Senior dwelling operator Wellpointe Inc. is increasing its small-footprint working mannequin with newly launched medical capabilities to raise resident care.
The California-based supplier operates 62 small-home assisted dwelling and reminiscence care communities, principally in California, and goals to offer reasonably priced assisted dwelling companies to older adults to fulfill the wants of a quickly ageing inhabitants. The corporate’s communities have capability to serve roughly 400 residents throughout Wellpointe’s portfolio.
Wellpointe serves assisted dwelling and reminiscence care residents with higher-acuity wants and extra complicated care calls for.. The corporate just lately added new communities in Fresno, California; and plans to develop close to Mission Viejo.
As we speak, Wellpointe is the biggest owner-operator of residential assisted dwelling houses in California, in response to the Nationwide Funding Middle for Seniors Housing and Care (NIC).
To look after older adults at increased acuity, Wellpointe depends on care coordination, vertically built-in well being companies and ongoing innovation to additional enhance its working mannequin, in response to CEO George Kutnerian.
This yr, the corporate launched a drugs order administration system that handles remedy monitoring and administration capabilities throughout the corporate’s 62 communities. Beforehand, Wellpointe workers spent over quarter-hour per resident charting remedy plans, however the system can now course of orders “in seconds.” The system will seize “the complete remedy expertise” at Wellpointe communities, protecting refusals, refills, pharmacy supply and real-time stock as drugs are introduced into every neighborhood, Kutnerian stated.
This program grew out of the corporate’s Wellpointe Labs, a expertise incubation hub inside the firm that identifies new applied sciences and processes to enhance operations, with affordability for residents as the tip aim, Kutnerian stated. Wellpointe Labs, began in the summertime of 2025, goals to deliver new expertise concepts ahead by way of an innovation hub led by a director of expertise. The corporate can be hiring a further knowledge engineer and including gross sales workers to enhance gross sales and advertising and marketing efforts inside its present markets.
“Prior to now, the trade instructed us that expertise will not be an operators’ enterprise and to remain in our lane,” Kutnerian stated. “However expertise innovation must be a part of our enterprise.”
Wellpointe created the Labs program after the corporate had been chasing “one-stop store” tech platforms, solely to “be taught the laborious means” as programs under-delivered or had been too complicated, Kutnerian stated.
The remedy administration system is the primary piece of “enterprise-level” expertise from the innovation lab and can assist the corporate scale remedy administration processes because it grows. The platform will sustain with the various persistent situations impacting residents and the a number of drugs they take to handle them.
Wellpointe integrates dwelling well being and first care doctor teams into its mannequin to “be extra on the middle” of care coordination and planning for residents, Kutnerian stated. Wellpointe makes use of fall detection expertise and is rolling out a brand new emergency name button system to be used within the occasion of a medical emergency. With these new items of expertise, Kutnerian stated senior dwelling suppliers now have the power to view glimpses into beforehand unseen cases of a resident’s day by day life that may in the end enhance care supply and security.
“We now have the power to take away that black field and additional enhance how we ship care,” Kutnerian stated.
Trying forward, Kutnerian stated he was “very optimistic” about incoming demand for senior dwelling, calling it “palpable,” however pressured that affordability will stay a urgent situation the trade should grapple with sooner or later. He warned that assisted dwelling is “a selection” with “substitutes,” like nursing care or dwelling well being, and the trade needs to be cautious about technological disruption and “overconfidence” in present working fashions.
