Aspire for More with Erin
Aspire for More with Erin
How One Tech Tool Could Save Your Nurses, Reduce Risk, and Cost You $0
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Over 80% of state reportables in Alabama communities are due to falls—and they’re burning out your teams. In this powerful episode, Erin sits down with Joseph Ross of iWatch Live to uncover how their 24/7 live nurse monitoring system is revolutionizing resident safety without costing communities a dime.
You’ll learn:
- Why fall-related incidents are the #1 claim in senior living—and how to prevent them
- What makes leaders resist technology—and how to overcome it
- How this tech has extended resident length of stay by 3+ months
- What makes caregivers feel empowered and safer at work
- Why innovation isn’t about “more”—it’s about working smarter
Whether you're burned out or building a new community from scratch, this is the kind of tool and episode that might just change everything.
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Welcome back to another episode of Aspire For More with Erin, where I am excited to highlight a new tech company in this space of keeping our residents safe. Joseph Ross is the Vice President of partnerships of iWatch Live, they came into my orbit when I made this post. Over 5000 state reportables from 298 communities inside Alabama. over 80% of those 5000 state reportables are from fracture or injury due to a fall or some type of event, whether it's a trip fall into the doorframe Getting up scratching themselves on some type of piece of furniture, whatever it is that caused a fracture or an injury. 80% of the 5,000 state reportables that are submitted from 298 communities inside of Alabama. Was due to a fracture or injury, from that post, iWatch Live contacted me about their product, which is fascinating, and I wanted to share it with you because it is very unique in what it does and how it's not costing the communities anything which is important. Joseph, tell us a little bit about, um, what iWatch Live is and then we will get into ourepisode here because I have lots of executive director questions.
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:first foremost, thanks for having me on. Aaron. appreciate the opportunity to connect with you to share our message. excited to share what iWatch Live does today. iWatch Live is a 24 7 live nurse monitoring platform that essentially prevents issues before they happen, those specificallythe issues I'm talking to would be falls, elopements, and security issues that happen in or around our communities and senior living.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:I didn't even think about elopements. I'm focused on the 5,000 state reportables. I didn't even think about elopements. Ooh, that is interesting. let's start with the reality that leaders are facing today. Leaders. What makes. Technology adoption hard. I could go into my own story here because here we know that we have a problem. The problem is 5,000 state reportables in the state of Alabama, 80% of them are due to fracture or injury. when I say that, that means they at least basic first aid from an incident that happened. I'm not talking about 5,000 hip fractures here or shoulder fractures. I'm talking about. Fracture or injury from an incident. But I know as me as a leader inside of a community with all the changes all the expectations all the things I was, I was not an adopter of technology. In fact. If there are certain people who even knew I had a podcast, they would probably be shocked, that I am even capable of doing this, but I am. tell me from what you see, why are leaders slow to adopt technology? this, this really piques my interest because it is such. A powerful tool that can save time in the long run, but the adoption of it may be a little bit hard to navigate in the beginning. talk to me a little bit about that. What are your thoughts?
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:that's a fantastic question for senior living teams. it's the fact that, they don't wanna necessarily not innovate for their communities, but they're already stretched thin. Right? if we look at it, if we put our former executive director hats on, we see still see those staffing shortages. the endless list of compliance tasks that you have to do. priority number one is taking care of the resident. that's what's making it feel overwhelming for senior living leaders. it comes down to it, they want a technology that is helping them provide value to their residents their care staff. they don't want something that they have to troubleshoot all the time. They wanna put something in place that provides that immediate value essentially doesn't hit their bottom line. that's a lot of why you're seeing that, that that overwhelming feeling, to adopt certain technologies. when operators see that they're implementing a technology that, doesn't necessarily increase their workload. that's, that's something that they're gonna wanna adopt moving forward.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:I never had somebody coming to me and saying, this tech is going to. Make life for your residents better. keep them safe. maybe you're not gonna have to report the 10 state reportables per month. I once lost a nurse that I don't know how long she would've made it, but we had 12 comprehensive assessments at least, and there was four or five state reportables within those 12 things. And in the state of Alabama, there's a lot of stuff you have to do with every single one of those. And she was so overwhelmed that she quit. it was overwhelming, especially for a new nurse. Had in that moment, we had technology available to us that could have prevented five of those incidents or three of those state reportables. That would have been amazing. I would've kept a nurse. Longer than 45 days, because that's what it was. She was there for 45 days. We had a really bad day, and then she left and it was a bad day. Okay. I'm not going to, it was a bad set of days, So as a leader, I would say, talk to me about this technology as a leader, who is. Afraid of change I was afraid of change and afraid of adopting new technology and being able to take power away and compliance. what you're saying to me is this can actually help you work less in those state reportables fracture incident reports, and maybe our nurses can have a little reprieve. Is that what you're telling me?
