Adaptive Care: Acoustic monitoring at WCS Care

03 May 2024

Successfully reducing falls

Welcome to this first piece of a two-part case study to discover how we helped WCS Care successfully reduce falls by an incredible 55% per year during night and day, with the use of our industry leading CLB Acoustic Monitoring!

WCS Care is a not-for-profit care home provider in Warwickshire with 13 care homes. They are known for implementing new technology which has a positive impact on the health and wellbeing of their residents. Adaptive Care’s CLB Acoustic Monitoring system has been installed at three new-build homes and the Wi-Fi enabled version was retrofitted at an older home, where minimising disruption to residents already living there was a primary aim. This was the first home in the UK to have the Wi-Fi enabled version of CLB acoustic monitoring and it was a great success.

Reduce falls, improve care & efficiency

Reduce fallsWCS Care’s motivation for the installation of Acoustic Monitoring from CLB was based on the improved quality of night-time care the system offered to their residents. The system was retro-fitted at their first home in 2016 where residents benefited from the system on the first night with carers able to give emotional support to a distressed resident promptly. In the first year of use, this home saw a reduction in falls at night of 34%. WCS has also evidenced a reduction in falls at another home of 55% at night and during the day, demonstrating that improved sleep contributes to a reduction in falls during the day too.

Soon after installation; over a period of 4 months the same home recorded no night-time falls. A clear demonstration that the system, alongside WCS’s approach, is embedded and delivering care quality and health improvements to residents.

Moving to multi-site monitoring

With more residents asleep at night, WCS Care reduced the number of night carers on shift from six to five. This gave a return on investment of 15 months for the system in that home.

This learning fed into their night-time staffing model for homes with the system, giving an overall net reduction of two night staff, who are generally more expensive, whilst delivering a better service.

With the opening of their latest home, WCS Care now has four sites using Adaptive Care’s CLB Acoustic Monitoring and they have taken the next step of centrally monitoring two sites from one location i.e. the new home.

Two of WCS Care’s homes; Drovers House and Castle Brook manage their monitoring independently, while Woodside Care Village stands as WCS Care’s latest new build home to have the Adaptive acoustic monitoring system installed.

Woodside Care Village monitors two homes. They administer both in-house acoustic monitoring whilst also monitoring The Limes from a single location. The Limes is the older facility that has the Wi-Fi enabled acoustic monitoring system. WCS Care’s ambition is to establish a single central monitoring hub for the entire group with the ultimate goal of extending the acoustic monitoring system to encompass more of their homes through the continued deployment of CLB acoustic monitoring installations.

Using this approach across just four homes, CLB calculate that annual revenue savings in the region of £80,000 – £100,000 can be achieved – depending on the length of night shifts and the salaries paid. This means more money to be reinvested into delivering exceptional levels of innovative tailored care.

To find out how we can help reduce or even prevent falls in your care environment, get in touch today!