Yardi is proud to acknowledge seven clients that have received recognition among the Fortune 20 Best Large Places to Work for Aging Services. Each client met or exceeded global Great Place to Work Standards. Learn more about some of the best senior housing providers in the industry. (Cited data points were supplied to Fortune as part of each company’s profile.) Brightview Senior Living of Baltimore now has 45 sites and more than 4,600 employees. The implementation of innovative backend and client-facing technology sets the senior housing provider apart from others. To run smoothly, Brightview relies on Yardi for customer relationship management, electronic health records, procurement, and maintenance technologies. Julie Masiello is the SVP of Technology and Marketing. She has observed that, contrary to popular belief, seniors demand access to technology that simplifies their lifestyle and care: “The old way of thinking was that senior living residents wouldn’t be interested in using technology until the baby boomer population ages and begins to move into our communities. But that couldn’t be further from the truth,” says Masiello in an interview with Argentum. Silverado Senior Living specializes in providing quality of life for those living with memory-impairing diseases as well as palliative and hospice care services. With headquarters in Irvine, Calif, Silverado has more than 2,100 employees at 31 sites. In response to the Fortune survey, one employee said, “No matter the situation, I know I can count on my administration to always make an ethical choice instead of a business choice. This is what makes it such a great place to work and be proud to serve any client.” Learn how Silverado thrives during uncertain times. MBK Real Estate was born and raised in Irvine. The organization has expanded to 2,200 employees services 33 communities that offer “quality services with genuine care.” That care is embedded into corporate culture. “The management team is very engaged with all the employees. If I need anything, whether I have a problem or not, someone has gone above and beyond they are right there to make sure we are all fine and or congratulating us on a job well done,” says a survey respondent. Continuing Life LLC of Carlsbad, Calif. has over 2,200 employees at six sites throughout the U.S. The organization prides itself on its care methodologies for employees and residents. On the Fortune survey, one employee responded, “During COVID-19, seeing the company find jobs to have all employees working during hard times was very meaningful and says a lot about the company overall.” That care translates to residents as well: “Our financial program has saved residents from the impact that rising health care costs and inflation takes on their fixed incomes,” says Warren Spieker, managing partner of Continuing Life in an interview with Business Wire. Retirement Center Management (RCM) is a sharpshooter from Houston. The organization of 1,900 members sets its sights on “exceptional quality of life and gracious living for residents.” To support its goal, RCM focuses on staff development and training. Per an employee survey response, “I love the fact that this company provides opportunities for growth and development.” The Springs Living of Mcminnville, Ore. puts people first. That includes superior care for residents and advancement opportunities for staff. Staff consists of more than 1,600 people at 17 sites. “I love that they support doing the right thing and are not always concerned with the bottom line. We build relationships, and sometimes that means taking the high road, and I feel they support us all along the way,” reports a satisfied employee. Senior Star is the brainchild of the Thomas brothers, twins from Tulsa with a passion for bringing small-town friendliness into the expanding senior living industry. Senior Star has nearly 1,200 employees across 16 sites. Employees appreciate Senior Star’s attention to detail and willingness to accommodate residents: “Transporting residents to their places of worship is important to them. I can...
Senior Living Wisdom
Facts and figures
Fifteen percent of Americans were 65 and older as of 2018. One study projects that the population of Americans 65 or older could reach 108 million in 2050. The 85-and-older population may increase at least fivefold in that time, to more than 6% percent of the citizenry. Some indicators of an aging population — and a few fun facts — are presented in the information below, which is drawn from a range of sources including the U.S. Census Bureau; the United Nations; Washington, D.C.-based population, health and environmental information source Population Reference Bureau; and Virginia law firm Mountain Empire Legal Services. 85 and up is the U.S.’s fastest-growing age group by percentage. By 2040, about one in five Americans will be 65 or older, up from about one in eight in 2000. Persons 65 and older are projected to outnumber children by 2034 for the first time in U.S. history. In 1960, those 65 and older comprised 4.9% of the global population. By 2050, they will account for 17%. More than 10,000 members of the baby boom generation (born between 1946 and 1964) turn 65 every day. As of 2018, 24% of men and about 16% of women 65 and older were in the labor force. About 65% of baby boomers say they plan to work past age 65. Five percent of people 65 and older in 1965 had completed at least a bachelor’s degree. Twenty-nine percent of that age group had done so by 2018. About 80% of seniors own a car and drive frequently. Nearly half of all adults 65 and older volunteer. Harland David Sanders (Col. Sanders) started Kentucky Fried Chicken when he was 65. May is Older Americans Month, so designated to appreciate and recognize senior citizens. August 21 is...
Aegis Living’s Leader...
