Seniors Housing & Healthcare Trends

LOS ANGELES: The first stage of 21 purpose-designed apartments in the new care suites building at St. Andrew’s Village offers a hybrid care model that enables residents to feel independent within their luxury apartment while also enjoying the security of full residential aged care services – covering both rest home and hospital levels of care.

With fresh, modern interior design reminiscent of a sleek hotel, each suite comes complete with a small kitchenette, lounge and dining area, an outside balcony, and a separate bedroom with a full ensuite. These apartments range in size from 39 to 43 square metres.

Most importantly, once residents move in, they can stay in the same suite for the duration of their life’s journey without the stress of having to move apartments again should their assessed levels of need increase from rest home to hospital level of care.

St. Andrew’s Village Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Joyce, says that the new care suites incorporate a New Zealand first in terms of assistive technology to enhance the safety of residents.

The new building is the first Aged Care building in New Zealand to use the Elsi Smart Floor system, which has been operating in Europe for many years, and is currently gaining popularity amongst care operators in Australia. The Elsi Smart Floor incorporates a system of copper tiles installed under the carpet in each apartment’s bedroom and lounge areas.

“As residents walk around their apartment, their weight will only ever be concentrated on a few copper tiles at a time”, says Andrew Joyce. “However, if a resident falls, their weight will be distributed across multiple tiles, instantly triggering an alarm for the care team, without the resident needing to activate an alarm call themselves. This allows St. Andrew’s to provide increased levels of care, as the system will run in the background 24/7, alongside the more traditional nurse call systems”.

“The Elsi Smart Floor system can also be tailored to meet individual resident’s needs”, states Andrew Joyce, “for example, by providing automated alerts to the care staff if a resident who is a known falls risk gets out of bed at night so that staff can go and assist them”.

The Elsi Smart Floor system also extends into the bathroom area via a series of sensor beams.

Andrew Joyce says the care suites are aimed at residents who want more than the traditional aged care room within a large Care Centre. “The care suites will be sold under an ORA agreement (similar to a retirement village transaction), and then the daily care fees are paid on top”.

He says “the entire building has been certified to provide both rest home and hospital level aged care services, and incoming residents will need to be formally assessed as requiring one of those levels of care. This same criterion applies to any resident moving into our traditional Care Centre.”

The care suites will be a welcoming environment for families and friends to visit, as residents can entertain within the privacy of their own apartments and within any of the communal spaces. Andrew Joyce says, “The care team would be delighted to show people around.”

So, no matter where your ageing and medical journey takes you, there will always be a home for you at St. Andrew’s Village, where you can live your best life.