#United States #Los Gatos #Age Safe America #Safety App #Home Score

Age Safe® America Launches the Home Safety Assessment App

Age Safe® America has taken a significant step in enhancing home safety for seniors with the launch of their new mobile assessment app and the innovative Age Safe® Home Score™. This new tool aims to standardize home safety assessments with a scoring system ranging from 0 to 100, providing a consistent measure for insurers, healthcare providers, and families alike.

The launch comes at a critical time when falls, the leading cause of injury-related hospitalizations among older adults, pose serious health risks. With costs exceeding $80 billion annually for Medicare, families, and insurers, it is imperative to enhance home safety. Approximately 80% of these incidents occur within the home, making it essential to assess and improve residential environments for aging individuals.

Previously, the lack of a standardized scoring system made it difficult for professionals to compare homes or make informed decisions about necessary modifications. The Age Safe app streamlines the assessment process, replacing lengthy paper checklists and hand-written reports. Certified assessors can now apply their clinical expertise to select appropriate recommendations from a structured library directly within the app. This integration generates a Home Score, reflecting a projected score post-improvement, and produces a detailed report for clients instantly.

The app utilizes a 240-point assessment method, drawing upon decades of comprehensive research and validated clinical practices. Age Safe's proprietary algorithm processes this data into a coherent, standardized score, ensuring that the same home receives an identical assessment regardless of who evaluates it. Significantly, this innovative method allows for comparable outcomes across different clients, agencies, and regions, similar to how Energy Star certification works for home energy efficiency.

Dan Davenport, the CEO of Age Safe® America, emphasized the critical importance of this initiative, stating, "Falls lead to more hospitalizations among older adults than any other reason, especially in the home. Our goal is to provide families, insurers, and care providers with a common metric akin to what FICO has done for credit scoring. This way, all stakeholders can effectively plan for necessary safety improvements."

The Home Score and the accompanying app cater to various sectors within the aging-in-place community, including payers such as Medicare Advantage, MCOs, and long-term care insurers. It also serves clinical and care delivery systems like home health and hospice providers, government agencies, and home service professionals, enhancing the efficacy of safety inspections and modifications.

As the app is now operational, all certified Senior Home Safety Specialist® (SHSS) professionals can access and implement this tool in their practices, revolutionizing their assessment processes and providing invaluable insights into home safety for their clients.

Age Safe® America has been at the forefront of training professionals dedicated to creating safer living environments for seniors since its inception in 2015. Their dedication to advocating for aging-in-place solutions has equipped countless individuals in over 60 industries with the tools and knowledge required to elevate home safety standards.

This launch marks not only a milestone for Age Safe® America but also a notable advancement for the home safety industry, offering families and professionals the means to tackle the prevalent risks older adults face within their living environments, thereby significantly improving their quality of life and safety at home.