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:you hit the nail on the head. you've seen it I've seen it being a former operator. first and foremost, I wanna say that caregivers are incredible. all the caregivers that are working in senior living, communities and working with the residents. that's priority number one. it goes back to what we just talked about, we're short staffed, and that burnout sets in so quickly. It's, it's always feeling we're behind. And at the end of the day, that's something that's having an emotional exhaustion and high turnover rate effect on our industry. So if we can set something in place like iWatch Live or A technology that helps remove that stuff off of somebody's desk or remove that stress. That's something that could keep a caregiver, what you're talking about, maybe that that story would've changed. yeah, we want to make sure that, operators are getting those tools. And that's something I feel with what our system provides, changes that experience not only for the nurse, but also for the residents and their families by providing that peace of mind.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:bringing in my own personal experience here. I was helping this private equity group, giving them some perspective about opening up a community that is not a, not a buildup, but. A community that was once a community that is not a community now that is going back to being a community. And I said to them, tech is gonna be your best friend. You have an opportunity to start from the ground up. Tech will be your best friend because you can do things that these other communities can't do. And from a very quick standpoint, have you seen that work? And, and from a marketing perspective, hey, look at what we can do. And that becomes a point of difference for the community.
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:Yeah. I want to hit on one of the points you just stated there. a lot of leaders are resisting tech because they've been burned before. Right. And me and you are both examples of that. I'll tell you this, and I'm sure you can relate to this, when I was in ed, we had 15 different softwares that had to log in every single day
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:Yeah.
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:and.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:Yeah.
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:does that add to the endless list of things that you're doing, but it adds to that emotional stress that you're constantly experiencing
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:Mm-hmm.
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:at the end of the day, your focus should be improving the lives of the residents that you're working with making sure that their families are taken care of. I feel I jumped on iWatch train because I knew that we were empowering caregivers that's something that I'm proud to say. one of the biggest benefits of what we offer versus the technology that might be in the space right now that may be adding something to the plate of the caregiver.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:let me ask you this crazy question. Is the ED have to, the director of nursing the nurse on shift have to update anything? How many updates is it take? Seamless all the time. How many updates?
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:a big fat goose egg. we don't want any of that. It's, your point, my old mentor used to tell me all the time, he is we want to take things out of the backpack of the executive director so that they can focus on wearing the hat that they need to, the mini hatch, inside their community they're working with residents families. don't want to add anything to their plate. essentially that's what we're trying to provide with Iwi Live is preventing those issues before they happen so that executive directors can focus on the most important thing, the resident.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:tell me about, I'm an E.D. That resists change in tech. I'm not as bad as I make myself out to be, but it was significant in certain areas. what is the win-win? I mean, I feel like I hear the win-win. I should explain it to you, but residents, I'm gonna have to work less hard on investigations, whether you call them self reportables, state reportables, whatever it is, those investigative points. is this a camera that I see the resident, is this a camera that I see a shadow and bones of the resident? This doesn't take away their dignity, right?
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:Oh, no, no. and I'm glad you hit on that because what we're trying to do with EyeWatch lot is combine the AI sophistication that everybody talks about. The buzzword across the industry is AI in every business, right. You can never replace that human connection. And I think that's the win-win. If we're looking at, from the, the brass tacks of it, residents are be able to stay safer because we're reducing the amount of falls that are happening inside the communities, reducing elopements or wanderings, and then the security threats that are happening around them, that's make them more independent. So provide that independence back to them in the community. And then, other thing I would say is that it's increase that peace of mind for the family members because they know that their resident, member is being taken care of inside that community. And the last thing I'll add to is that what makes it a win-win is when your caregivers feel supported and they feel empowered to do their job. And so our 24 7 365 component that we offer is essentially an extension of the staff. It's already there.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:Mm-hmm.
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:less about surveillance and more about focusing on the care of the resident. And at the end of the day, that's what we're trying to give.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:And it's not like a, it's not like a video camera. We're not be able to see them. We're only be able to see like, what, what can we see from the, like if I'm watching it, what can I see from the camera? I.