IDs Keys to Longevity
Editor’s note: The author is founder and CEO of Bellevue, Wash.-based Aegis Living, a national leader in senior assisted living and memory care that operates 32 communities in Washington, California and Nevada and has seven other communities in development. Interacting with our seniors at Aegis Living has taught me so much—not just about life and living, but also about how to live a long and happy life. One of the things I’ve learned from our “oracles”—which has been confirmed by research—is that having purpose in your life is critical to your health and longevity. I think of purpose as putting forth effort toward doing things that have meaning for you and having daily, doable micro-goals. For example, if gardening has become a passion for you, giving it a sense of purpose in your life would lead you to read gardening books, talk to neighbors about what they’re planting and share ideas and tips, speak to experts at nurseries, and move things around in your yard to improve and enhance their health and visual impact. A sense of purpose organizes your time, focus, and even relationships. People who have goals and work toward them also feel a sense of self-worth and fulfillment, which helps them maintain a positive outlook on life. I believe that finding a renewed sense of purpose is what takes people into thriving later in life. If you are bored with cooking after many years of doing it, find a new cooking style—or a completely new hobby or pursuit that excites you. Dedicating physical and mental effort Hidekichi Miyazaki, a Japanese father of four and grandfather of 10, was 105 years old in 2015 when he completed the 100-meter sprint in 42.22 seconds. He set a new Guinness world record in track and field as...
Looking Ahead in Senior Living...
Q&A with Richard Nix
How have sales teams adjusted to reduced face-to-face consultations during the pandemic? How do clients stay connected with leads? What product offerings will Yardi focus on in 2021? Richard Nix, senior director of senior living sales for Yardi, covers these topics and more. Below are excerpts from an interview that was published in Senior Housing News. Q.: You’ve spent your career in technology with a lot of time in the senior space and you’ve been with Yardi since 2014. What lessons do you draw from most frequently in your current role? A.: The main lesson is to always talk to people. A lot of folks like to communicate using technology, such as emails and text, but there’s nothing like getting on the phone with people and really learning their issues— especially now that we’re not seeing them at client meetings and at conferences — and to see what is really driving them and what issues are pertaining to them right now. The other key point is teamwork. The Yardi culture is all about teamwork. We have a great team, and we work to solve problems together for our clients. Q.: One of the early outcomes of the pandemic was the increase in technology adoption, including among sales and marketing teams. What are the most important ways that you’re seeing technology augment the diminished in-person sales calls in 2020? A: Salespeople depend on technology for handling many client requests. Since face-to-face meetings have been hard to arrange during the pandemic, continual contact with clients by other means became critical. In terms of specific technologies, the use of the video meetings has been a shift. This is a personal thing, but I like to put the camera on myself at the beginning of a video call....
Social Seniors
Thriving with HH Hunt
Have you ever heard the saying that attitude is everything? How we choose to respond to a situation impacts our outlook, our possibilities and the responses of those around us. During tough times, one young woman in Raleigh constantly recommits to her positive attitude. Her decision to do so has positively impacted the entire community. Meet Victoria Meet Victoria Polston, activity and wellness director at Spring Arbor of Raleigh, an HH Hunt Senior Living community. Victoria is like many employees in assisted living communities: compassionate, patient and heavily caffeinated. She also exemplifies personality traits that have become indispensable during the pandemic: creativity, grit and optimism. As cities issued quarantine mandates in the spring, Polston faced a community of seniors who were more isolated from their loved ones than ever before. Excursions and visitors were no longer an option. Some seniors couldn’t understand the severity of the pandemic or their vulnerability. They were hurt, depressed and confused that their loved ones were no longer coming to visit. Polston got creative with engaging activities for her residents. “My goal is to make the lives of residents fun, active and worth living,” says Polston. “When I do something, I like to go all out.” Fun for every season In the warmer months, Polston offered seniors hula dancing and a luau, fake tattoos, a Mardi Gras party and a butterfly exhibit. She even coordinated a farmer’s market on the premises to replace an excursion that residents missed. As the weather cooled down, the activities continued indoors. Seniors made gourmet truffles, and danced during a neon glow stick party. They customized their shirts with glow-in-the-dark paint and donned glowing necklaces and bracelets. “I filled our activity room with black lights and all my residents were so excited when they...
