The other day on National Public Radio I heard a report about medication errors in hospitals.

It turns out that medication errors are now the second leading cause of accidental death in the United States. The first is car crashes.

What happens to cause the death with a medication error is that either the person is given the wrong medication or they’re given too much or too little of the medication they’re supposed to get. I guess this means that either their underlying condition doesn’t get treated and they die of that, or it means they get something that is toxic to them or combines badly with another medication they are already taking.

The piece on the radio was about how medication errors tend to be higher in the month of July in hospitals where there are new medical residents coming on staff. Apparently these new residents are under slept and inexperienced and during the month of July they make more mistakes than they do any other point in their career.

As I listened, I was thinking about how this applies to people with elderly parents. Our elderly parents tends to be on increasing and increasingly complex medication regimens. There are a lot of different chemicals pumping around in their bodies, and it’s very important for us to keep an eye on what’s happening and to make sure that everything is working well together.

One of the tools that can help with this is a medication reminder device that will help keep the right medicines coming in at the right times. Medication reminder devices are available in the very simplest forms as pillboxes that let you plan out a weeks worth of medications at a time. On the high-end you can get computerized, lockeded medication reminder devices that will keep expensive medications secure and only release them at specific times. Some of these machines can alert you long-distance if medications haven’t been taken. And they have an audible alarm to remind the elderly person in the house that it’s time to take their medication.

Medication Reminder Devices

I think these are great idea, partly because I can’t even remember to take my medication on a regular basis–and all I take is vitamins.

And by the way, if you are concerned about this July spike in medication errors there a couple of ways shared in the radio piece for how to avoid them. The biggest advice was simply to politely but firmly ask the nurses and staff to doublecheck all prescriptions before medication is administered. They also limit recommended having an advocate come with you to the hospital to make sure that things go smoothly. It’s a tricky balance, because you don’t want to convey that you doubt the competence of the staff was hoping you, but it’s also a fact that medication errors are easy to make and I made all the time.

Photo by vieux bandit

UPDATE: I’ve just learned about the most technologically advanced medication reminder device. It’s the Maya from Medminder. It holds a week’s worth of pills, and it’s wired right into your phone line (no Internet connection required). Not only does it flash or have an audible alert if you haven’t taken your medication on time, but it also sends usage info up to the computers at Medminder. Your loved ones can receive alerts if you don’t remember to take your medicines.

An electronic medication reminder device is a gadget that reminds the owner when to take a pill or other medication.

These are practical tools that can help you remember when you need to take your medication. If you’re on multiple meds, they can remind you which pill you should take now.

The doctors call this “patient adherence.” I call it safety. If you’re a forgetful type (as I am) it’s easy to forget to take your pills or injection. And it’s also easy to get confused about which pills you should take in which order.

A watch like can remind you to take your medication

There are many kinds to choose from. You can wear a watch that buzzes or vibrates at certain times, organize your pills in a pill box, or have a keychain style medication alarm timer.

Remembering to take all your different medications at the right time and with the right foods can be tough even for someone who’s fully competent. For people who have health issues, it gets a lot harder.

If your parents live far from you, it can be reassuring to know that they have a good reminder system in place for taking their meds.

Here are some options if you’re looking to buy an electronic medication reminder device:

The MedReadyAutomatic Medication Dispenser (pictured above) is a lockable system that can handle 7 days of dispensing up to four times a day. It’s approximately $149 and provides a premium solution. The WatchMinder is a simpler solution. It’s a wristwatch with a vibrating alarm so you can be reminded to take your medicine without calling attention to yourself. Those links lead to Active Forever.

Like many things, the answer is, “It depends.”

First it depends how you want to hook up your stairlift. Some stairlifts can be installed with a simple power cord that plugs right into a nearby electrical outlet. This is obviously the easiest way.

Other stairlifts need to be set up on a dedicated circuit and hard-wired into the electrical wires inside your walls.

Obviously this can add expense to your installation.

In some states, such as Washington, state law requires that all stairlifts be hard-wired on their own circuit.

If this is the case for you, you’ll need to get an appropriate electrical permit and have a qualified electrician come and do the work before your stairlift installers arrive.

