Telecare

We’re just a phone call away

A local 81-year-old woman was recently hospitalized after falling and spending five days on her bathroom floor.

Officers found her when a caretaker called the police after not hearing from the woman in several days and noticing that newspapers and mail were piling up outside her home.

Apparently the woman had fallen and was unable to get up or call for help.

Perhaps the fall could not have been prevented. But the agonizing five days on the floor could have been avoided if the woman had been a participant in Telecare, Community Hospital’s daily contact program offered free of charge by the hospital Auxiliary.

“Every day of the year without fail, including holidays and weekends,”says program chair Norma Lazzarini, “we call our subscribers between 8:30 and 10:30 in the morning, just to make sure they’re OK. These are usually people living alone who don’t have family around. Whether healthy or feeble, they or their family are worried about them and want to make sure they don’t suffer any kind of accident or illness that leaves them incapacitated and unable to get help.”

If callers get a busy signal, they’ll hang up and try again, up to five times. If they don’t reach the subscriber, they’ll call one or two neighbors and ask that someone go check on the person.

“If the neighbors are not available,” says Lazzarini, “we call the police, who have no problem going over to make sure the person is OK. They don’t mind it at all.”

Some 18 volunteers suit up in their uniforms and head over to the hospital to take their shifts and place a morning call to each subscriber. It’s a daily greeting to someone who lives alone, a friendly voice. It’s the promise that someone will be calling regularly to make sure everything’s all right, and that there will be no prolonged wait to get help if it’s not. All this at no cost. And yet, there are currently less than 50 subscribers.

“It’s amazing how many people don’t know about this service,” says Lazzarini. “We try to get our brochures widely distributed; and they do disappear, so somebody’s reading them. The real issue is getting people to accept this kind of help.”

Telecare is less a statement of aging or infirmity and more a realization that people who live alone don’t have to feel isolated. They are part of a larger community ready and willing to look after their health and
well-being.

“I’ve been volunteering at this for six years, and I even have them call me,” says Lazzarini. “I live alone, and my two daughters are not nearby. My house is situated so I can get in and out without my neighbors noticing. It’s nice to have privacy, but it’s also important to know I’m not going to get lost in the woodwork.”

For more information or to subscribe, please call 625-4557.