Highly Skilled Security Systems Provider for the Aged Care industry and Independent Living [Interview][Transcript]
Guest: Matthew Doeg
Presenter: Wayne Bucklar
Guest Bio: Matthew Doeg is the Blue Force account manager for the Aged Care, Retirement and Health Industries. He has been in this role for 3 and ½ years, and succeeded in forging strong relationships, and thereby improving Blue Force’s market share. He sees the medical sector as an area in which there are more opportunities to improve service delivery to outpatients, and as a platform to increase their profile.
Segment overview: In today’s Health Supplier Segment, learn about security as Matthew Deog of Blue Force joins us today to discuss their company’s services. They provide quality security solutions for the commercial, industrial, residential and health industries. Blue Force specialises in Access Control, CCTV, Nurse call and Personal Alarms, all of which are important for staff and patient safety.
Transcription
Health Professional Radio
Wayne Bucklar: You’re listening to health professional radio, my name is Wayne Bucklar. Today my guest is Matthew Doeg. Matthew is the account manager who specializes in the health area for a firm called Blue Force, located in Western Australia. Now Matthew welcome to Health Professional Radio.
Matthew Doeg: Thanks Wayne. Thanks for having me on.
W: Now Matt, Blue Force is not a name that instantly tells me what the company does. So I know you’re in Western Australia but explain to us what your geographic footprint is. Where’s your service interest and just what it is that Blue Force does?
M: Well we’re a provider of access controls, CCTV, nurse call and lots of safety technologies predominantly here in WA. We do provide Australia wide depending on obviously the requirement from a client but probably the most relevant services we provide for your industry or your audience is our range of Telecare products which we can issue Australia wide. Yeah, we provide these services to entire villages, persons living independently and in the community obviously hospitals and pack teams and things like that.
W: So what does the system do Matthew?
M: Essentially, obviously Telecare many of your audience will know sort of what that’s about but essentially our medical alarms that are installed for people living independently in the home. So probably the most relevant thing for your audience is where someone sent home and put a time on your medication or they just had an operation and the occupational therapist or the surgeon or the family just want peace of mind knowing that if they need it, they can get it in a press of a button.
W: So this is the idea of distress pendants and all that sort of thing?
M: That’s right. And they can work via it’s either telephone line or the GSM network. So there are areas of flexibly in that, they do still work in rural areas which is an important one as well.
W: Okay. So does the Telecare extend beyond the kind of distress range? Does it extend into other forms of monitoring?
M: Yes, that’s a very good question. The devices can be set up with medication reminders, showing reminders, upon reminders and it can even monitor inactivity. Some of our technologies can actually be set up as a home dementia kit as well for those have a patient that wants to alert and things like that.
W: So they’ll actually connect when people have wandered away.
M: Yes, you can get those sort of technology. It’s not something we deploy very often because essentially when people get to that sort of that area of need, we know they’re moving into care quite quickly.
W: Yes, yes I can imagine that although I have to say I’ve got friends and in fact my own parents who are now both well in their 80”s, where anything that extends the level of comfort you can get as the child of someone is worth the investment, I think.
M: Definitely, definitely and that’s what we obviously with all the government initiatives, trying to get people to stay in the home for a lot longer. Some of these assistive technologies allow you to do that.
W: And so you monitor these systems 24 hours a day Matt?
M: Yes. We have a grade one, A’s grade monitoring setting here in Western Australia. What that means is our control room or subject to certain order to then control measure to ensure that we’ve got communication with be a mother or a father or a relative or patient all the time. So yeah, we are a 24/7 service and we’ve got yeah 24/7 on call service technicians as well. In terms of monitoring center, we can also call police because of our grading as well. So we also transfer distress or a medical emergency if there was some other types of emergency where they require police, they can press that button and we’d call the police for them as well.
W: Nice.
M: So how it works is you press your button, it might be pendant or watch style pendant that sends an alarm to our monitoring center and then we try to establish two-way voice contacts with the patient or the resident at home, establish what the emergency is and they’ll receive assistance as required.
W: I see. Now Matt, do you put services into facilities as well?
M: Yes, obviously aged care facilities. We can provide nurse call technologies as well, CCTV is been a really big one for that area obviously where they’re tracking sort of patients and staff activities and that sort of thing. But mainly independently in the community are the ones where we put the medical alarm devices but retirement villages are a large market of ours as well. We’re probably the main provider here in Western Australia, we have got a couple of villages in Queensland and Victoria also.
W: And I guess if you’re doing CCTV, monitoring the services and extends beyond healthcare and the security as well.
M: Well we are a major security provider here in Western Australia, that was where we built our base. We obviously saw that the retirement living and aged care markets and health markets where ones that we were missing out of on some work probably back in the day but over the last sort of 10 years we’ve built up strong relationships with some providers out there – Bethany, Baptist Care, Juniper, Southern Cross Care, Arcadia, all large retirement and health care groups. See, we’ve been doing quite well.
W: You’re listening to Health Professional Radio, my name is Wayne Bucklar. I’m in conversation with Matt Doeg of Blue Force, a health monitoring and security monitoring firm out of Western Australia. Matthew in every industry, there are misconceptions. What’s’ the biggest misconception in your industry that you’d like people to know about? The one that drives you nuts and keeps you awake at night.
M: Probably that managing your personal alarm, such as the alarms we offer by family and friends is the way to go. There are a lot of products out there they advertise over the radio, where will go families and friends and perhaps put triple hours or last contact. There’s a big risk of this calls are missed, everyone’s living busy lives and for a lot of safety devices, it’s critical especially medical alarms that call for the first time and every time. The other thing is you don’t have the benefit of having weekly system tests or low power reporting, low battery reporting – all of which are in place to ensure that if you do press your medical alarm or so you do press your pendant that we’ll receive the alarm and get you help as soon as we can.
W: I can understand why that would drive you nuts and keep you awake. If you’ve got a panic button, you want someone listening at the other end, don’t you?
M: Exactly, exactly. And probably a lot of people are doing this purely to save a few dollars a week, that’s the other thing that drives me nuts. It’s the people are up to this perception that it’s expensive to that a cost of a cup of coffee. It’s a small price to pay for peace in mind for medical practitioners and more so the family and friends of the patients or a person living in home independently.
W: Matt it’s been a pleasure of having you with us this morning. If you’ve just tuned in, then you’ve missed me chatting with Matt Doeg of Blue Force but the good news is we have a transcript on our website and a SoundCloud archive and a YouTube achieve, so you can hear what we’ve been talking about if you’ve missed our interviews this morning. They’re available on our website at www.hpr.fm and if you’d like more information about Blue Force, you can head off to their website at (www.blueforce.com.au) that’s B L U E F O R C E blue force dot com dot au. Matt thanks for being with us today.
M: Thanks Wayne.
W: This is Health Professional Radio, you’ve been listening to Wayne Bucklar.