​One of the most important questions to ask before starting a facility retrofit project often goes unanswered: “How are people actually using the building?”

It is easy to make assumptions. Residents spend the majority of their time in their rooms or apartments, the dining hall, and social areas. Visitors follow residents and staff work on dedicated floors or wings. But what if these assertions were only partially true?

What if data tells you when residents are most likely to want to socialize or are more susceptible to falls. Similarly, you may learn that the first stop for visitors is in one-on-one meetings with medical staff or the business office manager. Further, staff are often pulled in to help residents all over the community, instead of a dedicated floor, to fill ongoing staffing gaps. Those insights can shape the resident, staff, and visitor experience and influence retrofits.

Yet when it comes time for the building or community to undergo a retrofit, these assumptions are carried out in the planning and construction because real data on actual behaviors is not used.

The Impact of Relying on Assumptions During Retrofits 

While the building and amenities get an appealing facelift, a retrofit based on assumptions miss an opportunity to optimize the human experience within the building.

Here are a few examples of what happens. Dedicated visiting areas feature expensive new furniture that goes unused. The latest tech tools and digital apps looked great and easy to use during the demo, but months later your staff still faces a steep learning curve. Meanwhile, residents find it difficult to adapt to the changes, impacting their quality of life. These issues can be avoided by having a better understanding of how the building is used before the retrofit starts.

With 42 percent of senior care communities in the U.S. being at least 25 years old, there is a pressing need to upgrade and modernize facilities. This is becoming increasingly critical as demographics shift. By the year 2030, there will be more adults over 60 than there are under that age.

Getting Real-Time Insights Without Compromising Privacy

Without real insights into how residents, staff and visitors use the buildings, retrofit investments won’t pay off. But how do you get that information?

You can monitor behavior but that is time consuming, invasive, and lends itself to personal bias. Or you can look at research, but it is often an additional cost and is based on empirical data as opposed to intel specific to your community. Another option is to ask people to participate in a survey, but that, too, is time consuming and opinion based.

Lately, one way that senior care communities are resolving this issue is by capturing real data on how humans interact in buildings using newer technologies that ensure privacy.

For example, using thermal heat-sensing technology provides insight into human movements in a space without knowing the individuals that are present. The thermal technology depicts humans as small circles that are moving or stationary. This technology can come in the form of a sensor that goes on the wall, blending into the retrofit design.

What senior care administrators can infer from the sensor data are insights such as the best location for a visiting area, or when residents are most likely to engage in social activities based on their behaviors as opposed to a scheduled time. From a health perspective, being notified of changes in a resident’s movement allows staff to respond faster to emergencies. These urgent notifications, often a text, reduce technology learning curves because the complex computing is done behind the scenes.

The Benefits of Building Insight: Safety, Compliance, and Revenue

Having insight into how humans use a building before investing in a retrofit creates an opportunity to boost safety, ensure compliance, and improve the continuum of resident care.

It can also deliver better returns on the retrofit investment, according to administrators at Ranagård Community, which is using privacy-friendly heat-based sensors in over 700 apartments.

The sensors work with nurse call systems and immediately alert staff to incidents such as wandering, falls, or an increase in trips to the bathroom. This makes better use of staff time that was previously spent doing scheduled resident check-ins. They also have a digital record of activities, care, and responses in the event of an inquiry.

The community estimates they save $1,875,000 per year by reducing 0.5 falls per year based on an average cost of $5,000 cost per fall, which requires two nurses to accompany a resident to the hospital. With safer buildings, they believe they can increase occupancy by 250 beds, resulting in an additional $2,160,000 per year.

Each community must determine their own return on investment on retrofits. Yet as the need for senior care rises and residents demand modern buildings, the retrofit process should always start with a clear understanding of how the building is being used.

Honghao Deng is CEO and co-founder of Butlr.