Ashley Van Doorn, former General Manager, and her team at Alavida Lifestyles Retirement Home in Promenade, struggled with poor internet connectivity, phone lines that were constantly down, and nurse call systems that didn’t quite do their job.

“During Christmas our phone lines were down for a week and families were trying to call their loved ones,” explained Van Doorn. “We had internet issues constantly, our call bell phones were falling apart and breaking. All of our systems went down.”

Van Doorn said that it was common for them to bring in extra staff to help with issues as they arose because their system was unreliable.

“When I would get home I was constantly worried,” she admitted. “As a general manager I worried every night that I was going to get a call that our system was down.”

To make matters worse, all of the residents shared the same WiFi.

“They weren’t able to binge watch on Netflix or stream things,” she said. “Especially during the isolation that we experienced back in March.”

It was around this time that they knew they needed to upgrade their system.

The Zodiac Transition  

“The transition to Zodiac was really smooth,” she said. “Hesam’s team communicated amazingly and they were always in touch with our team.”

According to Van Doorn, she and her team always knew what was going on. Even with her lack of IT knowledge, she explained that Zodiac ensured that everyone on the team understood the process and how it worked.

“When they would explain it to us it was kind of in layman’s terms,” she stated. “They were always willing to help. Especially those first six months of the transition, the team came in and trained our staff.”

However, because their system was from 2009, there was a bit of a learning curve from the staff at Promenade.

“Some people aren’t tech savvy, but whenever they had questions, they could call and Zodiac would get back to us usually within 30 minutes.” explained Van Doorn.

Value

Comparing their old system to Zodiac, the staff at Promenade agreed that Zodiac offered these 3 core values:

Intuitively 

“It’s very user friendly, even for those who aren’t as tech savvy. They’re still able to pick it up relatively quickly.” she said. “It’s kind of intuitive in that way.”

Reliability

“The new system brought forward that reliability we needed because we were using a 10 year old system,” said Van Doorn. “Zodiac is a much more trustworthy system – one where I am not anxious that it would go down.”

Efficiency

“With a more efficient system, you’re able to deliver better care because you’re reliant. You’re relying on the system that is more confident.” she explained. “So you’re able to see that there’s a call, they’ll get to the resident quicker and the residents therefore receive better quality of care.”

One Month Later

“There’s no mishaps, the system doesn’t go down and you’re really able to give that quality of care,” she said. “The staff and the residents in the building noticed a difference right away because we were responding to call bells quicker and consistently. The internet was much better and they were able to make calls without dropping them and were quite happy.”

Van Doorn stated that from an operations perspective she was no longer stressed or worried about if the system was going to go down again.

“You want to work with companies you trust, and I fully trust Zodiac,” she said. “You’re getting the customer experience and the actual product does what it says. I’ve worked in quite a few retirement homes and seen quite a few call bell systems, but this is the best.”

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