This text is sponsored by LifeLoop. On this Voices interview, Senior Housing Information sits down with Rob Fisher, CEO of LifeLoop, to discover why creating a powerful innovation technique is important for guaranteeing the long-term success of senior residing communities, notably within the face of the trade’s most urgent challenges. He additionally discusses the rising emphasis on value-based care, highlighting how operators are prioritizing whole-person wellness and the transformative function expertise performs on this evolving panorama.
Senior Housing Information: Rob, you’re new to senior residing however have a powerful tenure in digital well being care. How do you align these experiences and traits to what you’re seeing within the senior care trade right this moment?
Rob Fisher: Whereas senior residing could also be a brand new trade for me, I’ve discovered my 20 years in digital well being care has ready me effectively for this function. I joined LifeLoop in April this 12 months and deliberately spent my first six months with the corporate studying, listening, and downloading with leaders from throughout the senior residing area. Firstly, the eagerness and dedication of the individuals working in senior residing is abundantly clear—this trade shouldn’t be with out its challenges, and the individuals who select to dedicate their careers to enhance the lives of older adults must be acknowledged and celebrated. This seemingly comes as no shock to my workforce as over my time at LifeLoop, I’ve communicated how important individuals and tradition are to my management fashion.
Over the course of my profession to-date, taking Curaspan by way of a sequence of acquisitions that finally resulted in a sale to Wellsky, I noticed first-hand how expertise was reworking the standard well being care mannequin for the higher. Senior residing is in fact experiencing the identical transformation, however what’s most fun is senior residing operators are embracing innovation. As I’ve hung out talking with operators, senior care suppliers, and longevity financial system thought leaders, there are three clear parallels from my time in well being care which can be driving senior residing ahead.
The primary being the gradual however rising expertise adoption curve. The pandemic catapulted senior residing right into a interval of adoption this trade had by no means seen, and that thirst for progressive options stays. Nonetheless, the trade nonetheless has a solution to go—expertise suppliers have to do a greater job of curating innovation to go well with the distinctive wants of senior residing operators and the older adults they help and aligning that worth to their enterprise and care goals. In relation to how we outline worth, that is one thing I’m personally fairly captivated with and brings me to my second level. The Worth Primarily based Care (VBC) mannequin was a key a part of well being care growth when it comes to care transitions for sufferers, and it’s beginning to achieve traction in senior residing. Specifically, how the trade views and delivers on “complete individual” wellness for older adults past medical wants, incorporating engagement and different dimensions of wellness that affect general well being.
Lastly, a give attention to distinctive service. We’ve seen this evolution in well being care in recent times as sufferers have extra choices than ever earlier than to entry care and assets–direct-to-consumer manufacturers, digital suppliers, payor constructions, and extra. This naturally drives a necessity for distinctive customer support to the highest of the precedence record. That is additionally true in senior residing and the way we help our clients by being not only a vendor, however a strategic companion who’s invested of their success.
Worth-Primarily based Care has been gaining traction within the trade over latest years. Why do you assume this mannequin is so necessary and distinct from how operators have seen resident care to this point?
All of it boils all the way down to high quality outcomes. VBC continues to make a wave by way of well being care and the Medicare inhabitants as a result of CMS has acknowledged its public objective to maneuver all Medicare beneficiaries to a VBC mannequin by 2030. In essence, meaning no extra pay for quantity however as an alternative, pay for worth. Medicare beneficiaries will likely be in considered one of two important fashions: enrolled right into a Medicare Benefit plan the place the well being plan will bear the monetary threat, or as a affected person beneath the care of an Accountable Care Group the place a supplier group manages majority of the monetary threat. In each situations, the actual goal is to supply proactive wellness care in an effort to drive down pointless ED visits or acute admissions the place price of care is extremely excessive and extremely variable relying on area. In an effort to present wellness care, you could go to together with your member/affected person of their resident setting for finest outcomes.
We hear it continuously from our clients, the residents they help, different suppliers within the trade, and so forth—residents want and need to be handled because the distinctive person that they’re, and that’s mirrored of their senior residing expertise. The Worth Primarily based Care mannequin gives a roadmap for operators to ship on that by prioritizing and integrating components of wellness into care and experiences that haven’t historically been a spotlight of congregate senior residing. What’s so thrilling is the important function of expertise in enabling the constant, assured, and scalable supply of this next-level personalization. Now we have alternatives to personalize the expertise of residents that they’ll be buying and selling in medicines for an genuine sense of group which bolsters wellbeing.
