Spring is the Perfect Time to Evaluate your Entertainment Package

As temperatures rise, our attention turns to favorite summer activities: walking along the beach, smelling fresh-cut grass, and America’s favorite pastime, baseball.

While baseball itself remains largely unchanged, baseball games cand be watched in a variety of ways from local channels to paid, and even the Internet. If you are still providing basic cable service, your residents could be missing out on their favorite team sports.

Residents Expect More

The expectation around entertainment is changing. More cable choices. Powerful Internet. Integrated DVR functionality. Anything less leaves residents frustrated with their entertainment options. They can buy individual solutions, but they are expensive and difficult to manage, and troubleshooting a problem is a nightmare when multiple vendors point fingers at each other. When residents aren’t satisfied with their entertainment, they aren’t satisfied with your community.

Residents expect the same functionality they had in their own homes:

  • More programming options
  • An easy-to-navigate guide that they can both see and manipulate
  • The ability to watch and record multiple shows at once
  • Access to on-demand programming
  • A TV they can control with their voices
  • Closed captioning for both current and recorded programs

The key to baseline resident satisfaction is to provide more sophisticated entertainment more simply. Look for the ability to control multiple entertainment options from a single device and one remote that controls everything—or for those who prefer—voice control.

In short: An integrated TV solution that is elegant simplicity. SeniorTV programming designed for your residents. Channel selection that the community controls and can change based on usage or level of care. TV that includes integrated DVR designed for seniors that they can control with their voice. And guides each resident can customize to meet their own visual needs.

Entertainment that Extends Beyond Programming

Graceworks Senior Living, a 100-acre campus in Ohio, estimates that 65% of its residents access the Internet. Seniors Housing Business noted that while 55% of residents never participated in a telehealth call before the pandemic, 52% will continue to do so now.[i]

Video conference calls, online news and streaming movies all take bandwidth. Residents too are adding printers, mobile phones, tablets, and computers to the network. With over three-fourths of seniors saying they go online daily [ii], most communities offering common-area Wi-Fi networks will struggle to keep up.

Most already can’t. And the residents suffer with slow download times, dropped calls, and buffering that interrupts streaming video. Expanded Internet is becoming common in senior living and today’s residents want:

  • Dedicated in-room Internet connections that offer up to 25 Mbps
  • The ability to buy up that Internet speed
  • Unlimited connectivity for personal devices
  • Easy connectivity for third-party streaming devices
  • 24/7 phone service for residents
  • Onsite Tech Concierge service to help residents adopt and manage technology

In short: An integrated entertainment solution that is elegant simplicity. Its entertainment that includes bundled Internet services that connect into the same device as the TV. Internet that provides unlimited connections for personal devices, and access to live help whenever a resident needs it.

Entertainment that Facilitates Engagement

Today’s entertainment solutions can do more. They can keep residents informed with a Community Information Channel. They can broadcast live events into the resident units. And they provide the engine for sophisticated, personalized engagement through the medium residents know best—the TV.

While many residents may use smart technology, they are the most comfortable with their TVs. Why not give them the ability to interact with the community, friends and family, even the healthcare ecosystem through that same device? Today’s technology gives you the ability to engage residents right through the TV:

  • Gauge resident wellbeing and satisfaction and provide personalized recommendations for new actions to try
  • Conduct a telehealth call right from the TV
  • Use therapeutic music to gain energy or even slow down for the day
  • View dining menus, schedules and weather
  • Register for events and request a repair
  • Keep up with their faith and even exercise in a safe way

 

Entertainment that Satisfies

Every community offers TV programming. Communities that think of entertainment as an investment rather than a baseline service believe they have more satisfied residents and a market differentiator that sets them apart.

Take a look at Entertain360SM

Spring is the perfect time to take another look at your entertainment offer and see if it can do more for your residents and more for your community. Entertain360SM, from Sentrics, is a TV, DVR, Internet and Engagement platform in one. It is elegant simplicity and it is available today. To find out more, go to https://sentrics.net or call (888) 988-8210.

 

Download the PDF here.

[i] 1 Are you Technologically Prepared, Seniors Housing Business, July 20, 2020.
[ii] Tech Adoption Climbs Among Older Adults, Pew Research Survey conducted Mar.7-April 4, 2016