Medical Alert Devices

Medical Alert Devices Can Get Emergency Medical Services to a Stricken Person Fast

Medical alert devices are simply small items that elderly people can wear on a strap around their neck or on a bracelet on their wrist.

How Medical Alert Devices Work

These devices hold a large button. If they push it, it sends a wireless alert to a monitor station inside their living quarters, usually set right by a telephone. That's because it's hooked up to the senior citizen's telephone system.

Once the monitor station gets the signal from the button being pushed, it dialed the company's service (toll free) and connects with a live operator. The company keeps a shift of them working around the clock, so it's like your own private 911 system.

The monitor station acts as a speakersphone. The operator's voice comes out loudly from the speaker, so they ask if the elderly person is all right.

If the senior (or disabled) person says they need help or is crying or screaming, or doesn't respond at all, the operator calls their local 911 and reports the problem, so help arrives as fast as it takes 911 to get there.

The medical alert device company should also make arrangements for police, EMTs or others to get in. We put a little box in the wall in the front of my mother's house, a little like the boxes for realtors containing the house keys, but not hanging from the door handle.

However, that box did contain keys to the house, and the medical alert company knew the combination, and would have given it to emergency first responders had that ever been necessary.

It wasn't, but only because I was always there when my mother did start having problems, so she just called out to me. And when I couldn't, I called 911, and opened the front door to let them in.

The Two Major Problems With Medical Alert Devices

Two things can keep this equipment from working and saving the life of your elderly loved one.

First, and probably most common, is they aren't wearing the button when they have an accident or stroke. They're supposed to keep them on at all times, including in the shower (they're build to be waterproof) and in the bed at night.

My mother used to take hers off and put it down various places. If she had fallen when I wasn't present, she would have been in trouble until I arrived.

I know she's not the only one. One of her friends told me that her mother had been the same way before she passed away. She'd hang the device on a bed post and then do what she wanted. My mother's friend had to yell at her mother, "If you die because you fall when you're not wearing that thing, I'll refuse to feel guilty."

The second potential problem is that the elderly or disabled person is hurt so bad that they can't even push the button. I'm sure this could happen if they're unconscious or so limited by a stroke they can't even lift their hand to the button and push it.

I'm sure the day is coming when you can put something in the elderly person's home that actually tracks them constantly, so if they fall to the floor 911 is called automatically, without any action required on the part of the affected person, who may be knocked out.

I suppose it could also incorporate devices to monitor their vital signs, so 911 is called if they're still lying in bed but, for example, stop breathing.

In the meantime, I'm glad that these medical alert devices now exist, because my grandfather didn't have one and lay on his bathroom floor all night after a stroke.

Next: Emergency Medical Alert System -- protect your elderly loved ones.