By Thomas A. Parmalee, staff writer, Senior Care Marketing Max
When Neil Tantingco, 58, stepped away from a career in high-tech in 2000, he wasn’t thinking about buying a 50-bed assisted living community.
He also never envisioned starting a home care agency and a leading telehealth provider blending live 24/7 remote care coordination with a remote patient monitoring system.
But that’s exactly what he ended up doing, and today, Connected Home Living serves clients in 33 states and also in Canada. Customers include hospitals, hospice and senior communities.
“But our fastest-growing market segment is home care,” he said. “This growth was spurred by our partnership with ComForCare and Right at Home, national franchise home care organizations with over 300 locations in the U.S. and Canada.”
It’s quite a change for Tantingco, who once worked for tech giants such as Yahoo!, Netscape and VMware, managing relationships with vendors, such as IBM, Hewlett Packard and Dell. “So, I spent the majority of my time traveling,” he said. “I didn’t find it fulfilling.”
When he left, he reconnected to his roots, spending time with his grand aunt, who lived in a senior care facility three hours away from his home in San Jose.
“I started volunteering in this senior community where my grand aunt lived, as she had never married or had kids, so I became her kid,” he said. “When you live three hours away, you don’t want to stay there for only 10 or 15 minutes. I got to know the residents, the staff and the owner.”
The next thing he knew, he was participating in activities and amazing the residents with what he could show them on his smartphone.
“For many of these residents, if you asked them what they had for lunch, they could not remember, but if you asked their address 60 years ago, they would know,” he said. “I would pull up their address on Zillow, and they would see a tree that they planted as a shrub 60 years ago.”
From there, he started serving residents dinner, vacuuming and washing dishes. “When I showed up at this building, I got 50 hugs and kisses,” he said. “I inherited 50 grandmas and grandpas.”
Finally, the owner told him, “There is something strange about you – you are here every weekend.”
She saw something special in him.
A Born Entrepreneur
What she might have seen in Tantingco was a born entrepreneur who thrives on striving a solution to every problem put in front of him.
Some of that may simply be genetic, he said, singling out his grandfather, who lived in the Philippines.
“He started off with a little horse cart and he just stuffed it – it was a mobile retail store,” he said.
He’d go from town to town selling everything he could before meeting his wife (Tantingco’s grandmother), and together they saved their money and bought a bigger cart before becoming owners of a small grocery store.
Later, his grandfather built the only rice mill in town, charging farmers a percentage of their rice to unhusk it, which paved the way for him to buy an even larger grocery store – and then a fleet of trucks. “Eventually, he became the richest person in the province,” Tantingco said.
Tantingco brings that same passion to being a business owner, but he also treasures his role as a proud husband and father to two young adult daughters, one who recently graduated from Long Beach State and another who recently transferred to San Diego State. “I stay physically active by hiking, working out, and mountain biking, often with my pup, Tia, by my side,” he said. “In my free time, I enjoy giving back through volunteer work with our Neighborhood Association, the Alzheimer’s Association, and the Red Cross.”
A Risk that Pays Off
The owner of the assisted living community asked the obvious question: Would he want to buy the place?
“I cashed out everything I owned, including my high-tech stocks and 401(k), and the prior owner helped me out in terms of providing a side note. She brought me under her wing,” Tantingco said.
And that’s how he ended up becoming the owner of Evergreen Residence in Visalia, California, a 50-bed facility that he owns to this day.
He had no way of knowing it at the time, but it was also the first step toward becoming the founder and CEO of what would become Connected Home Living.
After buying Evergreen, he introduced various innovations, bringing a new focus to caring for residents with diabetes, congestive heart failure and other ailments.
“Our staff were nonclinical caregivers, so how would they know to look for swollen legs, difficulty breathing, glucose levels, etc.?” he asked. “Most residents when they move in, they have at least two chronic ailments. If you don’t manage them properly, they are going to end up in the ER. You have a responsibility to care for these people. You can’t just change their diaper and give then a shower – it’s not enough!”
With that as a guiding philosophy, he began capturing vitals of residents, and his staff began to learn about what is normal or abnormal. “I started accumulating all this data,” he said.
When he shared what he was doing with home health nurses, they were amazed. At times, they would see a glucose reading and quickly discover that a patient who said they were doing great was not doing so well at all.