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:our recordings stay available up to five days is our default, but, the camera itself, you're able to see anything that happens in the room. we have a privacy switch that family members can use if they come in and. visit with their particular love member, or the caregiver is doing a certain type of, care transition that needs to be turned on for the privacy. the camera itself is 24 7 365. But the good thing about it is that our AI is completely in dark mode until that camera is turned on. that's where the connection of the human piece is critical. The AI itself is picking up these predefined safety zones in either a common area, a resident room, or as far as in or out of the community. Once those safety zones are broken, our AI is sophisticated enough to pick it up and say, this needs to be sent as an alert to our nurse. Behind that screen, our nurse assesses the situation, our nurses have worked in senior living as well, They've done a two person assist. They've interacted with the family members before, and that's something that makes this completely different from a lot of, prevention or detection softwares in the business. that's a huge component of combining that AI and the human connection. And for the camera itself, it's completely in dark mode until it gets sent to a nurse at our command center and then that nurse sends an alert to the onsite staff.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:And we haven't even talked about that This is not a camera alerting the community. from a page, you're not get a thousand different messages on your pager or your cell phone or you're using inside your community. This is going, the visuals are going to a nurse sitting in another place. It's almost New York during a football game, they are watching it and calling the referees and being like, Hey, we need to watch this play one more time. But they're instead they're calling you to say, somebody's moving. is that what it is?
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:Yeah. extension of the staff. that's a good reference. it's the referee to the game that's being called. and we've had a lot of operators come back to us and thank us, for certain things Different training opportunities that they had with certain caregivers or nurses that they'd hired first two weeks on the job. And those recordings pop up. Our nurses, have worked in senior living, know how to do two person assist, and specifically one example with a two person assist we had a couple weeks ago where the operator come back to us and said, Hey, thank you so much. For telling us that this person was trying to do this by themselves, they could have severely hurt the resident. great to hear, them share those stories because that connects the piece, that we're trying to provide from a value standpoint.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:yeah, it's not only resident safety, it's associate safety and it's insurance. risk management, because now all of a sudden you're saving workman's comp injury potentially as well.
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:Yeah. you hit the nail on the head when we started, this podcast earlier talking about the fall claims in Alabama, that's not just in Alabama, that's in pretty much every state across the United States. The number one insurance claim in senior living is falls.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:Mm-hmm.
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:we gotta figure out how to get ahead of that.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:Mm-hmm.
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:we don't want to just detect and see the results during and after the event happens. We wanna get ahead of the eight ball and prevent these issues altogether. We want to get away from those insurance claims. So, uh, it's funny, you mentioned that a lot of insurance partners will come back to us and say, Hey, we wanna partner with, EyeWatch Live live because you're helping us pay out less claims,
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:Mm-hmm.
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:the number one leading claim in senior living, which is falls.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:Mm-hmm.
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:it's great to see that. that's what we're trying to get at.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:you and I have spoke about, this is interesting because I thought that this was more of a hurdle than anything, but you've corrected me. companies and communities don't have to pay for this, which is interesting because Medicare will pay for this. Which then I said, oh, but how are you getting the information? Because is the business director going to have to give to you, the census list every week? Because obviously, our occupancy changes and our residents resident rosters change a lot. And you were like, no, because I'm like, this sounds great, but I can't guarantee you that we're gonna give you every resident every time because we're not necessarily set up that way. And you said. No, we do it automatically. And I'm what? So tell me how you do that. Tell me the executive director who's saying to you, I don't wanna adopt tech because I don't have time for that. And now you want me to send you our resident roster every week?
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:that's a great question. it goes back to what we talked about removing things off of the desk of the executive director or the directors that are, dealing with the residents. And we wanna make sure that we're taking things out of that backpack, I talked about. And one of the ways that we're doing that is handling the reimbursement process. Since we're Medicare approved with what we do, we handle the reimbursement to the operators of what would be a monthly charge for our service. to your point earlier, you're saying, there's no cost to EyeWatch Live. There's truly not because. It's covered underneath resident insurance. So that's one of the biggest benefits of what we offer is that we are covered by Medicare Part B and we're trying to offer something that doesn't hit that bottom line and doesn't hit those margins because we know as former operators, that's something we're constantly looking at if we want to help that out,
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:That is fascinating to me. So y'all will automatically get the information
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:Yeah. Yeah, we do. what we do is, is typically we reach out to the director and then the director will connect us with their particular EHR or their resident care system that they work with, that being PCC, Yardi, whatever it is that they work with. And we connect directly to that system, and that system supplies us with the information that we need for the insurance.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:Okay. Just to recap. I, I may get to keep my nurses longer because they may not have to have the 12 incident day or two or three days, whatever it was. I can't remember, but it was an insane amount of incidents in, in at least a two day span.