New Features
In the Senior Living Suite
Yardi continuously strives to make its property management software more valuable to operators of senior living communities. As new features are incorporated into the Yardi Senior Living Suite, the upgrades are documented, compiled into manuals and made available to clients. Recent upgrades and plug-ins include: Yardi Voyager Senior Housing: You can track monthly fee deferral requests, recovery schedules and generate payment plan agreements for signature with the Deferral Plan functionality. Community Analytics and Senior Financial Analytics reports are easier to use. Watch the video overview Yardi Senior CRM: Check out an enhanced user interface that includes a new dashboard with optimized graphical reporting, several new KPIs and goal tracking, and a redesigned prospect profile that includes a new activity feed view and streamlined navigation among prospects. We also added specific approver roles to the leasing workflow and a new Past Due Activities report that provides real-time data on overdue activities. Watch the video overview Yardi EHR and Yardi eMAR: EHR: Service plans can now be signed digitally. The Clinical Move-In workflow lets clinical teams move residents into EHR without impacting the financial Move-In process. There’s also a new Shower/Laundry/Housekeeping Schedule report that covers seven days of upcoming tasks. eMAR: Quantity tracking is enhanced, as is the ability to perform blind counts of controlled substances and identify discrepancies. You can set up the Order Change report to run nightly and send automatically to the pharmacy in a password-protected email attachment. Watch the video overview You can also join a webinar to gain even more insight into our comprehensive solution for senior living...
Advanced Marketing Tools...
For Senior Living
What is lead attribution and how can it help senior living community operators get the most out of their marketing spend? Lead attribution is the process of determining how leads from a Facebook page, Google ad, directory listing or other source become associated with a property. Understanding all sources that a prospect touches on the path to becoming a resident can help property managers determine how to allocate their marketing money and staff resources most efficiently. RentCafe Senior CRM illuminates lead attribution with a “lead journey” feature that shows how many prospects who became residents spent time on the Facebook page or follow a Google ad to the website. The lead attribution report, another element of the solution, analyzes data to reveal, among other things, the organization’s top sources for prospects. Other reports illustrate the top and bottom sources for resident conversions. The system assigns scores for each source using attribution models that split prospects across the sources in their journey and includes prospects who submitted an inquiry and toured the community. Yardi Senior CRM scores all sources that contributed to a prospect’s inquiry, with full drilldown to the score’s elements. Marketing managers might want more nuanced source information than just “property website” from a lead that comes into RentCafe Senior CRM from a website. What’s of greater value to them is the site the visitor was on when they clicked the link that brought them to their site. RentCafe Senior CRM tracks the true source of a lead journey when a prospect submit information from the “Contact us” of “Schedule a tour” page of a Yardi-hosted website. With these data and analytics, which include each marketing touchpoint that contributed to a lease and not just the first source that generated the lead, sales...
Yardi Enhances EHR
Update on Upgrades
Yardi has been building Yardi EHR, a full service electronic health record solution for senior living, for the better part of a decade. Client feedback and ongoing development give rise to regular product enhancements. Here’s a sampling of recent upgrades. Clinical move-in Users can now execute a clinical move-in process that includes adding global contacts, allergies, diagnosis, orders from a library, and schedule assessments. This new feature allows a facility to perform a financial move-in prior to the resident physically arriving in the building or vice versa. Clinical staff can move a resident in and the billing staff can complete the financial move-in when they return. A new KPI shows a resident’s pending move-in status, allowing the facility to easily monitor resident move-in activities. Medication tracking Recent enhancements allow counting of controlled substances between shifts, check-in of medications delivered to the community and documentation of medications disposed of. Facilities can also update the quantity of medication on hand when new deliveries arrive. Digital care plan signatures New functionality enables digital signing of service plans. Five new KPIs monitor the signing status. Continuity of care document interface (CCDA) Facilities can now create, send and receive CCDA documentation using the KNO2 interface. The CCDA document sends and receives data elements in a standard format. Information exchanged includes advanced directives, allergies, adverse reactions, medications and social history. The CCDA user interface lets you search for documents by a date range or create a new document. Shower/housekeeping/laundry schedule A new report assists staff with weekly shower, laundry and housekeeping schedules. Filters allow for multiple schedules to be displayed and is viewable in a list or calendar view. The list view can also display task details. Simple wounds The wound module has been streamlined and enhanced for assisted living...
Clients Star
In Senior Living Study
Yardi clients placed high in the third annual J.D. Power U.S. Senior Living Satisfaction Study, a measurement of the resident experience this year in assisted living, memory care and independent living communities. Chicago-based The Senior Lifestyle Company LLC earned a tie for the highest rating among assisted living/memory care providers for overall customer satisfaction among family members or other decision-makers. Residents named Life Care Services LLC of Des Moines, Iowa, the top independent living operator for overall satisfaction. Responses from nearly 5,000 senior living residents and their families formed the basis of the J.D. Power study. Survey participants rated community buildings and grounds, staff, dining, price paid for services, resident activities and the family member’s living unit. J.D. Power said in a news release that “amid continued worries about COVID-19 outbreaks in senior living communities nationwide, the families of assisted living/memory care residents are generally very satisfied with assisted living/memory care operators” and their initiatives on cleanliness, social distancing and other elements of dealing with the pandemic. More information about the consumer insights, advisory services and data and analytics provider’s study is available here. The Yardi Senior Living Suite comprises a single connected solution for managing all types of senior living communities. Learn more and view a brief...