“So, then, they would speak to a doctor and say, ‘This dosage is not working.’ Sometimes, maybe the dosage was making things worse.”
Over time, residents began living longer, which resulted in a good problem to have: Tantingco’s facility was always full – and his waiting list kept getting longer.
Getting into Home Care
Fewer people were moving out and more people were wanting to move in.
Tantingco wanted to help them all.
“Folks like Brookdale Senior Living have a certain culture in their residence – they don’t want people too sickly,” Tantingco said. “They either charge a huge amount of money, or they kick them out. But we love those residents – we love putting them back to health.”
But with only so many beds at his facility, there was only so much he could do, so he started a private duty agency to serve those on the waiting list.
“At that point, I was very familiar with home care,” he said.
But 24-hour in-person care costs between $14,000 to $18,000 per month, and most clients had a budget of $7,000 or less. “Issues like falls, non-compliance, or wandering often arose when clients were alone between caregiver and family visits,” he said. “To address both affordability and safety, I started integrating various technologies with live remote caregivers. It took about a year to identify and operationalize the right technology due to numerous offerings, so we relied on our community feedback through trial and error.”
Eventually, he realized others could also benefit from the services and solutions he’d developed, and he formally launched Connected Home Living in 2015. “Our first customer was a home health agency, which piloted our services in 2015 and eventually became our first customer,” he said.
The stakes were – and continue to be – high.
“You’d leave Mrs. Smith on a Friday and knock on her door Monday – and she was gone,” he said.
Usually, what happened was that the person had fallen and no one got to them in time to help.
That’s why one of the core services CHL offers is technology to detect a fall, including a slow-moving fall, which can often go unnoticed by other fall detection systems.
“We experimented with cameras with fall detection built in, but they did not want them in the bathroom. So, we eventually settled on our device that does a 4D radar scan that monitors 24/7,” he said.
The radar waves are emitted through a hockey puck-like device that can be mounted on walls or ceilings to monitor an area, he said.
“Once it detects someone on the ground, it will light up for a minute and a half to see if you are doing sit-ups or tying your shoes – you don’t want false alerts,” he said. “Then, it will forewarn the client and start to beep, letting them know that you better get up, or it is going to call for help.”
He added, “Our 4D radars, mounted on walls or ceilings, emit less energy than a standard smartphone. These radars continuously scan rooms, generating silhouettes or images of individuals without revealing faces or private body parts, thereby ensuring privacy. If our AI detects a person on the ground due to a fall, after a short period (typically 4-7 minutes), an alert is sent to CHL 24/7, which then notifies the appropriate contacts according to each client’s unique, predefined protocols.”
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Connected Home Living Hits its Stride
While Tantingco thought home care agencies would be banging down his door to do business with him, he got some unexpected pushback at first.
“They thought we were a threat,” he said, explaining the fear was that families would subscribe to CHL’s services and then require fewer billable hours.
But Tantingco found advocates in the home health market, which took him by surprise.
“The majority of people needing home care were also accompanied by home health,” he said. “When people are discharged from a hospital, they are assigned to a home health agency.”
They began seeing how Tantingco and his remote care coordinators were working with clients, using technology to monitor blood pressure, take glucose readings and interact with people virtually to remind them to take their medication.
More importantly, they realized that CHL clients tended not to go back to the hospital, which was big, as home health agencies get penalized if clients are frequently re-admitted to the hospital within 30 days of discharge.
“We started recruiting home health agencies,” which were eager to pay for CHL’s services for a month to get the through that critical period after a discharge. When it was time for them to cut off services, family members would often insist a home care agency continue using the services, as they liked having someone to remind their loved one to take their medication, or to simply talk to them when they were lonely.
“The home health agencies said, ‘Hey, we are going to pay you to keep them out of the hospital for 30 days.’ And then they would call the patient and say, ‘It’s time to discharge you, and they would say, ‘Wait a second. You cannot unplug this.’”
What Tantingco found is that over time, remote care coordinators developed a strong rapport – even a friendship – with clients. “They can reach CHL 24/7 using the call button on the smartphone app or by calling our 800# number,” he said. “CHL’s success in achieving compliance and engagement is largely due to our human factor.”
With the family urging home care agencies to continue CHL’s services, it became a much easier sell.