Group employees want options that allow them to effectively study resident preferences, retailer that info, and make it usable to ship customized care and experiences. The extra a resident feels linked to their group and the alternatives they’ve to interact with each other by way of socialization, mutual pursuits, and actions that hook up with their passions, the extra they’re engaged in all that group life has to supply. This will increase bodily exercise, stimulates mental and psychological well being, and gives so many different advantages that enhance general wellbeing. These well being advantages can’t be overstated or underestimated, particularly when research level to issues like social isolation being as harmful to older grownup well being as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
Expertise is the bridge that helps communities overcome most of the obstacles that make resident personalization difficult, opening new doorways to ship really differentiated and significant experiences for seniors.
Equally, senior residing has been experiencing a “increase” in expertise and innovation adoption, most notably for the reason that pandemic. What do operators have to prioritize — or keep away from — to achieve success with expertise investments right this moment?
It’s thrilling to see the trade embracing expertise and what number of progressive corporations are turning their efforts towards supporting older adults. Operators have an growing variety of choices to undertake options that may profit their residents, employees, and communities, which could be an amazing endeavor for an trade largely unaccustomed to digital transformation. An important recommendation is, regardless of the place you’re in your digital transformation journey, approaching expertise as a method versus an amenity or price middle is totally important to success.
Viewing innovation by way of a strategic lens allows operators to harness its true worth and apply it to areas of want particular to their enterprise and their individuals. Adopting expertise for expertise’s sake solely ends in extra points—lack of adoption, inflated tech stacks, vendor administration, added prices—however approaching expertise as a strategic funding units operators on a path that prioritizes fixing the best issues and right-sizes prices and useful resource planning.
After all, “shopping for expertise” shouldn’t be a easy activity. Operators should steadiness prices, challenge ROI, assess infrastructure, handle onboarding and ongoing adoption—all these issues imply shopping for an off the shelf resolution isn’t going to work. That is why options which can be curated for senior residing operators are so important; the answer should ship tangible worth with out including burden or complexity to the already overwhelmed group employees. Additional, the consumer expertise is predestined to seamlessly wrap across the present workflows of group administration and resident engagement.
For instance, the workflows between creating content material, distributing it to residents, and the way the resident engages with it—signing up for an occasion, watching a video, taking part in a sport—these nuances are accounted for with an answer that understands how these items have to work collectively to ship an optimum expertise distinctive to older adults. This worth is magnified when contemplating multi-site organizations that want to perform these goals on a a lot bigger scale.
With respect to multi-site operators, what does a sound expertise technique appear like, and have you ever recognized any traits on this adoption or implementation method?
Multi-site operators stand to exponentially profit from expertise. If you happen to take a look at the challenges a single senior residing group is dealing with right this moment throughout employees recruitment and retention, resident engagement, and group administration, then multiply that by dozens of areas throughout a number of time zones and types, these challenges develop into vital obstacles to success. Bigger operators have to standardize enterprise-level options that account for effectivity, scale, visibility, and management, with out the complexity that usually accompanies them.
Cogir Senior Residing is a main instance of how an operator strategically deploys expertise to perform portfolio-wide problem-solving, whereas including enhancements that profit employees, residents, and their households. The group manages over 80 communities and has acquired a number of senior residing manufacturers in recent times. The company workforce assessed options to satisfy key enterprise goals together with aligning employees processes, enhancing resident and household engagement, unifying branding, the flexibility to leverage data-driven insights from group efficiency and the resident expertise. Cogir finally partnered with LifeLoop to enhance resident engagement, employees operations, and household communications.
The results of this strategic expertise partnership enabled Cogir to seamlessly standardize methods, talk and keep model requirements, ship a world-class resident expertise, and allow a data-driven method to tell future enhancements portfolio-wide. Cogir now has a stable expertise basis that future proofs the group to cost forward on its progress path.
Finally, a sound expertise technique for operators of any dimension, however particularly for bigger organizations, begins with aligning resolution capabilities to your group’s objectives and guaranteeing you’ve engaged a expertise firm that’s your companion—an organization that’s repeatedly invested in your success.
