NORTH LIMA, Ohio (WKBN) – A health care facility in North Lima has found a way to make it easier to connect patients with health care workers. New technology is benefitting the facility.
The Calcutta Health Care Center (CHCC) has just received a new way to connect patients with their nurses across the facility.
Over 200 Amazon Echos were donated to CHCC for patients and nurses to use, helping them communicate across their wing of the facility.
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The idea came from CHCC’s corporate activity director’s son, who is an Amazon employee.
“It was an original concept that he had and Amazon had, that wanted to partner with nursing homes. We were one of the first ones that said we’re willing to do it, we want to give it a try. We are the only ones in the state of Ohio with this,” said Greg Roof, CHCC’s regional administrator.
The idea has already been implemented in hospitals but not in nursing facilities. It was originally designed to reduce staff from going into patient rooms during the pandemic.
Now, the Echos serve a bigger purpose.
“If a resident puts on their call light, we can do a face-to-face interview with the resident and ask what they want. If they ask, ‘I need a drink of water,’ they can go down and get a water and take it to their room,” Roof said.
Patients are finding the Amazon Echo to be very helpful.
“I like it. It’s really nice. It’ll help out everybody,” said patient Chris Seawood.
Amazon Echos are also in four other CHCC facilities across Northeast Ohio. They hope to connect the Echos to their medical record software and continuously use all of its capabilities.
“It’s kind of just in the process of seeing what we can do, seeing the features we can add to it and communicate with staff, showing staff how to do it,” Roof said.