Long-Term Care
Pharmacy Partnership Begins
Registration has started for the Pharmacy Partnership for Long Term Care Program. This innovative collaboration facilitates free, on-premises COVID-19 vaccinations for senior living providers. CDC facilitates vaccination services for senior living residents The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has partnered with CVS and Walgreens pharmacies to offer vaccination services for residents of senior facilities. The new program, called Pharmacy Partnership for Long-term Care (LTC), “provides end-to-end management of the COVID-19 vaccination process, including cold chain management, on-site vaccinations, and fulfillment of reporting requirements, to facilitate safe vaccination of this patient population, while reducing burden on LTC facilities and jurisdictional health departments,” reports the CDC. Senior living providers gain free access to services such as: on-location clinic dates orders for the vaccine and necessary supplies vaccine administration cold chain management for the vaccine reporting to local, state and federal jurisdictions compliance with Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) COVID-19 testing requirements for LTCF staff Skilled Nursing facilities (SNF) must register through the National Healthcare Safety Network. Assisted living facilities (ALF) must register via REDcap. Registration is non-binding and facilitates may opt out at any time. What to expect during Pharmacy Partnership for Long-term Care registration Providers will have the opportunity to select between CVS and Walgreens as their pharmacy partner for the initial phase of the vaccinations. After the initial phase (about two months) facilities may chose a pharmacy provider of their choice. Online sign-up details will be disseminated through the providers’ communications channels including but not limited to websites and email. The CDC will coordinate facilities’ preferences with the pharmacy partners. Please be advised that the CDC may reassign facilities to accommodate availability and other considerations. Registrations for the program ends November 6. Explore FAQ regarding the Long-Term Care Program for COVID-19...
Better Health Assessments...
With Yardi Long Term Care
A registered nurse quoted on the American Assn. of Nurse Assessment Coordination’s website says that obtaining baseline patient health data “is an invaluable tool to us in long-term care. It involves so much of the nurse and her relationship with the resident and getting them to get to that highest level of function. It is so important, it’s so exciting, and it’s a tool that just drives great care.” Completing that assessment, known as the resident assessment instrument minimum data set (RAI MDS), is a mandatory element of guiding resident care planning and monitoring in long-term care settings. But compiling the required information manually often involves uncoordinated efforts by multiple parties who don’t always know if the information they’re dealing with is current. Nurses, administrators and other senior care providers now have the means to complete the RAI MDS process more easily and accurately. Yardi Long Term Care, a new mobile electronic health record solution available in Canada, saves time and eliminates errors by automatically prefilling the RAI MDS with data from previous assessments through electronic workflows. Staff members updating an RAI MDS don’t have to spend time entering data or backtracking through a lengthy paper trail. Mobile charting that sends resident data from the point of care to the MDS saves even more time. Yardi Long Term care also tracks frequently changing regulations and automatically checks submissions for fatal errors, missed fields and inconsistencies. It provides a clear audit trail, with user logs, change reasons and up-to-date chart data housed in a centralized platform. Yardi Long Term Care is the Canadian version of Yardi® Skilled Nursing, a new solution that sends resident data from the point of care directly into the MDS. “Accurate data from Yardi Long Term Care will equip senior living...
RentCafe Wellness
Boosts Connections
The latest addition to the Yardi Senior Living Suite helps senior living staff and residents’ families stay connected as senior living communities maintain largely isolated from outside contact during the COVID-19 pandemic. Community managers can use RENTCafé Wellness to schedule healthy activities, track attendance and create custom-branded online wellness calendars. Activity organizers can create calendars on a community’s marketing website, manage RSVPs from residents and their families, and assign staff to the activities. “RentCafe Wellness combines with the rest of the Yardi Senior Living Suite to help communities elevate residents’ quality of life and maintain connection with family members in these challenging times,” said Ray Elliott, vice president of senior living for Yardi. “The solution also helps community staff work more efficiently by enabling management of calendar content, design, publication, registration and attendance from a single connected solution.” RentCafe Wellness is an element of RentCafe Senior Living, a secure portal that residents, staff and families use for payments, communication, service requests and other operations. Learn more about how RENTCafé Wellness and other RENTCafé Senior Living solutions can help residents of senior living communities stay connected and...
