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Senior dwelling corporations are evolving their working fashions to more and more use new know-how and real-time information to make higher choices. In 2025, the hole between corporations with these capabilities and people with out is widening.
Earlier this week, I attended the Senior Dwelling 100 Management Convention in Jacksonville, Florida, the place I talked with a number of suppliers actively utilizing new tech platforms into their working fashions. Within the final three years, a few of the largest house owners and operators within the trade have overhauled their operational playbooks with new information evaluation and intelligence instruments to regulate rental charges, observe and trim bills and assess new residents with surgical precision.
In 2025, senior dwelling operators are utilizing tech and information platforms in new methods, comparable to pulling real-time information and analytics to information care coordination and constructing programs to enhance workers effectivity.
As they achieve this, they’re reaping the advantages within the type of higher gross sales and advertising and marketing strategies, occupancy ranges, resident care – and finally improved margins.
“Frankly, when you’re not technology-based, you may be shortly,” Juniper Communities CEO Lynne Katzmann stated. “Mindset is a very powerful factor we will work on, and it’s additionally probably the most troublesome.”
Katzmann believes that adopting new mindsets with regard to know-how is a very powerful — and troublesome — job for operators.
Gross sales and advertising and marketing is one other entrance for senior dwelling tech and information deployment. The incoming child boomer technology is extra tech-savvy and communicates in several methods than their predecessors, and that may require a brand new method to succeed in them than previously, senior dwelling operators have lengthy advised me.
That sentiment is rising amongst senior dwelling executives, together with Sonida Senior Dwelling CEO Brandon Ribar, who sees a must get “forward of the sport” relative to the corporate’s opponents by utilizing gross sales information to pinpoint new prospects and market to them on-line with pinpoint accuracy.
“All of us get served adverts day-after-day,” Ribar stated. “We’re not fairly there in senior dwelling, however an increasing number of we will tailor our providing to when persons are trying to find issues in our house.”
As I wrote final Might, I consider information will differentiate good from nice senior dwelling operators. Within the final yr, senior dwelling corporations have iterated on their already forward-thinking processes, and I consider these examples ought to be a wake-up name for operators within the house that haven’t but adopted new tech and information platforms. Whereas there may be nonetheless time for corporations to energy their operations with new analytics capabilities, I sense that the clock is ticking for others to comply with swimsuit or discover themselves at a possible drawback within the years forward as their opponents get an increasing number of refined.
On this week’s members-only SHN+ Replace, I mirror on my conversations concerning information and operations at SL100 and supply the next takeaways:
– How information is turning into a must have for advertising and marketing and care coordination efforts
– Why information might be an important software within the trade’s effort to develop occupancy and margins
How information powers higher operations
One of many driving forces behind the trade’s latest push into information analytics have been REITs Welltower (NYSE: WELL) and Ventas (NYSE: VTR). Each have constructed their working companions with proprietary programs able to monitoring numerous features of operations, from gross sales and advertising and marketing to resident care. These capabilities are serving to broaden their senior housing working portfolios and aiding their working companions to make higher choices on the bottom.
Operators are additionally build up their in-house information capabilities on the similar time. They embrace New York Metropolis-based Trustwell Dwelling, which has doubled down on information analytics within the final yr; Wichita, Kansas-based Legend Senior Dwelling, which is rolling out a brand new enterprise intelligence reporting software in 2025; and Des Monies-Iowa-based LCS, which in 2024 launched a brand new information science effort with in-house information scientists.
It’s no shock to me that corporations with enhanced information analytics capabilities consider these efforts are value doing, given how a lot they often put money into them. However I can also see the affect of these methods in enhancing working fundamentals. For instance, Trustwell Dwelling has within the final yr constructed a platform that tracks information factors comparable to occupancy, resident charges, income per occupied room, bills, workers hours, time spent on duties and lead quantity.
Cohen advised SHN that the corporate’s data-forward method helped develop occupancy in a five-community turnaround portfolio by 12 share factors final yr.
“It’s a manner that we will be sure that we’re at all times enhancing our processes to be probably the most environment friendly and the best-in-class in all features,” Cohen stated throughout a latest look on SHN+ TALKS.
