Kendal Lathrop Easthampton

Uses SARA for Broad Emergency Management Applications

Description

An affiliate of The Kendal Corporation, Lathrop Retirement Communities in Northampton and Easthampton, Mass., are not-for-profit organizations with local, volunteer boards of directors serving older adults in the Quaker tradition. The Easthampton campus includes 61 townhomes and 59 studio and two-bedroom apartments at The Inn at Easthampton.

Opportunity

The Easthampton campus of Lathrop Retirement Communities deployed Status Solutions’ Situational Awareness and Response Assistant (SARA) in 2008 to replace an existing emergency response system that was problematic, unreliable and complicated.

SARA now serves as the alerting engine for nurse call through wireless personal pendants and pull cords in each unit, as well as pull cords in public restrooms and exercise areas.

With SARA, the retirement community was able to expand its wireless bubble, converting wired pull cords in bathrooms and bedrooms to wireless ones that can be moved easily within a unit to accommodate residents’ furniture, for example.  

SARA’s implementation also allowed the community to leverage the existing hardware for its conventional pendant system and card readers for access control throughout the campus. When a door opens, SARA generates a history. The solution also lets security know via pagers when key personnel – such as the executive director, facilities director and head of nursing – have entered a building.

Solution

In addition to using SARA as the direct alerting system for personal pendants and nurse call, the Lathrop Easthampton campus has integrated the solution with many other emergency management and environmental monitoring systems for situational awareness. Examples of current uses include:

• Fire panel integration – Smoke, heat and carbon monoxide detectors are installed in each unit and all common areas. Fire pull stations throughout the campus also are integrated to SARA.

• Empty cottage fire alarms – A universal transmitter is wired to the dialer/strobe circuit with signals going to SARA to indicate if an alarm goes off in an empty unit.

• Door contact alarms – A universal transmitter is located on each door, telling SARA when a door has been opened. If the apartment door of someone with cognitive issues has been opened at 2 a.m., an alert notifies security. Combined with the access control and security camera systems, a trail can be created to determine what is happening.

• Low temperature alarms – If a unit is empty or if a resident goes on vacation, a universal transmitter can be placed on a counter to let SARA know if the temperature in the unit drops below 40 degrees.

• Security checkpoints – Transmitters with key switches have been set up at 11 checkpoints throughout campus. Every two hours, the security officer on duty must insert a key into each checkpoint to generate a history logged in SARA, showing that security is making appropriate and thorough rounds.

• Sewage pumping stations – A universal transmitter at each pumping station sends a signal to SARA if a high-water condition occurs to prevent a catastrophic shutdown.

• Generator – A universal transmitter sends a signal to SARA to let it know that it is in operation.

• Sprinkler system control – Again, via universal transmitters, SARA will know if a sprinkler goes off and where.

Partnership

“SARA is easy, versatile and dependable,” explains Jack Cooper, director of facilities for Lathrop Retirement Communities. “The solution does what it’s supposed to do when it comes to helping us provide basic emergency response. However, we’ve been able to use it for broader emergency management and environmental monitoring applications.”

Cooper goes on to explain that SARA’s supervisory feature adds to its dependability. The SARA server looks at all of Easthampton’s pendants, pull cords and transmitters across campus. It will show if a device is missing – if someone leaves the campus and is gone for an extended period of time that would create concern – and if a battery is low so preventative maintenance can be performed.  

This feature enabled Easthampton to investigate when alerting devices on an entire street recently went offline. When it was determined that a painter accidentally had unplugged a repeater, it was quickly plugged back in once the problem was discovered.

Summary

In addition to emergency response, Lathrop Easthampton uses SARA for a number of emergency management and environmental monitoring applications. “We can use SARA to generate an electronic history for virtually any category we create,” notes Cooper.

The community’s emergency management policy requires that staff open the SARA application when they report for work and keep it running on their computers in the background. Then in the event of an alarm, they will know exactly what is happening and from where the alert is coming.