Senior Living Spotlight
At LeadingAge event
“Our world has changed. Our field has changed. Now we need to prepare for what lies ahead and determine how we move forward, together.” That’s how LeadingAge describes the purpose of its annual meeting in November, which is always one of the senior living industry’s premier events. And that’s exactly what Yardi will do this year — twice, in fact, since the conference, originally scheduled for San Antonio, will take place as two three-day virtual events. Along with cosponsoring LeadingAge’s technology development initiatives, Yardi will contribute to the conference by spotlighting the Yardi Senior Living Suite, which helps senior living community operators improve resident care and staff efficiency. The suite enables management of all operations on a single connected solution, including accounting, clinical services, marketing and sales. Other elements of the Yardi Senior Living Suite include business intelligence, electronic charting, resident health assessments and pharmacy integrations. LeadingAge will include all the hallmarks of a dynamic in-person conference including keynote speeches, educational sessions and a performance from comedy and magic duo Penn and Teller. Yardi is dedicated to interacting as fully this time as it did at the most recent LeadingAge annual conferences, which drew about 4,500 senior living professionals to San Diego and Philadelphia. Our experts would love to chat with you about how technology can help senior living community operators manage today’s challenges. Please contact us to make an appointment during the Nov. 10-12 or Nov. 17-19...
Hospitality to Healthcare
Senior Living Tech Shift
Senior housing providers are witnessing a major shift within the industry. Traditionally following a hospitality format, today’s senior living specialists now adapt pages from healthcare models. The pandemic prompted senior living staff to implement more on-premises care methodologies. The results are fewer in-person touch points, enhanced health tracking and preventative care. With these changes come new challenges. Bob Kramer is the co-founder of the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing and Care (NIC), a Yardi partner. Kramer shares his insights on the challenges faced by senior housing professionals as they shoulder more on-premises care for residents. Learn about the benefits of the NIC Actual Rates Initiative for senior housing market data. A transformation born from necessity In recent history, senior housing providers focused on the resident experience. Staff left health care in the capable hands of off-site experts. COVID-19, however, required staff to renegotiate the barrier between hospitality and health care. In addition to their existing responsibilities, housing providers initiated on-premises health care tasks. “[The pandemic is causing] what you might call the creative destruction of some of what has been the paradigm to senior housing and care,” Kramer explained during a panel interview. “The senior housing and care model that we don’t do health care, and that we ship out our residents for health care services, I just don’t think that model will survive.” He continued, “That doesn’t mean senior living providers need to abandon hospitality-driven models altogether. But it does likely mean they need to rethink how they coordinate care within their communities.” Reimagining doctor’s visits and communication “In just the past six months, older adults have learned to fear the hospital, the emergency room and the doctor’s office, as these are places now associated with a deadly pandemic,” Kramer said. With the help of site staff, residents have taken comfort in telehealth options. Housing professionals forged partnerships with health care providers to offer remote care. Through this alternative, seniors skip unnecessary transport to medical specialists. They receive assessments and basic care from the comfort and familiarity of their communities. Community staff members implement software to help manage residents’ chronic conditions and any changes in wellness. Routine maintenance that was once handled off-site now takes place within residents’ rooms. Emerging from the pandemic, it’s unlikely that telehealth services and community-centered care will fade from practice, suggests Kramer. Staff can rely on technology and data to make the new on-site care model more efficient and secure. Data and interoperability at the intersection of senior housing and health care Interoperability and data management are lingering concerns with senior living providers. The concern has only grown as more care takes place within communities instead of hospitals. An upcoming change in policy may provide the guidance and structure that senior living providers seek. The Interoperability and Patient Access final rule from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) requires all health plans to present their data as an application programming interface. Proposed to take effect by July 1, 2021, the policy gives developers insight into general health care data. They can then use that information to address interoperability issues in new technologies. The data can also highlight trends in resident behavior or assessments that allow staff to take proactive care measures. As with all things data, the more information uploaded, shared, and properly analyzed, the more accurate insights become. “The challenge is making sure they have the means to upload their observations that are then screened by an algorithm searching for red flags and are instantly shared with those responsible for the delivery and care for that individual,” Kramer said. While site staff will enter their observations, residents can be empowered to share their health data on their own. Kramer expects strong participation. He observes that many Boomers want to be proactive about their health. “I do think that this is the role of tech, in enabling Boomers to self-direct...
State of Senior Housing...
Fil Southerland Interview
Senior Housing News recently interviewed Fil Southerland, director of healthcare solutions for Yardi, about the biggest changes in senior living technology during the COVID-19 pandemic, how technology is meeting new healthcare demands and his experience growing up in Idaho, where his father operated assisted living facilities and built his own technology platform to support them. Excerpts follow. Q.: One of the early outcomes of the pandemic was the increase in technology adoption. What are the main silver linings in terms of senior living technology? A.: COVID-19 has definitely been hard on our industry and the residents we’re caring for. I think what it’s really highlighted is the incredible resilience of the organizations and their staff members that we work with. I’ve been particularly impressed with the amount of rapid innovation and technology uptake within the industry. Yardi’s contribution is a broad-based platform that helps providers efficiently manage everything from the care-related side to operations to finances. We’ve continued to add new clients at a rapid pace and we’re also seeing our existing clients working to automate and streamline a lot of their workflows. I think that kind of technology adoption is a necessity now. Over the long term, we’re hopeful that it will produce a lot of good dividends for the industry in terms of care coordination and personalization, wellness, operational efficiency and risk mitigation. Q.: Which changes in senior living technology prompted by the pandemic do you think will last? A.: One area is marketing and admissions. Previously, residents or family members had to come into communities to sign leases or changes to service plans. Yardi has a solution that allows all that to be done online. We’ve seen a lot of interest in that. Also, families considering a community are really concerned about...
