It’s clear the senior living industry has embraced technology, particularly when we zoom in on post-pandemic adoption growth. What is critical now is not just the pace of technology adoption for innovation’s sake, but the strategic application of technologies that can provide meaningful outcomes for residents, staff, and the business overall. This all starts with data.
Today, most senior living executives depend on traditional outcome data to measure and track business metrics such as employee churn, resident length of stay, occupancy rates, and margin. While these metrics are of course essential, the reality is operators are sitting on gold mines of behavioral and operational data that can be used to address issues before they negatively impact business outcomes. The potential lies in harnessing lagging and leading indicators to deliver actionable insights that transform your innovation investments into concrete ROI.
The data enterprise senior living operators value most
LifeLoop recently issued its fifth annual industry report surveying senior living leaders on technology adoption, priorities, and current trends. When reviewing feedback from senior living operators with portfolios of 20 or more communities, our analysis revealed clear synergies with the need for this type of proactive data. Not only the ability to collect and analyze leading indicator data, but the importance of solutions that enable operators to seamlessly put those insights into action.
The following article outlines the four essential data-driven outcomes that 93% of enterprise operator CEOs cited as “highly valuable” to inform their organizational strategies.
Increase visibility into portfolio-wide performance
For multi-site operators, scale is paramount. As the industry continues to adopt solutions that can benefit resident life and community operations, operators must be enabled with comprehensive platforms that consolidate key functionalities under one roof. This integrated approach allows operators to not only standardize technology investments, but seamlessly scale resources across the portfolio. Perhaps most importantly, this is the key to leveraging portfolio-wide data insights.
The result is a top-down view of community performance that enables the implementation of systematic, data-informed decision making. Broad trends across community operations, staff productivity, and resident engagement all contribute to top line growth. The ability to instantly view these performance indicators and action those insights across campuses is an essential capability for today’s operators.
Measure and benchmark community performance
Let’s review exactly what is meant by community performance indicators. Lagging indicators are metrics that provide insights into past performance, whereas leading indicators provide insights into future performance. In senior living, lagging indicators include metrics such as occupancy rates, length of stay, and staff retention. Leading indicators include a variety of daily activities and workflow metrics such as resident well-being, resident engagement, staff efficiency, and satisfaction.
So, what is the through-line of these indicators to tangible business outcomes? Let’s use a timely example. Our annual report revealed that 80% of enterprise operator CEOs view staff recruitment and retention as the top priority. By the time a drop in staff retention is revealed, the opportunity to reduce that churn has passed. By tracking and measuring contributors to what motivates a staff member to remain in their role, operators can get ahead of that attrition. In this case, leading indicators would include:
- Operational efficiency – easing daily work, saving staff time and reducing stress
- Staff satisfaction – providing a sense of fulfillment
- Resident and family satisfaction – easing stakeholder management
Favorable trends in these indicator categories can result in longer staff tenures. Victoria James, corporate director of programming for Phoenix Senior Living, has experienced this return while using the LifeLoop platform. She shared, “The fact that our staff have an all-in-one tool that helps automate so many of their daily workflows is ultimately why we see so much more satisfaction in their roles. They’re able to be effective and feel accomplished in their positions.”
The same opportunity exists to better manage the resident experience. For example, activity attendance and engagement programming utilization are key leading indicators of resident wellness and satisfaction outcomes that influence length of stay.
Improve low-performing areas with actionable data
When lagging indicators start to fall below the line, what is your action plan? Leading indicator insights enable operators to take preventative actions before the business health is impacted. Senior living leaders with enterprise visibility can identify macro performance trends and develop best practices to improve areas of deficiency, resulting in increased community performance overall.
Portfolio-wide improvements now become evidence-based, comparing metrics across communities to determine ideal opportunities for growth and intervention. Once changes have been implemented, operators can consistently view progress by comparing KPIs over time, fueling longer-term organizational strategy.
Save time with a single source of key performance data
There is no shortage of data available today. However, senior living is a unique industry led by executives who are just as busy as their community counterparts. Data tooling must meet the needs of this specific business and in a format that delivers insights efficiently and effectively.
A consolidated view of key performance metrics, based on reliable data, enables operators to confidently draw vital conclusions about residents, staff, and operations at scale. A single composite KPI that encapsulates all essential leading indicators can holistically illustrate community performance across the portfolio of communities. Operators can instantly identify where attention is needed and how to position the best performing communities for benchmarking and cross-pollination of best practices.
The case for advanced data that enables operators to analyze and optimize community performance is clear. What is also clear, is the importance of implementing the right community operations and resident experience solutions. A comprehensive, enterprise platform is what ultimately connects the dots between technology investments and business outcome ROI. Both leading and lagging indicators are crucial to enterprise senior living operations, the key is knowing how to strategically implement and leverage each.
Contributor Bio: Dylan Conley is the Chief Technology Officer of LifeLoop, the leading staff and resident experience solution for senior living.