Stairlifts can be powered by electrical cords

photo credit: j / f / photos

And although the added cost won’t be welcome, there are advantages to direct-wired lifts. First off, you don’t have yet another electrical cord lying on the ground presenting a tripping hazard. Secondly, there’s no risk that the cord will come out of the wall and leave the chair in an uncharged state, which could be a safety and/or convenience hazard.

Check with a local stairlift installer about whether an electrical permit is required in your area.

There’s a lot of planning required when your parents start getting older.

Unfortunately, a lot of it requires the services of an attorney.

While there’s a definite cost to hiring a lawyer to advise you and your parents about legal issues, there can be an even bigger cost to not doing it. What’s the phrase? Penny wise, pound foolish?

You’ll find right away that there are two main kinds of lawyers who work with the elderly. The distinctions are important.

Elder law attorneys

Elder law attorneys help people plan for the kinds of issues that come up when people become incapacitated. The basic focus is on figuring out the person’s needs during their lifetime and deciding how to plan and pay for it. They help you maximize your income and assets so you can live the lifestyle you want to live. They know a lot about the benefits available to seniors in each state.

Estate planning attorneys

Estate planning attorneys help people pass on wealth from one generation to the next. Of course, part of this is making sure there’s enough money to support the person during their lifetime. Most of the time estate planning is used by families who are vulnerable to the estate tax (this means they have over $3.5M in assets), but they can also be helpful to families with less.

By the way, if your parents are in that lucky group with over $3.5M in assets, run — don’t walk — to a competent estate planning attorney or financial planner who specializes in using charitable contributions to avoid estate taxes. In many cases you can eliminate your entire estate tax liability with careful planning. What this means is that you can support charities you love with millions of dollars of donations and still give you children more than you would have been able to do if you hadn’t planned.

Read that sentence again. It’s true.

First off, all modern stairlifts are electric. But if you’ve never owned one or seen one close up, it’s not obvious how they work.

There are two kinds of stairlifts. Some run on regular AC power and some run off batteries (of course the batteries are charged by your regular household AC power).

It used to be that the AC power lifts were the most popular stair elevators, but the big advantage of battery powered stairlifts is that they still work even when the power goes out. As I’m sure you can imagine, this is a pretty valuable feature. Not only will you not get stuck in the middle of the stairs during a sudden outage, but you can use your lift many more times during the outage. Some manufacturers say their chairs can make 30 round trips without recharging.

A battery operated electric stairlift has a battery operated motor under the chair that drives the lift up and down the staircase.

At each end of the rail, there’s an electrical connection that charges the battery while the stairlift is idle. This way the stairlift is always ready to go.

Some manufacturers have a cable that connects the chair to the charging source so it’s always plugged in and charging. The problem with this is that the trailing cable can get tangled. (Doesn’t happen often, but it’s a possibility.)

The best stairlifts have a continuous charging strip inside the rail so the lift gets charged no matter where on the rail you park it.

Watch this video review of the new Jitterbug J cell phone. This cell phone is specifically designed for the elderly or for people with special needs.

This review by a reporter from the Miami Herald is a little snarky in one spot, but it underlines the key point: the Jitter Bug J is easy to use and has free live help from actual operators (and they’re based in the USA!).

Click here for more information about this senior-friendly cell phone

There are two kinds of stairlifts, straight and curved. A curved stairlift is custom designed to fit your particular staircase, and this leads to two main myths about them.

1. Curved stairlifts take too long to be built and delivered. This isn’t true. While you won’t be able to measure for the rails yourself, as you would with a straight one, the home survey can be done within an hour and it usually takes only a month or less for your completed lift to be delivered. That’s really not too long to wait for the increased convenience of being able to ride from the bottom to the top without having to get off and change lifts.
2. Curved stair elevators lose their resale value. People think this because the curved rails are custom fabricated for your particular staircase that the lift has no resale value. Actually, half the value of a used machine is in the chair and the power unit. These can definitely be resold, even if the rails can’t. Also, you should know that used stairlifts don’t always have a lot of value because they take a lot of time and effort to remove, refurbish, and install. You should buy one for the increased quality of life it gives you (and the protection from falls), not for the resale value.

While two straight lifts can be a good solution, don’t overlook curved ones.

Curved stairlifts can be parked out of the way

A few simple steps can make a home much safer for an elderly person who wants to age in place.