Senior Living Changemakers
Speak Out in New eBook
When Yardi launched its Changemakers initiative last year to capture innovative thinking in senior living, few could have anticipated the profound challenges that emerged over the next 15 months. Changemakers, a collaboration with Senior Housing News, features interviews with leaders who offer creative perspectives on a range of issues including community architecture; care support partnerships with outside parties; the collocation of independent living, assisted living and memory care under one roof; technology issues; and staff members’ work/life balance. Eleven senior living provider executives presented their thoughts on the state of the industry in the Changemakers series for 2020, which is now available as an eBook. COVID-19, of course, ended up overshadowing almost every other issue this year. Mary Leary, a Changemaker with Mather, predicts that the pandemic “is going to catapult the industry forward because we’re having to abandon, at least temporarily, ways in which we have been providing services, which will give us an opportunity to rethink how we may want to do things differently.” Here’s a sampling of other impressions you’ll find in the eBook: “Changemakers definitely are risk-takers. When I first started Silverado, it was such an enormous change that I was proposing to the industry’s norm of bringing in the medical piece, the clinical piece, the 24-hour seven-day-a-week licensed nurses, master’s level social workers, and don’t even get me started with use of pets and children coming in.” – Loren Shook, Silverado “Our communities are designed to fit the neighborhood. It does not look like the sunrise Victorian mansion that gets plopped down into areas that don’t have Victorian mansions. We use the local vernacular.” – Michael Schonbrun, Balfour Senior Living Care “It’s not good enough to say, ‘I’m a risk-taker.’ What does that mean? Does that mean you’re at the firm every other Thursday? It’s not good enough just to be a risk-taker, you have to quantify risk. This [COVID-driven] economic downturn is a great example.” – Dwayne Clark, Aegis Living “We are less focused on the number of changes or the speed, but rather how meaningful the change may be to seniors, their families, and our associates. The number of ideas are infinite and can result in busy-ness rather than improved sound business practices.” — Marc Vorkapich, Watercrest Senior Living Besides sponsoring Changemakers, Yardi drives innovation by offering a comprehensive technology platform for senior living management. Learn...
Yardi Skilled Nursing...
New for Senior Living
Yardi created the Yardi Senior Living Suite to encompass every element of senior housing management within a single platform, from sales, marketing and care management to payments, family communication and medication administration. The suite helps facility operators grow their occupancy, deliver quality care and lower total costs of ownership. A recent addition brings even more key operations into the suite. Yardi Skilled Nursing is a mobile solution that helps senior living staff members deliver care and document their actions more efficiently. Yardi Skilled Nursing saves time in resident assessment, charting and reporting by sending resident data from the point of care directly into a standardized patient health assessment repository known as the MDS. This streamlined documentation process lets staff members spend more time on resident care instead of entering and validating data. The solution also fortifies compliance by ensuring operators are current on frequently changing regulations and automatically checking for fatal errors, missed fields and inconsistencies. User logs, change reasons and up-to-date chart data establish a clear audit trail. Advanced reporting, clinical key performance indicators and financial measures enable full oversight of care services. Yardi Skilled Nursing also delivers value to senior living facility operators by: Reducing manual data entry errors with automatic pre-population of MDS with information from previous assessments Providing a user-friendly interface that helps lighten staff workloads and improve productivity Streamlining government reimbursements with simplified, error-free claims management Delivering full access to real-time clinical information for staff across the business “Staff members can devote their energies to resident care because all electronic point-of-care charting is readily available on any mobile device,” said Ray Elliott, vice president of senior living for Yardi. “That benefit combines with real-time availability of full service information to give facility operators the means to improve health outcomes,...