As expertise adoption within the senior residing area evolves, what function will rising applied sciences like AI, AR/VR, and robotics play in senior residing’s future? How can operators benefit from any such innovation?
Rising applied sciences are in fact an indication of the subsequent frontier in senior residing innovation, they usually current immense potential when applied the best manner. It’s necessary to acknowledge that not all operators are on the identical path in relation to digital transformation, so once we begin to see issues like VR/AR and Synthetic Intelligence trending, the pure query that many operators are asking is, “What can this do for my group?” And that’s precisely the consideration they need to be making when approaching any kind of innovation, however particularly those who have but to be extensively applied for the distinctive use circumstances of senior residing. These improvements should be curated to serve a significant function for senior residing.
This brings me again to one of many factors I made within the final query, that expertise is just helpful when it’s clearly aligned together with your group’s outlined objectives after which applied to execute in opposition to these goals. Let’s take AI for instance, because it’s presently the most popular trending rising expertise in senior residing.
Whereas AI shouldn’t be a brand new expertise, it’s undeniably gaining appreciable consideration in senior residing. We’re seeing it mentioned at each trade convention and as a constant matter in key thought chief circles, but solely 9% of senior residing operators presently use AI-aided expertise (LifeLoop 2024 State of Senior Residing & Expertise Report). Whereas 34% of senior residing executives plan to undertake any such expertise sooner or later, it’s clear that for a lot of operators, the through-line between the potential of AI, and the way and why to really implement it, shouldn’t be but clear. That is the place we, as a strategic expertise companion to our clients and this trade at-large, need to do the work to interrupt down the attract and make it tangible and significant for operators.
LifeLoop centered its efforts right here effectively over a 12 months in the past when contemplating how AI may benefit our clients, and we’re excited to have formally launched AI-enhanced LifeLoop options in October 2024. Our method embraced this methodology of weaving the ability of AI all through the LifeLoop platform to basically supercharge the present employees and resident workflows communities are already accustomed to. This accomplishes three key issues: mitigating the onboarding and coaching burden on employees, making use of AI to handle key ache factors that employees and residents are already experiencing, and maximizing the long-term worth of AI relatively than making a ‘flash within the pan’ characteristic.
The results of this intentional AI implementation is quicker time to worth and elevated adoption. This was evident by reaching 1,400 engagements with our AI-enhanced Calendar Administration characteristic throughout the first 24 hours of launch, and a New Perspective Senior Residing employees member commenting that the AI enhancement saves her as much as a full day of time every week. That is how we, pretty much as good stewards of innovation, establish, curate, and deploy rising applied sciences to ship worth for senior residing operators.
Defining an innovation technique and the best applied sciences to help it may be a frightening activity. What recommendation would you give to operators to optimize this course of?
I’ve talked concerning the significance of mapping expertise investments to your organizational goals—that’s primary. That additionally comes with the understanding that this may be an intimidating enterprise for operators with no expertise strategist on-staff for example how expertise could be utilized to gaps and alternatives. That is the place a vital companion piece of recommendation comes into play; senior residing operators ought to establish and assess expertise corporations that provide partnership over transactional relationships. The partnership method ensures that communities obtain correct expertise session, implementation help, employees coaching, and continued innovation and buyer help that meets the wants of all of their stakeholders. Whereas we spend limitless hours creating expertise to create efficiencies for our clients, we nonetheless consider strongly within the accelerated outcomes from human connection – and it’s due to this our individuals stay our secret sauce.
A expertise companion will show you how to overcome that data hole to successfully establish how options can problem-solve and supply enhancements to what you uniquely care about in your group. That is the important thing to long run innovation success.
End this sentence: “Within the senior residing area, 2025 will likely be outlined by…”
…a mix of customized care, implementation of AI options to drive employees efficiencies, and holistic wellness, prioritizing each bodily and psychological well being to foster group, connection, and independence.
Editor’s observe: This text has been edited for size and readability.
LifeLoop is the main resident and employees expertise resolution for senior residing and is presently supporting over 500,000 residents at 4,700 communities throughout the nation. Obtain LifeLoop’s lately launched Future-Proofing Senior Residing Communities information for innovation finest practices and roadmap insights from high senior residing operators.
The Voices Sequence is a sponsored content material program that includes main executives discussing traits, subjects and extra shaping their trade in a question-and-answer format. For extra info on Voices, please contact [email protected].