Though that’s only one comparatively small instance, Trustwell isn’t alone in seeing these sorts of outcomes.
Dallas, Texas-based Sonida is spending as a lot as 30% extra on know-how in 2025 to make higher operational choices. Ribar has famous that the corporate’s tech push can be restricted to “issues that really have an operational affect, or that basically assist our residents,” comparable to a monitoring AI program that has decreased its response occasions for a resident fall to round two minutes. The corporate additionally has used information from in-house leads and move-ins to tell advertising and marketing choices because it has moved away from relying as a lot on its giant nationwide referral companions.
These efforts, Ribar stated, place Sonida to be “far forward of the place the trade has been traditionally.”
Juniper makes use of its information to energy and inform its care coordination efforts. The corporate collects info comparable to well being and exercise information to construct a “prescriptive life-style prescription” for every resident, Katzmann advised me.
“We wish to assist residents perceive what they should do to remain wholesome,” Katzmann added.
A technique that Juniper is seeing information enhance operations is thru neighborhood engagement, with extra residents apt to utilizing voice-assisted know-how in coordinating every day actions as language recognition and AI-supported giant language fashions are “altering dramatically,” she added.
I believe all of that is resulting in a world the place some operators are merely higher outfitted to fulfill the desires and desires of the boomers. Though operators can absolutely market their providers and coordinate look after residents with out information sophistication, they only gained’t have the identical visibility to benchmark the affect of their choices.
I believe the chance forward is that senior dwelling corporations both fail to reinvest in higher information processes and fall behind within the years forward, or that they fall sufferer to tech amounting to “snake oil” alongside the way in which. The excellent news to me is that, primarily based on what I noticed and heard at Senior Dwelling 100, operators are simply getting began in these efforts, with extra to return down the street.
High-quality-tuning operations for higher margins
Senior dwelling operators and house owners have a troublesome job forward in 2025.
Though occupancy is usually on the upswing, a brand new ground for bills, ever-present staffing challenges and fixed unit turnover are making sustaining and rising margins more durable. I believe getting a greater deal with on information assortment and evaluation is paramount if operators wish to additional these efforts this yr. That’s underscored by what number of senior dwelling working fashions now depend on performing upon real-time information.
One option to get higher margins is to ensure staffing hours correlate to care providers, however therein lies a fragile stability. Too many employees on the clock may blow up delicate staffing budgets, whereas too few may hurt high quality of care.
Arrow Senior Dwelling makes use of its proprietary Archer platform to merge scheduling, communication, budgeting and EHR information into one place so as to drive higher, extra fine-tuned outcomes.
“This gives real-time, minute-by-minute information and helps establish variances or outliers in care,” Harris advised me. “If we may begin to take a look at methods to fulfill individuals somewhat sooner within the [senior living] course of, that’s all including worth to the underside line.”
Denver, Colorado-based Ascent Dwelling Communities swapped out 12 tech platforms utilized in operations so as to permit information to movement right into a “information lake” that parses out real-time figures on neighborhood efficiency, co-founders Susie Finely and Tom Finley advised me whereas at SL100. The end result has helped some communities in its managed portfolio to succeed in margins “touching 40%,” and instantly impacted margin enchancment by 7.5% in 2024.
“The info we’re giving our groups is between half-hour and 23 hours previous,” Tom Finley advised me. “It’s a really completely different manner to take a look at the enterprise.”
Cohen spent many years finding out monetary P&Ls within the senior dwelling trade, and he has come away with a perception that the one option to sustainably develop margins is to take a surgical method to operations. The corporate collects information on resident assessments and workers hours and ensures they’re precisely in sync – and it’s the “little issues that make a distinction,” he stated.
“What we’re attempting to grasp is how we will use and create real-life info to permit us to raised workers our communities successfully and in addition drive the revenues for the care that we’re driving,” Cohen stated. “It’s not popping out of the field from one of many programs that present an answer to senior housing. You need to create that, it’s bespoke.”
As Cohen famous, these are sometimes programs that operators should construct, not purchase. And whether or not they select to companion with a bigger companion that has already constructed such a platform or go it alone, to me the underside line is that senior dwelling should be shifting quick now to create instruments for achievement tomorrow.
