Getting started with a new medical alert in mom’s home is pretty straightforward. Setting up the equipment, testing and showing mom how to use her new emergency button is a breeze for most families. I truly think the most difficult part of all this is remembering to test your system monthly. In the short-term, remembering to test actually is easy. Most seniors are excited about their new system and enjoy testing it to see how it works. But as mom’s system becomes a normal thing for her around the house, remembering to test becomes more and more difficult. After a year, she’s tested that button 12 different times and she may start taking testing for granted.

The importance of testing monthly just cannot be stressed enough. Yes, mom tested last month, but there are a handful of variables that could have changed over that time. Testing her button tests the speaker box, its connections to the electricity and phone jack, the button itself and more. This will allow both her and us to know that when an emergency strikes she’ll be able to reach an operator and get the help that she needs. Needless to say, we take your mom’s safety very seriously. That’s why we recommend marking her calendar with the days she is planning on testing for the entire year. Just pick one specific calendar day (the 12th… or the 25th) and mark “Test Your Medical Alert” there for every month! You can even use your smart phone’s calendar to alert you on that day. Don’t know how? Give us a call and someone in our Senior Safety Team will walk you through setting that up. We are more than glad to do that for you, because testing is SO important. So let’s all start our 2015 out right and mark our new calendars for testing monthly!