Senior dwelling communities and a resident’s residence – for years, operators have seen the 2 issues as separate ideas. Not anymore.
Senior dwelling operators together with Bloomfield, New Jersey-based Juniper Communities are on the vanguard of a motion to make senior dwelling providers extra “place agnostic” with entry to providers resembling that of Amazon, a market the place customers can store for a lot of various things in a single place.
“In different phrases, offering our providers not solely to our residents in our communities however elsewhere,” Juniper Founder & CEO Lynne Katzmann stated throughout a current webinar hosted by Senior Housing Information and different WTWH Media publications. “One other means of it will be merely to say we’re separating the true property from the providers.”
Katzmann and Juniper will not be solely in search of to supply a number of service strains, the corporate is trying to utterly rethink care and the way and the place it’s delivered. All of those efforts are coming collectively beneath the lens of integration whereby a number of departments from eating to actions collaborate to enhance operations.
“With out integration, you don’t have high quality as outlined by the payer, by the buyer or the supplier,” Katzmann stated. “Integration can also be key if you wish to finally personalize care and repair, and I feel that’s critically necessary as we transfer ahead, notably in senior dwelling.”
Constructing a extra place-agnostic senior dwelling mannequin
Juniper has labored for years to attempt to give residents extra entry to the care providers they want. The operator is among the many founding members of the Perennial Consortium, which advocates for value-based care plans and helps different operators arrange their very own plans. Due to the operator’s involvement in value-based care preparations, Juniper’s leaders are keenly conscious of what it takes to combine care and repair between senior dwelling and suppliers who work inside communities to assist residents.
Amongst Juniper’s instruments for resident wellbeing is “Connect4Life” which brings on-site main care, remedy, pharmacy and labs alongside medical concierges to ship care. The corporate additionally in 2022 launched Catalyst, a program that delivers life-style concierge providers to members specializing in well being and wellness.
Utilizing that strategy, Juniper can preserve departments from working in silos and extra successfully navigate resident care in all components of the group.
“It’s the departments that was once often known as meals and beverage, housekeeping, transport, actions and wellness. These are actually all coming collectively, we combine them internally in order that they will serve our residents in an built-in continuum,” Katzmann stated.
Now’s the time for operators to start incorporating the practices to arrange for the wave of child boomers that’s on their doorstep. Juniper can also be methods it will possibly additional lengthen its choices as a result of infrastructure it has constructed up up to now.
The corporate is integrating the present providers it offers and dealing with different suppliers, ideally to create an “built-in ecosystem of care and repair round a person.” New tech and partnerships will allow operators to offer residents extra of what they need.
Juniper is within the early phases of working with a accomplice to supply extra providers to residents beneath the GUIDE program, which strengthens care coordination and care administration for residents dwelling with dementia.
Whereas Katzmann sees GUIDE as an extension of its current choices, it could not work for operators who haven’t already invested in constructing out their service choices.
“I feel as soon as it’s important to exit into the group, I feel it is extremely tough so as to add the employees essential to make these providers viable,” she stated.
Katzmann describes Juniper’s care coordination efforts as “conducting the orchestra,” and to maintain up has expanded to getting access to residence care, transportation, health teaching and extra for them to take care of wellness. The follow permits Juniper to develop its providers into the house market.
“By conducting and acknowledging that we’re offering providers and doing so not just for the people who reside with us, we’re in a position to faucet a bigger market, the house market,” Katzmann stated. “We imagine that may allow us to develop the bottom of individuals from whom we are able to accumulate charges for offering packages of providers, and that may be capable of create a market just like what Amazon does.”
She added: “It opens up a pipeline for individuals dwelling in our buildings. It reduces issues like advertising and gross sales prices. And we expect it’s the long run.”
Pushing for higher reimbursement
Juniper can also be among the many operators on the forefront of pushing for added reimbursement for providers which might be already customary, notably from the Facilities for Medicare & Medicaid Providers (CMS).
“The truth of our scenario is that we’ve been offering many of those providers on an oblique foundation over an prolonged time period,” Katzmann stated. “What we try to do is acknowledge what we already do after which discover cost sources by way of the care providers that we offer.”
Due to its work with the Perennial Consortium, the group has managed to redefine what “yields well being” for older adults as a result of variety of residents who come into care with persistent diseases. To assist offset the prices, Juniper established a well being plan for residents that features treatment administration, diet and social engagement.
Consequently, Juniper receives funds for the care coordination it offers and a budgetable payment every month for each member who’s a part of the well being plan.
“We’re additionally paid for extra providers than we had been after we first began,” Katzmann stated.
Operators aren’t the one ones in a position to get extra advantages from CMS’ actions. Round two years in the past, residents had been in a position to obtain hire subsidies via Medicare Benefit to afford secure housing, which a scarcity of entry to is now outlined as a social detriment of well being. As such, senior housing prices go on to the member quite than the group.
“They get the offset, and it’s an incentive for being in an surroundings the place care and repair might be coordinated and the place the economies of scale might be realized,” Katzmann stated.
