News

John Knox Village, one of America’s leading continuing care retirement communities, has partnered with Tunstall Healthcare, the world’s leading provider of telecare equipment, delivering a new telecare service to support seniors in living a more independent life.

3 October, 2008 - One of America’s leading continuing care retirement communities, John Knox Village, has chosen to partner with Tunstall Healthcare, based in the United Kingdom, to offer its existing residents and those living outside of its campus the very best in telecare services to help them remain independent and increase their quality of life.

Located in Lee’s Summit, MO, John Knox Village is one of the largest retirement communities in America offering more than 70 housing options, including one and two-bedroom homes, villas and cottages and apartment homes. It also includes a residential care facility with private apartments and the Village Care Center, a 430-bed skilled nursing facility. The community also offers high quality community health care services and has joined forces with Tunstall to provide an enhanced level of service, known as Home for Life Solutions, by drawing upon Tunstall’s 50 years experience in providing telecare and Personal Emergency Response System (PERS) equipment. Tunstall currently supports over 2.5 million people to live independently and has extensive experience in offering such solutions across the world.

Tunstall has supported the development of John Knox Village’s Home for Life Solutions and is helping the organization deliver the products and tools to its residents and community. In the USA, it is estimated that the number of people over the age of 80 will triple from 9.3 million (2000) to 33.7 million by 2050, meaning there is urgent need for alternative care solutions to assist the growing demand for community care.

Telecare builds upon the benefits offered by traditional PERS services to further enable seniors to remain living safely at home. Telecare provides enhancements beyond traditional PERS services and helps monitor a wide range of activities of daily living, the home environment and personal safety. It consists of various unobtrusive telecare sensors placed around the home linked to a telecare enabled home unit, such as the Tunstall Caresse. The home unit and sensors are monitored 24 hours a day, 365 days a year by a dedicated monitoring center. When the sensors are triggered, a call is immediately sent to the center, allowing action to be taken quickly. The range of sensors, which includes smoke detectors, flooding detectors, high and low temperature sensors, fall monitors, and many more, provide greater reassurance and protection for the users.

The use of telecare not only benefits the user and their loved ones with increased safety and the reassurance that help is available 24 hours a day. It can also help reduce the need for some hospital visits, as well as reduce the length of stays in nursing facilities and residential care facilities, resulting in reduced health care costs.

CEO of Tunstall, James Buckley commented: “Tunstall is delighted to be working in partnership with John Knox Village to launch Telecare into the North American market. We are sure the partnership will help them continue to deliver high levels of service to their existing customers while expanding new telecare services and increasing the number of people benefiting from the comfort such services offer.”

John Knox Village CEO Dan Rexroth said: “What began as a vision to enable seniors to live in their homes longer, is now a dream fulfilled.” He added “it is a giant step to now be able to serve the greater community and other organizations, with the goal of helping seniors live more safely in the comfort of their home”.

Rodney McBride, Vice President of Health Services at John Knox Village said: “We are proud of the support we offer to our customers and partnering with Tunstall will help us deliver this new service to the very highest quality. Tunstall has a proven track record of delivering market leading technology and now, partnering with Home for Life Solutions, they have the opportunity to be a leader in America.”

Tunstall and Home for Life Solutions will be jointly demonstrating their services at booth 540 at the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging (AAHSA) annual meeting and exposition in Philadelphia, PA October 12-15.

About John Knox Village
John Knox Village is a not-for-profit, nondenominational continuing care retirement community, offering a variety of health services to 16 counties in Missouri and Kansas. Home for Life Solutions is available to John Knox Village residents and the community. PremierLife Enterprises INC, the sister company, provides telecare and telehealth products and services to health care organizations. For more information please visit our web sites at www.johnknoxvillage.org, or www.homeforlifesolutions.com.