It would preferrably not have a monthly service, but of paramount importance is the automatic fall detection. My mother falls frequently. We simply cannot be confident that my mother would push a button to call for help following a fall.
I don't know how you would find a company providing free service.
The service I got for my father was after I researched and contacted several to determine which service I wanted. I went with Guardian, a local company that initially started in whole house security systems and developed a medical unit for monitoring.
He has a small "pendant" about the size of the earlier collapsible cell phones. It has a motion detector and alerts when a position is changed. It can be put in a pocket or better yet, attached to a belt so it detects bending or falling more accurately.
Faithfully, it always alerts when he's in the ER and laying on a hospital bed b/c his position has changed. Once it alerts, the monitoring service continues to call me, as first named person on the call list, until I let them know he's in the hospital, or at home and just bent over to pick up a book or magazine.
If you do hire a service (and I don't know how you'd get the kind of coverage you want w/o paying), you should also consider a lock box with a key so first responders can get into the house if your mother needs help.
Don't get a lock box that looks like the kind used on school lockers, i.e., an upside U that fits over the door handle. It can be sawed off; I tried it and got a saw inbetween the sides of the U. Get a lockbox that screws into the studs adjacent to the outside door.
The service I got for my father was after I researched and contacted several to determine which service I wanted. I went with Guardian, a local company that initially started in whole house security systems and developed a medical unit for monitoring.
He has a small "pendant" about the size of the earlier collapsible cell phones. It has a motion detector and alerts when a position is changed. It can be put in a pocket or better yet, attached to a belt so it detects bending or falling more accurately.
Faithfully, it always alerts when he's in the ER and laying on a hospital bed b/c his position has changed. Once it alerts, the monitoring service continues to call me, as first named person on the call list, until I let them know he's in the hospital, or at home and just bent over to pick up a book or magazine.
If you do hire a service (and I don't know how you'd get the kind of coverage you want w/o paying), you should also consider a lock box with a key so first responders can get into the house if your mother needs help.
Don't get a lock box that looks like the kind used on school lockers, i.e., an upside U that fits over the door handle. It can be sawed off; I tried it and got a saw inbetween the sides of the U. Get a lockbox that screws into the studs adjacent to the outside door.