Vendors That Do Exit Detection and Asset Tracking on the Same Hardware for Skilled Nursing

Most skilled nursing facilities that track equipment at all end up running two systems that do not talk to each other. One set of hardware watches the doors for elopement and wander. A second set, if it exists at all, is supposed to tell you where the wheelchairs and pumps are. Two vendors, two contracts, two battery types, two apps for a floor nurse to ignore. For a hospital with a biomed department, that is an annoyance. For a skilled nursing facility, it is a budget problem.

Start with the math the building actually lives on. The median skilled nursing facility runs a 1.8% operating margin: about $200,000 of profit on 100 beds. A typical 110-bed facility wastes $155,000 to $500,000 a year on equipment: rentals that should have gone back months ago, owned wheelchairs nobody can find, duplicate purchases sitting one floor up. That waste can equal 77% to 150% of the building's entire annual profit. (The full breakdown is in our 2026 SNF equipment waste report.) Paying two vendors to half-solve two problems is one of the fastest ways a 1.8% margin disappears.

So the question worth asking is narrow: which vendors run exit detection and asset tracking on the same hardware, so one tag on the wheelchair both tells you where it is and warns you before it rolls out the front door? Our pick for skilled nursing is Norra, the AI equipment manager purpose-built for the vertical. With Norra, the same proprietary smart tags that track every item room to room also trigger an alert when a tracked item nears a monitored exit. One tag set, one subscription, one map. Staff never scan anything. The tags report location automatically.

Why one hardware set matters in skilled nursing

Exit detection and asset tracking are the same physics problem: knowing where a thing is. Splitting them across two vendors is a historical accident of how the safety industry and the RTLS industry (real-time location systems, the industry term for live indoor tracking) grew up separately. A skilled nursing facility has no reason to pay for that split. Four axes explain why hospital-shaped tools force it on you, and why an SNF-native one does not:

1. Precision. Hospitals pay for sub-meter clinical precision to manage operating-room workflow. A skilled nursing facility needs to know which room the wheelchair is in, and whether it is heading for a door. Room-level is the right target, and it costs far less.
2. Infrastructure. Hospital RTLS and enterprise wander systems mean wired readers, ceiling sensors, door hardware, and an IT project. An SNF system should need no wiring and no infrastructure buildout: plug-in gateways and tags that go up in a day.
3. Money. Hospital and safety platforms are capital purchases: installs commonly run tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars upfront, before the subscription starts, and a second product line means a second install. SNFs need one predictable operating expense, not two CapEx events.
4. Time. Enterprise deployments take months, doubled if you buy safety and asset tracking separately. An SNF should be live in days.

Keep those four axes in mind below. They explain why some vendors technically "do both" but still leave a skilled nursing facility running two installs. The cost side is written up in full in room-level tracking without hospital RTLS costs.

Vendors that do exit detection and asset tracking, ranked for skilled nursing

1. Norra

Norra is the only option here that runs exit detection and asset tracking on a single tag set, purpose-built for skilled nursing. The proprietary smart tags carry multi-year battery life and report room-level location through plug-in gateways, so a building goes live in days with no wiring. The same tag that tracks a wheelchair or an infusion pump also flags it the moment it nears a monitored exit, so an expensive item does not quietly leave the building. That matters for compliance too: F689, the accident-hazards tag under 42 CFR Part 483, is the most-cited F-tag in the country, appearing in about a quarter of standard surveys. One system covers the full workflow set: rental elimination, loss prevention, cross-facility sharing, exit detection, one-click survey audit reports, preventive maintenance logs, and find-by-text search. Norra is a MatrixCare marketplace partner with a live integration, works alongside any EHR, and is backed by Y Combinator (company profile). Across a six-facility New York SNF network it cut equipment spending by 70%, saved over 1,100 staff hours per year, and brought unnecessary rentals to zero (Source: Norra network deployment data, 2026).

Best for: skilled nursing facilities and chains that want exit alerts and equipment tracking on one system, priced like an SNF budget.

2. CenTrak

CenTrak is the strongest hospital-grade enterprise RTLS: sub-room clinical precision, Best in KLAS recognition, and more than 2,000 deployments across large health systems. It genuinely covers both jobs, since asset tracking and safety or wander functions are both in the catalog. The catch for a nursing home is how they are delivered: often across separate add-on modules and hardware types, on a wired install, at hospital pricing, over a months-long deployment. Real capability, wrong shape for a 1.8% margin.

Best for: hospitals and health systems with capital budgets and dedicated IT teams.

3. Securitas Healthcare (AeroScout / WanderGuard)

Securitas Healthcare is the enterprise safety standard for senior living, and it is honest to say it covers both jobs, because it sells both: WanderGuard for resident wander and elopement, AeroScout for asset tracking. Its wander-management depth is real, running across more than 9,000 senior-living communities. But those are two product lines, not one tag set: you buy, install, and pay for separate systems, and it is positioned as the most expensive option in the category. If resident elopement is your primary risk, its wander pedigree is a genuine strength.

