Three-way partnership aims to fill PERS niche

PLYMOUTH MEETING, Pa.—Aiming to deliver a new PERS package that fills a specific, underserved segment of end users, PERS manufacturer Medical Alarm Concepts on Sept. 8 announced a partnership with central station automation platform supplier Micro Key Solutions and central station receiver manufacturer Sur-Gard.

The new program, called MediMonitoring, targets hospitals and other healthcare facilities and their recently discharged patients, according to Steve Beeferman, MAC director of Home & Healthcare Services. The partnership will provide everything a healthcare organization needs to monitor their patients themselves, from MAC's PERS pendant to the receivers from Sur-Gard and Micro Key's automation platform, which makes all the signal processing and monitoring possible.

“Hospitals and others approached us for a custom monitoring solution and we are providing it,” Beeferman said. “Hospitals and medical centers that are interested in the MediMonitoring program are interested for a simple reason: They do not want the people they discharge and care for to be monitored by anyone but them. Similarly, the monitored persons are sensitive to being monitored by other than preferred organizations.”

Is there room in this new PERS package for the private PERS dealer? Beeferman said there's no reason a dealer couldn't get involved as long as they can participate at the scale necessary.

“We aren't competing for RMR with dealers with this program,” Beeferman said. “There are hospitals who recommend PERS services to patients, and make alliances with local companies, and those are the hospitals [dealers] could try to get … We have created a package that could allow dealers to now go after hospital business on a level that the hospital would require … we could help a dealer get this kind of business.”