No One Should Lie on the Floor for an Hour: How Stowford House Closed the Gap with Vayyar

Every care home has a version of the same fear. A resident falls. They get up. They say nothing or can’t say anything. And by the time someone finds the bruise, the moment to respond has long passed.

At Stowford House, a 53-bed care home supporting residents with dementia and nursing needs across two floors, that fear was a reality.

“We would find a massive bruise on the head or on the leg, but we were not sure how it happened,” says Shamek, Deputy Manager and Registered Nurse at Stowford House. “Residents with dementia could get up from the floor by themselves and carry on and we never picked it up.”

Hourly checks were in place. The team was diligent. But the gap between checks was still a gap and for some residents, that gap was everything.

The Problem with Hourly Checks

In theory, hourly welfare rounds mean no resident goes unseen for long. In practice, a fall can happen in the first minute after a carer leaves a room.

For residents without the cognitive ability to call for help, that gap could mean lying on the floor injured, frightened, or bleeding for up to an hour before anyone knew.

“If you have someone falling and hitting their head, you need to respond straight away,” Shamek says. “Every minute is important. Without that system in place, the person could be on the floor bleeding for an hour.”

That’s the problem Vayyar was brought in to solve.

90 Seconds to Knowing

Since Vayyar was installed at Stowford House eight months ago, the response to falls has been transformed.

Alerts are delivered directly to every mobile device in the home including Shamek ‘s own phone and the Home Manager’s. The moment a fall is detected, an audible alarm fires across the team.

“Within 90 seconds, we know there’s a fall,” Shamek explains. “We respond quickly. We can recognise what’s happened within seconds which was just great.”

The system is straightforward to use. Staff have two buttons to confirm a fall or clear a false alert. Adoption has been swift.

“The system is very easy to operate,” Shamek says. “That made a difference.”

The Dementia Gap, Closed

For Stowford House’s ground floor residents those living with dementia, from residential through to nursing level the Vayyar system addresses something that traditional monitoring simply cannot.

Sensor mats can alert staff when a resident leaves their bed. But they can’t tell you what happened next. A resident with dementia who falls, recovers, and carries on with their day may never be able to explain what happened and the evidence may not surface until a bruise appears hours or days later.

“We didn’t know,” Shamek says simply. “Now we do.”

That certainty knowing within moments that someone has fallen, not discovering it after the fact is what Shamek identifies as the system’s most important contribution. “It’s the safety net that was missing.”

Precision in the Paperwork

One detail stands out as particularly valuable: accuracy of time.

Before Vayyar, fall times were logged from memory. A nurse might record a fall at 4:00pm that had happened at 3:30. That 30-minute discrepancy might seem minor, but for a thorough falls analysis understanding why a fall happened, what preceded it, who was present it matters enormously.

Now, the exact time of a fall is recorded automatically and fed directly into the accident report via Stowford House’s integration with their PCS care planning system.

“The system goes straight to the point,” Shamek says. “The fall happened at that time. It goes straight onto the accident report and into PCS. That’s a massive improvement for analysis.”

The integration also removes the need for manual duplication when a fall is confirmed, the accident report is automatically generated and ready to complete.

More Than Falls: Behaviour Patterns and Early Intervention

Daily reports from the Vayyar platform have opened a new layer of insight for the Stowford House team. Each morning, Shamek reviews changes in resident behaviour flagged overnight patterns that might signal something is wrong before it becomes a crisis.

“We look at changes and alerts to see if there’s anything unusual, something we can start addressing,” he explains. “Sometimes that matches with what staff are reporting: that a person seems unwell, or there are signs of a UTI. We may have identified potential infections through behaviour changes that could eventually have led to a fall and prevented them.”

James Webb, Sales Director at Vayyar, is also working with the team to identify fall hotspots across individual rooms, pinpointing the highest-risk residents and enabling targeted interventions before the next fall happens.

“The data allows us to move from detection to prevention,” he explains. “We can see exactly where falls are occurring and give the team the insight they need to act early.”

Reassurance That Residents Feel

When Shamek shows prospective residents and their families around Stowford House, the Vayyar system is part of the conversation.

“We explain: even though we check every hour, there’s still a risk of a fall in between. And we show them that this system closes that gap,” he says. “Especially for residents with residential needs, it gives them a sense of security that something is keeping an eye on them, even when no one is physically in the room.”

That reassurance isn’t just felt by residents and families. It runs through the whole team.

“It gives peace of mind to me, to all the staff, and to the residents, that if a fall happens, we will know, and we will respond rapidly.”

A Safety Net Every Care Home Needs

Asked what he would say to another care home considering Vayyar, Shamek didn’t hesitate.

“Go ahead, definitely. Because no matter what you do, falls are going to happen. What this gives you is the confidence that when it does, you will know within seconds and your team will respond. It’s the safety net that was missing. And once you have it, you wonder how you managed without it.”

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Interested in what Vayyar could do for your home? Get in touch to find out more or arrange a demo.

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Stowford House | 53-bed care home | Residential Dementia, Nursing Dementia & Nursing Care