Will medical alerts get used differently by a new group of older people?

What’s going to change with medical alerts as a new group of people retire?

Starting in 2011, the baby boomers are starting to retire. For the next twenty years we’re going to have the largest group of retirees ever.

Are these retirees going to be different than the retirees who have come before them? Some people say yes. There’s an article I read recently that claims that unlike prior generations, the current generation of retirees is going to be vocal in asking for what they need and want.

There’s a stereotype about older people with medical alerts that they are sometimes unwilling to press their medical alert call button because they don’t want to bother anyone.

You hear stories about people who have even lain overnight with a broken hip but haven’t used their emergency call button because they didn’t want to call attention to themselves. Maybe they were worried about how the emergency responders would get into their house. (If you don’t have a key in a lockbox it’s possible that responders may have to damage your door in order to come in to help you.)

I do think this stereotype is going to change. And I think that’s a good thing. With a service like a medical alert, especially a medical alert that’s monitored by a professional monitoring center, you’re paying a monthly fee so that people will pick up the phone when you activate your personal emergency response system.

Maybe another generation was content not to ask for help, but the boomers are going to be very mindful of the fact that they’ve paid for a certain service, and they’re not going to be shy about using it.

So I believe providers should expect more calls. And I believe the issue of people with Medical Alerts not using them is slowly going to go away. We might have the other problem, in fact, where companies need to set up new pricing structures because people are using their services a lot more than they used to.

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