Accenture exaggerates wildly -- but what should we think? Rant on. Accenture, seeing a void of 'information' to use to gain new clients, put out an obfuscating headline in a press release last week that precipitates pause. More than pause -- the need for a willing suspension of disbelief: Tech-Savvy Seniors Seek Digital Tools to Manage their Health. To generate that headline, they surveyed 9015 adults internationally, including the US -- and, get this, of those, they included 200 aged 65+ Medicare recipients. Of course, 2 percent of the survey responders is what led some PR genius at Accenture to grab attention with that headline. So what's a senior, anyway? Accenture was pitching global consulting services, naturally, and promoting the report that sat behind the headline -- intended for companies filled with young marketers trying to penetrate the mystique of consumers. But when Accenture foists a fact-like assertion, doesn't this make you want to know -- so what IS the technology adoption rate of the real seniors in the US? In September, Pew's researchers sent this along about those aged 76-80: 8.3% have a smart phone, 60.8 have a regular feature phone and 30.9% have neither type. Odds are that the 30.9% population is not online and thus won't be seeking a digital tool to manage their health.
It is never a single problem or issue that creates a “troubled” long-term care facility, says Alan Funk, President, Pomeroy Health, Inc. To be able to identify the underlying issues and develop appropriate strategies to deal with them, Funk suggests that difficult situations need to be broken up into different components. Funk believes the battle has to be addressed on several fronts,
Dementia care – it’s 4:00 and what’s happening? In a nearby memory care unit in an Assisted Living community, the movie has ended, the credits rolled. Next up – visitors hear loud yelling and observe a staff member separating and redirecting an able-bodied resident. Count the number of residents in wheelchairs -- nearly half of the unit -- awaiting some physical care before dinner. These residents seem ever-more frail -- likely because they are delaying move-in until the need is urgent. Often it appears that staff is supplemented with home health or companion services -- note that these providers are assigned to individual residents, not the group -- just like the resident-specific role played by visiting hospice workers. It may appear that there are many staffers around, but minus the one-on-one folks, there aren't enough staffers to keep everyone else occupied. Now consider the dependency on staff to engage these otherwise-bored and idle residents. Soon it will be dinner time and the activities person will have left for the day. Staff members (who earn a national average of $11.10/hour) get busy with ADL-related chores before/after meals and before bed.
Incubators and contests -- do they enable innovation? Paul Krugman's interesting article about GE’s competition to find a new design raises a question about how to boost innovation and lower its cost. If you read the article, entitled 'Complexity is Free' – you will discover how a simple contest, fielded internationally, generated a design improvement at almost no cost for GE: "The winning prize pool [was] $20,000, spread out across 8 finalists, with awards ranging from $1,000 to $7,000 each." So for $20K, GE got something it wanted, layered that something into a design process that enables continuous revision to designs without new infrastructure investment (the 'free' in the title.) Does anyone else find it interesting that there was no internal engineer who could figure out how to design a lighter-weight bracket component -- and that a contest was required? Or was this a publicity stunt to generate good will for GE?
Consider the data, check elsewhere, and discard this report. This kind of thing catches my eye. You know by now which single age demographic income group saw a statistically significant increase in median income since the recession (supposedly) ended in 2007. The New York Times helpfully tells us – it was those 65-74 folk. Says the Times insightfully: “helped perhaps by the decision of some older workers to remain in the work force or re-enter it.” A long way down in the article, we learn that the 5.1 percent increase for those 65-74 put them at a median income of $43,000 -- the national median rose to $52,100 in June -- even though in many cases the head of the household was retired. Guess those 65+ must be doing okay.