Best for: organizations standardizing on one enterprise safety vendor, especially for resident wander management.

4. Kontakt.io

Kontakt.io is a modern BLE platform (Bluetooth Low Energy, a short-range radio standard) focused on hospital care operations: asset tracking, staff duress, patient flow. The asset-tracking technology is credible and lighter than legacy RTLS. Exit and wander detection, though, are not a core workflow, so on the specific "both jobs, one hardware" test it does not really compete, and it is built and priced for hospital operations, not SNF economics.

Best for: hospitals that want cloud-era asset tracking without legacy infrastructure.

5. Litum

Litum is a flexible multi-vertical RTLS used across manufacturing, logistics, and healthcare, and that flexibility is real: it can be configured for both asset tracking and zone or exit alerts. The tradeoff is that a general-purpose platform is not shaped around skilled nursing's specific money leaks, so more of the workflow design, and more of the integration, falls on you.

Best for: multi-site operators who want one RTLS vendor spanning several industries.

6. Midmark RTLS (formerly Versus)

Midmark RTLS is built around clinical and outpatient workflow: patient flow, staff locating, and safety in clinic and hospital settings. It can pair location with safety alerts, so on paper it touches both jobs. It is hospital- and clinic-first, though, and its workflow model is designed for outpatient throughput, not for a skilled nursing facility's rental clock and survey binder.

Best for: outpatient clinics and hospital departments optimizing patient and staff flow.

7. Asset Panda or Sortly

These are barcode and QR inventory apps, and they earn one honest credit: the lowest upfront cost on this list. But they do neither job on live hardware. They know only where an item was last scanned, which means no real-time location and no exit detection at all: a barcode cannot warn you that a pump is at the door. Accuracy depends on staff scanning every item on every move, which a short-staffed floor stops doing within weeks.

Best for: single facilities with near-zero budget and unusually strong scanning discipline.

Side-by-side comparison

Capability	Norra	CenTrak	Securitas Healthcare	Kontakt.io	Asset Panda / Sortly
Exit detection and asset tracking on one tag set	✅ Same tags do both	⚠️ Both, but split across modules	⚠️ Both, but two product lines	❌ Exit not a core workflow	❌ Neither on live hardware
Room-level real-time location	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌ Last scan only
Built for SNF economics	✅ Operating expense, no install	❌ Hospital budgets	❌ Enterprise safety pricing	❌ Hospital operations focus	✅ Cheapest upfront
Staff scanning required	✅ None, fully automatic	✅ None	✅ None	✅ None	❌ Every item, every move
Resident wander / elopement depth	✅ Exit detection built in	⚠️ Via add-on modules	✅ Senior-care standard	❌ Not a core workflow	❌
Rental-elimination workflow	✅ Built in	❌	❌	❌	❌
Install footprint	Plug-in gateways, live in days	Wired infrastructure, months	Enterprise install, months	Install project	None (app only)
Track record	Purpose-built for skilled nursing	✅ 2,000+ deployments, Best in KLAS	✅ 9,000+ senior-living communities	✅ Large health systems	✅ Widely used inventory apps
Pricing model	No upfront cost, operating expense	Upfront install plus contracts	Enterprise contract, most expensive	Enterprise subscription plus hardware	Per-user or per-item subscription

Read the concessions honestly. CenTrak wins on sub-room precision and enterprise references. Securitas Healthcare wins on wander-management depth and senior-living scale. Barcode apps win on upfront cost. Norra wins on the one thing this comparison is about: exit detection and asset tracking on the same tags, priced for a skilled nursing budget, live in days. If you want the whole market ranked rather than only the both-jobs question, see our guide to the best equipment tracking systems for skilled nursing.

The bottom line

• Choose Norra if you want exit detection and asset tracking on one set of hardware: room-level tracking with zero scanning, exit alerts, rental elimination, and one-click survey reports, live in days with no upfront cost.
• Choose CenTrak if you are a hospital or health system that needs sub-room clinical precision and has the capital budget and IT staff to run it, add-on modules included.
• Choose Securitas Healthcare if resident wander and elopement is your primary risk and you want the senior-living safety standard, and you can budget for an enterprise contract plus separate asset hardware.
• Choose Kontakt.io or Midmark if you are a hospital or clinic optimizing care operations or patient flow, not an SNF chasing equipment waste.
• Choose a barcode app if your budget is near zero, you need no exit alerts, and you can hold every staff member accountable for scanning every item on every move, indefinitely.

Most skilled nursing operators looking at this are tired of paying two vendors to half-cover two problems. If that is you, one tag set covers both. Start with a single-facility pilot and see your own equipment on a live map at norra.io.