the floor for almost an entire weekend before she was found. We ended up doing phone calls every morning and evening after that because she didn’t trust the “buttons”.

[jrodgers]

We discovered that after a power outage, my father’s desk console did not reset for 2 days, luckily he did not fall. In the course of a discussion about the inherent problems in such a situation, I was informed that if there was a power outage that lasted more than a day, his button would be completely non-functional, (the lifespan of the backup battery in the console unit is only 24 hours). My father is deaf, legally blind and the button monitors for falls as well as emergency calls.

I am looking for suggestions about what has worked for others to help guide us in the decision of which button to replace his current one.

[jrodgers]

Here is a cpsc recall for a personal safety button – the console would not notify of a low battery in the pendant

recall summary
name of product:

visonic amber classic and amber selectx personal emergency response system (pers) kits

hazard:

a single amber base station set to common area mode will not detect a low battery or dead battery warning signal from the remote pendant that notifies the end user or system administrator to replace the pendant battery.

these buttons are used at the assisted living facility where my dad goes for respite care. i wonder if they have responded to the recall yet?

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