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:Yeah.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:my residents will be safe. I won't have to report my, my percentage of the 5,000 state reportables of fracture and injury. I may save money on workman's comp and other insurance claims, keep my residence longer and I don't have to pay for this. And as an executive director or director of nursing, I don't have to make sure any kind of software updates are done.
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:You hit it. That's it.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:Okay. Hmm. what is the downside to this? Is there any downside to this?
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:Sounds too good to be true. Yeah. what I would say is, The downside is that, In our industry and in our, in our time and space right now, everybody is, hesitant to be in front of a camera or be caught on video or be caught on audio, whatever it is, right? But I'll say this, your phone is a camera. Your phone is audio and video constantly. we have operators that come to us and say, what is the biggest hesitation that you have with future prospects or people that are vetting out your system? We say, installing the camera. and I always say we're constantly around cameras, your phone, your laptop, and everything else. It's no different from that. And this is truly, it should be an extension of the staff that we're partnering with and it should not be monitoring, everything that they do 24 7. It is something that should empower them and make them feel better about their job and less stressed.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:Yeah. And one of our, earlier conversations, you talked about being able to extend the length out of residents staying at your community. I know one of the things that I always, Felt so heartbroken about, again, we're talking about the state of Alabama, it's harder to operate here. falls are certainly one of the gray areas as to being able to meet the resident's needs if we can't, keep them safe. But you had said that, you, EyeWatch Live has been able to extend the length of stay. By some residents, by three months or more, and an 89% adoption rate. Right. Explain that to me, this is the proof. This is where cynical, worn out, overwhelmed executive director, you start touching the heartstrings of keeping my people safe. Now all of a sudden it's not about me. It's about them.
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:Yeah.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:So give me, sell me the proof. I wanna know the proof and the impact that you have seen on being able to keep my residents safe and not having to hear them say, am I gonna have to move out because I'm falling? Because that is the worst feeling for me when a resident is trying their best and yet they can't. They can't, and is this a way to help them with that?
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:Yeah. That's, it's you said, pulling out the hard strings of a
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:Mm-hmm.
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:that have worked in the business. And for us it's been a lot of, operators come back to us and say, it's too good to be true. response to that is say, I would encourage you to talk to our partners that already use our service so that you can see the type of value that they're day in and day out. we even have. Operators come back to us to say, I switched jobs from, being executive director at a, B, C, senior living and to a different community and I told them I wasn't gonna accept the job unless they had iWatch live installed. for us, sharing those stories and having them say that is the proof in the pudding for us. the results you're talking about. something they see from an impact standpoint. we know for a fact we're able to reduce falls by up to 70%. That is a clear indicator of, reducing that number one insurance claim in our industry, because we're preventing those issues. We're not detecting them. getting ahead of those false positives. the false positives being, decreasing the amount of emergency room visits we have for a particular community. we're happy to say that that's gone anywhere up to about 60%. we're able to reduce that by 60% for those false positives. you hit it nail on the head earlier, what's the biggest thing, the bottom line, right? For sales directors or directors in general that are running a senior living community. We gotta make sure we close that back door on those sales deposits. the last thing you wanna see is a sales director working for, months at a time. They get all these residents moved in, you finally get up to 90% occupancy you lose a month, three to four months later. All that work goes out the window. we're happy to say we're able to increase that resident length of stay by over three months, along with all of those efficiencies we talked
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:my work clearly, the goal is to make a profit. You're running a business. I get it. that's the real estate side. Give me the a hundred percent. yay. The other side is you are dealing with people the most vulnerable at times traumaticParts of their lives we can't lose sight of that. being able to say, Hey, this is what we have that's going to help you stay here longer when they are fully entrenched in the culture of your community, is one of the greatest gifts you can give a resident and their family. My grandmother lived at the community when she started falling. When there, when the pattern was, she was falling more than she ever did. I was oh my God, how are we gonna keep her safe? how am I going to allow her to stay here as long as she can? And that was as an executive director and a granddaughter who, she was my person and I was hers. that is a that was a difficult time. And this would have been able. To help her, to prevent, that's the thing.'cause we can't say that we can prevent all the falls. We can say that we can be here quicker. We can say that we can keep them busy and engaged. but we can't prevent all the falls as a community alone. And now we may have an opportunity to help do that. The executive director will comply and adopt new technology.