Moreover, if a client did not already have home care lined up, Tantingco could call an agency and refer them as a patient, explaining that he does not sell his services directly to consumers, but he would like to recruit them to be his partner.
Everyone ends up being happy – the home care agency as it lands a client, the family as they are taking care of loved one, and CHL, which earns the chance to help one more person – the fuel that keeps Tantingco going.
“Once we took that approach, we started accumulating more home care agencies,” he said. “I love working with moms and pops, but we also started working with ComForCare and Right at Home agencies in multiple states, and we started getting them on board.”
A Competitive Advantage
Home care agencies that use CHL generally mark up services 150% to 200%, Tantingco said.
But more importantly, it gives agencies the chance to differentiate themselves from competitors, Tantingco said.
“All our solutions, the cost is about $325 to $350 per client per month to the agency,” Tantingco said. “The only time they may decide not to mark it up and eat the cost is for a 24/7 client. In that case, they may wrap it up in the cost of the service. If someone is paying you $25,000 or $30,000 per month, you want to be sure they are as healthy as they can be. Most of the trouble occurs when a client falls because the caregiver does not sleep in the same bedroom. They won’t discover a fall until the following morning.”
Even if the person recovers, the reaction from family members can be severe, Tantingco said. “They may be paying you 30 grand a month. They think, ‘You let my mom be on the ground for hours … you’re fired.’ So, it can be worth it for an agency to put our solution at least in the bedroom to detect if there is a fall.”
More progressive agencies often wrap CHL’s solutions into the hourly rate of employees and offer it to every client, he said. They’ll determine a family’s budget and then propose a certain number of billable hours combined with CHL’s services to cover the client 24 hours.
Some agencies bundle CHL services into their hourly care packages (typically with a 20-hour weekly minimum), Tantingco said. For clients not yet ready for in-person care, standalone CHL services range from $100 to $500 per month, depending on the level of support required.
“For clients not yet ready for in-person care, CHL services can be offered as a standalone solution,” Tantingco said. “We emphasize the significant value: for approximately $500 per month (roughly $16.70 per day), families receive 24/7 live remote monitoring, proactive engagement, and safety alerts. This is often less than the cost of a caregiver for a single hour, yet it provides round-the-clock peace of mind.”
Ultimately, CHL bridges the gap between affordability and quality oversight, particularly during the early or transitional stages of care.
“The point of our solution is not for the agency to get rich doing it, but to beat your competitors,” Tantingco said. “The industry is missing so much innovation, and this can set you apart.”
Additional Insights for Home Care Professionals
Asked if home care providers are leveraging technology to its fullest potential, Tantingco said the answer varies depending on the client.
“But I think all seniors deserve CHL,” he said. “Especially if they are not getting ongoing care – those customers are especially vulnerable. You just need that one disaster to happen. In my opinion, every home care client should have CHL in some shape or form.”
Many CHL partner agency operators agree with that and include it as part of their standard service, he said. “They call it Connected Care because we white label our services,” he said. “They let clients know that the way they are different is they provide ongoing care, regardless of your budget.”
As for what sets CHL apart, Tantingco gave a quick summary:
- Home Care Transition: Reduces hospital readmissions or manages chronic disease through remote monitoring and telehealth support.
- Virtual Caregiving: Bridges the gap between in-person visits with live, 24/7 remote care.
- FAST Detect: Real-time fall detection without the need for wearables, cameras, or pull cords.
- FAST Monitor: Tracks elopement, wandering, and other unusual behaviors using passive sensors.
Some of the common red flags that a remote care coordinator may raise with a client include:
- Signs of chronic disease exacerbation or constant rehospitalization.
- Undetected falls or long-lie.
- Behavioral changes (i.e. wandering, elopement, frequency of bathroom visits, etc.)
- Loneliness and isolation.
- Social determinants of care, such as medication refill, transport, food replenishment, lack of transport, etc.
“These solutions are often bundled together but can also be tailored individually based on each client’s specific needs,” Tantingco said. “Many families—particularly adult children—are hesitant to commit to in-person care during the initial assessment. Yet, the need for immediate oversight is often urgent. CHL helps bridge that gap by offering timely, nonintrusive support that brings peace of mind, relieves emotional stress, and respects financial constraints.”
