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Walk into most senior care facilities and you'll find the same thing at the front desk: a clipboard, a pen on a chain, and a sign-in sheet that's somewhere between half-filled and illegible. It costs a few cents a page, which is exactly why it survives.
But "cheap" and "free" aren't the same thing. Here's what the clipboard actually costs.
1. You don't know who's in your building
The sign-in sheet records whatever visitors choose to write, in whatever handwriting they have, if they stop at all. During a busy visiting hour, plenty of people walk straight past.
That matters most in the moment you least want to think about: an evacuation. If the fire alarm goes off right now, can you produce a list of every visitor in the building and check it at the assembly point? A clipboard left at the front desk can't.
2. Nothing gets screened
A paper sheet accepts anyone. It can't flag the ex-employee who was escorted out last year, the estranged family member with a court order, or the "vendor" no one scheduled. Your receptionist is the only screening layer, and they can't memorize every name.
3. The privacy problem sitting in plain sight
A visitor who signs a clipboard can usually read every name above theirs, along with who those people came to see. HIPAA doesn't ban sign-in sheets: HHS allows incidental disclosures when the information shown is limited and reasonable safeguards are in place. But a sheet that lists residents' names and room numbers for anyone to read is hard to defend. A kiosk shows each visitor only their own entry.
4. Surveys and disputes become archaeology
When a surveyor asks who was in the building on a specific date — or a family disputes what time they arrived — someone goes digging through a banker's box of paper. If the page is missing, smudged, or was never filled in, you have nothing.
ArrivSure records are timestamped and searchable, and every change lands in an append-only activity log.
5. Zero operational intelligence
Paper tells you nothing. Which days are busiest? How long do vendors stay? Which families visit weekly and which haven't come in months? That information walks out the door every night. Facilities that capture it use it — for staffing the front desk, for family engagement, and for spotting patterns worth acting on.
What replacing the clipboard actually looks like
A typical setup is an iPad at the front desk and, if you want printed badges, a Brother label printer. Visitors check themselves in at the kiosk. The person they came to see gets a notification, every arrival is checked against your ban list, and the front desk sees the live roster on the reception dashboard.
Once you've settled the visit types and the hardware, going live is mostly training the front desk. See how visitor check-in works, then talk with us about your locations.
Sources and privacy guidance
Last reviewed September 28, 2026.
Confirm your privacy obligations with your compliance advisor.
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