OneStep's Customer Advisory Board brings together clinical and operational leaders who use OneStep every day, in real communities and real clinics, with the residents and patients they serve. They are the people who tell us when something works, when something does not, and what care teams actually need from a mobility platform.
That input shapes the product. It keeps OneStep practical, clinically meaningful, and grounded in the pressures our customers are managing right now. We are grateful for the time these leaders give us, and for their willingness to challenge us.
Each month we spotlight one member of the board: their story, their perspective, and the work they do to move care forward.
Christen Bliss Vice President of Clinical Services, Blue Stone Therapy
“Everybody’s goal is to remain as independent and active as possible for as long as possible.”
What makes a frequent faller so hard to treat?
I think therapists get stuck. I think they struggle with, “What should I do next?” It’s a frequent faller. I’ve done the same thing over and over, and that patient continues to fall. So what’s great about OneStep is it gives you some targeted intervention treatments that are meant for that specific patient and what those gait deficits are showing.
Rarely for lack of effort. A fall is an event, not a diagnosis. It tells a therapist something is wrong without telling them which thing, so the next plan tends to look like the last one. Our research in skilled nursing points the same way: a single number rarely explains a faller. Naming the specific deficit is what makes a plan targeted instead of general.
What does a targeted plan look like in practice?
So we had a patient, she had had frequent, multiple falls, and we were struggling with what to do next. So with this patient, we were able to gather a baseline. We were able to find out what those specific gait deficits were, create a targeted approach, and then track that data. We were able to identify those subtle changes and improvements, and then that led us to know that our treatment plan was indeed effective.
Between formal reassessments, the honest answer is often that nobody has fallen yet. That is a lagging signal, and a crude one. Movement intelligence turns those weeks into something visible, so a plan gets confirmed or adjusted while it is still running. Christen’s team did not wait for an outcome. They watched the deficits move.
Where do you see this going?
When we embrace technology such as OneStep, it’s going to allow us to see subtle changes before anyone else would, and this is going to allow us to reach our goals of being independent and remaining active.
Asked what the board has been like, Christen pointed at the other people in the room. “It’s been really nice to work with a group of people who want to share ideas about technology and how it can better support our patients and our facility partners that we serve.”
That is the part we did not design. We built the board to hear from clinical leaders. What it became is a room where they hear from each other, and what comes back to us is sharper for it.
What Christen brings is what every member brings: a clear view from inside the work, and the directness to tell us what actually matters. That shapes what gets built, which means it eventually shapes what shows up in the communities you serve.
Every step tells a story. Our board makes sure we are listening to the right parts of it.
This is the second in our monthly Customer Advisory Board series. Read the first, with John Brackle of Vetter Senior Living. Keep an eye out for the next one in November.