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:I we talked about this earlier in the show, which is senior living is something that. It pretty prevalent in our industry. and I feel a lot of senior living leaders think of tech as an extra, when they should be thinking it as something that should be removing things from their desk. I hit on this a little bit about, taking things out of the backpack, but we wanna make sure that. Their priorities are things that they can focus on. We, you shouldn't be having to log into a dashboard, go look at analytics as an executive director, for the technology that you're using constantly day in and day out. Those things should be provided to you, on a daily, weekly, monthly, resource for you. And then on top of that, you should have a technology that feels it is supporting you. empowering your onsite staff because once they feel empowered to do their job, that's where a lot of, you're gonna see residents start to thrive and family members start to come back and share their testimonials they've done with us.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:do you have a powerful testimonial that you can say Hey, here's one that knocked my socks off.
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:there's one mention that happened a couple weeks ago. We had a resident that was trying to, set the preface here. The resident wasn't using a software prevention or detection service prior to iWatch live, and she had fractured her hip, in the memory care unit that she was currently living in, in this particular community. the family members reached out to the community. the community to find a solution that would prevent these issues before they happened, and the community reached out to us uh. Yeah. Uh, we installed iWatch live and we're happy to say that she hasn't fallen since. But, uh, it, it just goes to show that there's a lot of residents out there that if there was something put in place for them, we could. Detect, prevent a lot of these things from happening. one of the most staggering stats that we always come across is over 70% of the fall related claims that happen in our industry are dementia related, So memory care or assisted living, uh, related. And then sometimes in independent living is, which we work with We know for a fact a lot of that can be prevented ahead of time if they had something in place that, uh, alerted them so that they can assess the situation and cut down on that response time. Because as you know, Aaron, like the Response time in our industry is. Very high, and from what we've seen, it's around 22 to 25 minutes when people install our particular software into their communities. We see that cut down to about two minutes. quite a drastic difference from what we see in the average.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:That's powerful. we close this out, because I am fascinated by this and would love to have seen it work inside of my communitywhat adviceWould you give a leader? We've both been in the community who wants to champion innovation in their community, but feels alone doing so orthe leader who is tired that the thought of doing that is exhausting.
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:That's a very good question. the biggest thing is start small, uh, but start somewhere.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:Mm-hmm.
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:don't sit there if you got something that, you know, would provide value to the industry. Innovation doesn't happen from comfort zones
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:Mm-hmm.
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:we're all a result of burnout at certain situations in our career. we've all sat there and said, Hey, this would help us right now, here and now With our residents. And I would encourage you, get out there, partner with people that will share your story and walk that journey with you you don't have to do it alone. have somebody share that story with you, walk with you, and again, start small, but start somewhere.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:Yeah, I would say as somebody who has walked that journey, felt those things and honestly did not have a vision of innovation. that was never something that was in my periphery. I'm I'm surviving every day and I'm trying to get and stay at a hundred percent. What's innovation? I'm surviving, what I know now is what gets in the way becomes the way, period. End of discussion. if you're exhausted and you have something that's there that could actually make life better, then give it a chance. Hear it out. Be aware of the lens that you're looking at it through, because it actually could be the way of making you less overwhelmed, right? And, Everything takes time. It's a process. Success is a process and change is a process and go into it with open eyes because what gets in the way becomes the way. Joseph, thank you so much. You have said a lot of powerful things inside. this episode, you have got my curiosity peaked about. The sales and marketing side of this, the customer service point of this, the safety and security that family members would feel knowing that they had something like this inside of their community. I think it's something valuable and I hope that the people listening at least get curious about it too. where can they find this? almost too good to be true opportunity. what is the website? How they get in touch with you? Give us all that.
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:Yeah, our website is EyeWatchlive.com.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:Mm-hmm.
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:you are welcome to jump on there and see our testimonials from different partners we have in the industry. And then I would say connect with my team, connect with my sales team, reach out to me. we'd love to set you up with a quick demo. Won't take 15, 20 minutes to show you the value show you how families and communities are saying this is a game changer for them.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:It doesn't even cost the community anything, which is nuts. Nuts. I'll say. It's nuts.
joseph-ross_1_11-04-2025_101730:Nuts and bolts. Yeah.
erin-thompson_1_11-04-2025_101729:That's right. Thank you so much, Joseph. We appreciate you. If this, conversation resonated with you, share it to everybody, that you think it would help and send it up to some higher ups in your company because this could actually be a win-win, win for all of the people that we serve and our key stakeholders. So thank you so much and always aspire for more for you, knowing that you are already enough. Have a great day.