Meet Dave Eskenazy
Senior Living Industry Expert
Data analytics may not be easy, but they’re often necessary. You can’t just gather data. You’ve got to know what the numbers actually mean if you want to push your teams forward in senior living. That’s just one piece of advice that Dave Eskenazy, an industry expert with over 25 years’ experience, recently shared with us. We sat down with Dave to hear how he’s used the Yardi Senior Living Suite to drive growth through technology. From the importance of integration to the value of easy-to-understand metrics, he had plenty of insight to offer. Q: How do you track prospects in senior living? What I love about RENTCafé Senior CRM is that from the very first moment an inquiry is made, the prospect’s name is entered into the system. And I begin to track that. At some point, that prospect moves in, but the ability to move that prospect in and change them from a prospect to a resident becomes so much easier and so much quicker. Oftentimes, when somebody is looking for senior housing, they take a lot of time to really make a decision. But once that decision is made, it’s time to move. Having a lot of that information already in the system – and being able to simply pick up from before – is a key benefit of RENTCafé Senior CRM and the complete stack of Yardi products. One of the things I like most about Yardi is that there are a lot of modules that follow us all the way through the system. And it starts with RENTCafé Senior CRM. Q: How does data sync improve billing? One of the problems with billing is if you have separate systems for capturing your care than you do for billing your...
Better P2P Process
Senior Living’s Silverado
Employing disconnected procurement processes eats up staff members’ valuable time, fritters away resources and creates opportunities for runaway spending. Managers of senior living communities need to direct their resources toward productive activities. So why not find a better way to purchase, approve and pay for goods and services? That was the purpose of a recent webinar moderated by Senior Living Foresight and featuring Yardi Procure to Pay manager Kim Hensley along with Carmin Tomassi, vice president controller for Silverado, an Irvine, Calif.-based assisted living, home care and hospice care provider. The traditional approach to purchasing goods and services involved manually scanning data and routing paper around for approvals. The lack of formal workflows and repeated manual tasks obscured budget visibility, duplicated payments, and created opportunities for duplicate payments and other errors. The sheer volume of invoices to be processed – up to 35,000 per year for a typical user of Yardi PayScan – made the process even more daunting. Silverado offers an example of a senior living community operator overcoming the flaws inherent in manual procurement processing. Tomassi recounted how Silverado reduced its payables reversed rate to 0.56%, versus the industry average of 1.8%, and its checks voided rate to 0.43%, versus 2.1% for the industry, by automating the process end to end with Yardi Procure to Pay. The system, he said, produced “a night-and-day difference from where we were just four years ago. Now we have one automated system paying all our bills. All approvals are electronic, we have vendors set up in workflows, and we have centralized a big chunk of the business function, with better results. It’s been real win for us.” Silverado uses Yardi Procure to Pay to move its purchase orders through the approval process electronically, with customized approval...
Changemakers Series
Charlie Trefzger, ALG Senior
Charlie Trefzger is no stranger to change. Already this year, as president and CEO, he oversaw the rebrand of his company from Affinity Living Group to ALG Senior. At the same time, he reorganized his company’s operational structure. ALG communities now have more autonomy in how they operate, able to make decisions and take action without a set directive from headquarters. That’s not to say that Trefzger and his team don’t support their communities, however. When the coronavirus first started making news, they instituted change after change to ensure resident safety. They reacted fast thanks to having prepared well in advance just for this sort of emergency. “We implemented a pandemic flu policy some time ago. Since, we have tailored it to the COVID-19 policy, which is founded upon the CDC guidelines,” said Trefzger. “We’ve been drilling and practicing that for a good portion of the last year, and Lord have mercy, here we are right now dealing with it.” In recognition of the transformations Trefzger has driven, Senior Housing News has inducted him into the 2020 class of Changemakers. Read on to learn what steps ALG took to slow the spread of COVID-19 and how he believes the pandemic will impact senior living going forward. What have been the biggest changes that ALG Senior has made since COVID-19 hit in mid-March? Gosh, what hasn’t changed? There have been so many things that we’ve had to adapt to, such as visitation; narrowing our network of health care professionals; gathering data and having a greater reliance on data; the screening of our employees; using technology, both for visits as well as data-gathering and for activity programs; the need to address loneliness in our residents and trying to be innovative with visits. Probably our biggest change...
Argentum Illuminates
Senior Living Management
The annual Argentum Senior Living Executive Conference Argentum wasn’t live with thousands in attendance as is usually the case, but it still lived up to its legacy as a major event in the professionally managed senior living community industry. Held in September and hosted by a major national trade association, Argentum offered 30 hours of programming over three days. Leaders from Life Care Services, Mather, Eclipse Senior Living, Heritage Communities and other providers offered tips on such timely topics as shifting from survival mode to a sales-oriented environment, giving buyers a seamless journey (“omnichannel marketing”), protecting health data from cyberattacks and staying ahead of COVID-19. Besides sponsoring registration for the event, Yardi’s principal contribution was hosting a virtual session that addressed how advanced business intelligence technology can drive informed decision-making. Senior living executives J.R. Southerland and Richard Nix focused on one of Yardi’s new contributions to efficient senior living management – Yardi Senior IQ, a BI solution designed for senior living that compiles portfolio-wide information. Southerland and Nix explained how executives can use Yardi Senior IQ to execute benchmarking, elevate reporting to investors, board members and others, and deliver details on everything from unit availability to current market rates. Please contact us if you would like to know more about the business intelligence presentation or the Argentum conference in...