Falls are the biggest cause of injuries in people over 65. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control says that 1 out of 3 people over 65 will fall each year. Falls result in injuries and even deaths. For many, a drastic fall spells the end of their independence and puts a big strain on their health. Avoiding falls is very important for ensuring a long and happy life.

photo credit: tico24

Some of the ways of avoiding falls are expensive. For example, installing a stairlift on a staircase will make it easier to avoid falling on the stairs.

But there are inexpensive solutions, too. One of the best? Remove all throw rugs. According to an article by the Associated Press, removing throw rugs is the single most important thing you can do to reduce falls, particularly in the bathroom.

Here are a few more inexpensive tips from that same article.

• make sure all carpeting is secure and flat
• add non-skid adhesive in the tub. Use a plastic shower chair. Raised toilet seats also help
• Add handrails in trouble areas
• Don’t wax your kitchen floor
• Watch out for high thresholds in doorways
• Don’t leave clutter on the floor!

A friend just bought a Life Alert system for her mother.

If you’re not familiar with this system, it’s the classic “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” setup.

You wear a pendant or piece of jewelry with a button on it. If you have an emergency you press the button and a plug-in unit (something like an answering machine) dials an emergency response center.

Theoretically, a trained agent gets on the phone and determines if you have a medical emergency. They summon help if you do.

Life Alert is the biggest name in this market, as far as I can tell. Since my friend mentioned it, I checked it out.

Now, I don’t have one of these systems, and I haven’t spoken to anyone who has had a good or bad experience (my friend’s mom just installed hers).

But I went to the Life Alert website and got yucked out. Here’s why:

1. The sales pitch is based on fear. They show a scary video of a home invasion to get you feeling frightened and vulnerable
2. There’s no pricing information on the web page
3. There’s no refund or cancellation info on web page
4. You have to give your phone number to get a brochure
5. You have to sign up for a 3-year contract that can’t be canceled.
6. There’s steep sign up and installation fee ($195 to $500, depending who you talk to)

But it gets worse. There are dozens and dozens of complaints on the internet about this company. Now, that doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily a bad company. Some people will complain about anything. But there certainly are a lot of people who feel ripped off. you can read the complaints for yourself by searching Google for “life alert cost”. That’s te search I tried when I wanted to find out how much the service cost, because the website wouldn’t tell me.

Apparently they use very high pressure sales tactics.

There’s a competitor. Actually, there are several. One of them is Medscope, which reveals its pricing, reveals its easy cancellation process (the service has no long term contracts) and has no set up fee.

There are also services which don’t have a monthly fee at all.

What is the best medical alert system to install in your home?

The one that’s going to work when you need it.

Okay, so that’s not a super-helpful answer. But the fact is, there are a lot of good medical alert systems on the market, and the one that’s right for you might not be the right one for your neighbor.

Here are some factors to consider:

Are you on a tight budget? Then you might want to consider a system that doesn’t require a monthly monitoring fee. Here’s how these work: you buy a unit that you plug into your phone line. It’s like a speaker phone. You program it (or have a helpful friend do this for you) so that it will dial the phone numbers of people who care about you. Usually you can program these machines to call up to 4 or 5 friends. Maybe the first call goes to your neighbor. The next goes to your son who lives across the country. Etc. If you have an accident, you just press the button on the transponder you wear, and the machine starts dialing. When someone picks up, the machine automatically announced that this is a distress call from you. Then the speaker phone allows you to communicate with the person you called.

Do you just want an affordable system? If so, choose a vendor with affordable monthly fees. You might want to steer clear of the bargain basement services. After all, if they’re charging just $5 a month for the monitoring service, you might wonder how well they staff their monitoring centers, and whether you’ll be able to get service when you need it. Then again, some of these companies are probably great. You can probably find a good solid company for about $30 a month. It’s important to buy the equipment outright (this will cost about $200) instead of leasing it from the company.

Is money no object? There are quite a few companies that are happy to speak to you if money is no object. They will happily charge you upwards of $50 a month (some as high as $100) for the monitoring service, and $500 for the same base station equipment that others sell for just $200. They’d also be happy to lock you into a 3 year contract that you can’t get out of even if you’re disappointed in the service.

To summarize: there are a lot of options when you’re looking for life alert or medical alert services. It’s important to understand all your options before you sign a contract.

Find the best medical alert system for your elderly parent