Congregate Care

Congregate Care refers to seniors facilities which span the full “Aging in Place” spectrum.  Included are independent seniors' apartments, seniors’ condos, life lease facilities, retirement homes, assisted living, nursing homes, acute care, hospice care and supportive housing facilities.



Independent Living

Supportive Housing

In a typical independent living facility (which includes Retirement Homes and Assisted Living Facilities), each suite is equipped with a Caresse+ or Vi+ and a portable Amie pendant. At the push of a button, instant voice response is available whenever assistance is required, from anywhere in the resident’s suite. All residents can access the emergency response system from anywhere in their suite, using their wireless Amie pendants, the alarm button on their Caresse units, or a variety of wireless sensors such as pull cords, flood detectors, fall detectors, smoke detectors etc.

The staff carry wireless telephones, which enables them to respond to calls from anywhere in the building complex, as well as control the front door through the PBX telephone switch. 

Calls can be programmed to go to the receptionist, wireless telephones, commercially available pocket pagers or mobile phones. Alternatively calls can also be routed to a professional monitoring station where operator are on duty 24/7

Using VoiceGate Software calls can be routed to staff via text message or e-mail 

Many low income seniors and people of all ages with disabilities live in subsided apartments or in their private homes. They are in need of a variety of services provided by Home Care organizations which can include Meals on Wheels, medication management, vital signs monitoring, laundry services, transportation for medical appointments and other services designed to keep them safely in their homes. Tunstall PERS products are ideally suited for these clients. Using either the Caresse+ or the Vi+ the client can send an emergency call directly to a home care worker carrying a cell phone or PDA device such as an iPhone or Blackberry. Calls do not need to be sent to a professional monitoring service first,  then relayed back to the home care worker. This eliminates the cost of paying for a monitoring service and the response time from the care provider is faster since the call goes directly to their wireless phone. Tunstall products provide an effective low cost, streamlined solution for these seniors at risk.   

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Assisted Living Solutions using a PBX System 

A Telephone PBX Switch is similar to a hotel telephone system. It has the ability of offering complete telephone services to your residents as well as to your staff. The additional revenue realized from billing residents for their telephone service which they presently purchase on a monthly basis from their common carrier (Bell, TELUS, Sprint, AT&T etc) will provide a complete payback for both the telephone system, including the wireless telephones and the Nurse call System over a 5-year period. Each resident would have their own unique telephone number and be able to send and receive telephone calls directly as they presently do through their common carrier. Similarly, they would have access to all the features available from their common carrier.

The Tunstall Caresse+ and Vi+ will work with almost any commercial PBX switch including Mitel, Panasonic, Toshiba, Avaya, and Cisco. Today, most PBX are IP switches. However, they all offer the analog ports necessary to connect the Caresse+ or Vi+. Both our products will also work with SIP converters.

PBS telephone switches are available through Tunstall business Partners (See the ”Resources” section for a list of providers).

Benefits of a Tunstall Assisted Living Solution


  • Improved Quality of Care
    • Major staff productivity improvements and quality of service resulting from direct voice communications with the residents, and the ability to cancel frivolous or non-urgent calls remotely. 
    • Flexible backup alternatives not available from traditional Nurse call systems, such as 10 levels of escalation, without the need for either a PC or additional software. 
    • Integrating your nurse call system with pagers and cordless telephones will help to eliminate the noise and visual confusion of traditional nurse call systems with lights and alarms.
    • Wireless communications for greater resident safety in their suites, i.e. pendants for residents and wireless telephones for the staff which.
  • Improved Communication
    • All employees can have Direct Dial numbers, which allow easy access from the outside without having to go through the receptionist. This will greatly cut down the number of calls through the main desk.
    • All residents and employees can have voicemail, which will greatly improve their ability to communicate internally as well as allow them to send a message to all of the residents and employees simultaneously. 
    • 911 calls that are dialed from a resident’s room are notified to the main console. Any 911 call from within the building automatically registers on the main attendant console. They will know which room has made the call and be prepared for the Emergency Response team.
    • Access to facilities such as the kitchen, or any of the departments is accessed through a 3 or 4 digit local for your residents or employees.
    • Direct overhead paging through the telephone system into the common areas, hallways and residents rooms.
  • Reliability
    • There is significantly increased reliability since there is no single point of failure, as each device is on its own telephone line. This increased reliability translates directly into lower maintenance costs. In fact there is no need for service calls as our service department can diagnose the Caresse+ or Vi+ remotely. 
  • Cost Savings
    • Major cost savings since no Nursecall conduit is required, as it uses the standard telephone cable already in place.
  • Service and Support
    • One-Stop shopping for both systems; sales and service.
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