Buttonworks and call light systems
A call light is the fastest way for a resident to reach staff, and no software should try to take that job. What it cannot do is say what the resident actually wants, which is why a member of staff has to walk to the room to find out.
Where a call light works well
- It works with no phone, no account, no battery, and no shared language. A resident who cannot read can still use it.
- It is instant and it is wired into the building, so it survives a dead phone and a bad signal.
- Skilled nursing is required to have one, and surveyors expect to see it working.
Where it runs out
- It carries one piece of information: someone in this room needs something. Staff walk there to learn the rest, then walk back to do it.
- Most of what comes through it is not urgent, and staff know that. In a survey of 105 nursing home staff, 72% agreed residents use call lights for non-urgent requests, and 62% believed residents do not use them for urgent needs.
- That teaches the building to discount the signal. In the same survey, more than 49% said staff do not pay attention to call lights.
- Under load, calls get dropped. Observing four nursing homes, researchers found staff cancelled 10% of call lights because of workload and forgot to return to the resident about 3% of the time.
- Nothing is written down. There is no queue, no history for a resident, no way to see that the same radiator has been reported nine times.
Side by side
| Call light | Buttonworks | |
|---|---|---|
| What the resident can say | That they need something | Anything, in their own words, by voice or text |
| Who finds out what is needed | Whoever walks to the room | Whoever is on the team that handles it |
| Language | Whatever the responder speaks | The resident writes in theirs, staff read it in the facility's |
| Where it goes | A panel, a dome light, or a pager | A work order on one team's dashboard |
| What is left afterwards | Nothing | A timestamped record, per resident and per team |
| Emergencies | Yes, this is what it is for | No. Call 911 or use the call button |
What happens with Buttonworks
- The resident sends a voice note or a message on an app they already have. Messenger and SMS are the first channels.
- Buttonworks transcribes it, works out which team it belongs to, and creates the work order.
- It appears on the dashboards of that team only, so the maintenance request does not land on six phones that cannot act on it.
- The resident gets a reply in the same chat, in the language they wrote in, telling them which team has it.
Keep the call light for what it is good at. Give everyday requests somewhere else to go, so that when the light does come on, it means something again.
Buttonworks is not an emergency service and does not replace your facility's emergency call system or trained staff. In an emergency, call 911 or use your facility's emergency call button.
Buttonworks is in early access. Statistics on this page are cited on the Sources page. See the other comparisons, or what Buttonworks does.
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