Westmont Living
Honors WWII Veteran
Over the years, Yardi client Westmont Living has developed creative ways to honor esteemed residents. The tradition continues through the age of social distancing, requiring ingenious workarounds that still help residents feel appreciated and valued. Honoring Lt. Dever’s 105th birthday Westmont Mariposa at Ellwood Shores is home to veteran Charles “Charlie” Dever. First Lt. Dever enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1941, and he served as a lead navigator in the 98th Bombardment Group flying B-24s during World War II. Devers lived independently until he was 103. He then joined the family at Mariposa at Ellewood Shores. The quiet life that he now lives gave no indication of the surprise that awaited him for his birthday. It began when Lt. Dever’s daughter, Kathy, emailed Vandenberg Air Force Base to plan a surprise for her father. In response, the 30th Space Wing leadership notified its members of the momentous occasion. Active Air Force servicemembers near and far penned more than a hundred thank you letters to the veteran. To deliver the letters and show their appreciation, Vandenberg staff, Kathy and Team Mariposa arranged a grand ceremony. Festivities kicked off with a color guard presentation and speeches by Westwood executive director Peter Bonilla and 30th Space Wing Commander, Anthony Mastalir. Mastalir presented Lt. Dever with a 30th Space Wing challenge coin and granted him honorary membership in the United States Space Force. Vandenberg leadership then presented Lt. Devers with an American flag. Party planners arranged a car parade that would allow friends, family and community members to safely show their support for the veteran. Dozens of cars streamed through the property, showcasing their decorations, cheering and sending well-wishes to Devers. During his speech, Commander Mastalir said, “While Charles will tell you that his years in...
Changemakers Series
Marc Vorkapich, Watercrest
It’s easy to attribute the successes of a company to exemplary individuals. Think Steve Jobs of Apple or Elon Musk of Tesla. But in truth, their accomplishments wouldn’t have been possible without those who supported them. Marc Vorkapich is quick to say that his people are the key to success. As the principal and CEO of Watercrest Senior Living, a Yardi client, he’s brought together a team of “servant leaders” who inspire trust from both residents and staff. It’s earned the company a Great Place to Work award, and it’s also caught the attention of Senior Housing News. They’ve given him the title of Changemaker for his history of nurturing strong leaders and promoting collaboration at Watercrest. When they asked him about the association between embracing change and taking risks, Vorkapich made it clear that although he may be in charge, his team gives him the confidence to see things through: “When a call for change derives from a desire to serve something greater than ourselves, any sense of risk is far outweighed by the depth of purpose. My risk tolerance is high, as my entire career over 27 years has developed by having faith that I and others surrounding me have been equipped for what lies ahead.” And during the pandemic, his commitment to teamwork and service has helped ensure that Watercrest can continue to provide great care. In this excerpt from his Changemakers interview, Vorkapich describes their COVID-19 response and offers his thoughts on how the virus may impact senior living as a whole. Do you see Covid-19 changing the senior living industry in lasting ways? If yes, how? One thing is certain, there is an increased awareness and understanding of the importance of having a highly competent operations management team laser-focused...
Senior Living Wisdom
Insights for Success
The senior living industry can be competitive, but it also has no shortage of experienced professionals ready to work together and share their hard-earned knowledge. This sort of collaboration has been needed now more than ever as the industry has had to adapt to new challenges. In search of best practices everyone could use, we interviewed clients who had steadily grown their senior living organizations. We asked them what issues they faced, what goals they pursued and how they leveraged technology in innovative ways. Their answers formed the basis for our How Do You? video series, which you can access and watch on our resources page. But not every piece of advice made it into the final videos. These senior living leaders had a lot to say, and we want to ensure there’s a place for all their insights to be discovered. So we revisited their interviews and pulled their answers together for a new white paper: How do you excel with senior living technology? Here’s a sneak peek at questions we covered: How do you | encourage move-ins? “It’s always ideal to know how close a lead is to moving in. Some leads are two months out. Some are three months out. Some are years out. Understanding that allows us to input a call-out in two years maybe or a follow-up that works for them. We’re not that typical marketing person who’s going to bombard them every week.” – Nicole Graham, Licensed Administrator How do you | improve resident care? “By electronically charting as you go along, it cuts the background stuff out of the process of taking care of a resident. All of the time that they would spend trying to figure out when to chart and what to chart is gone....
Software for Senior Living
A Provider Toolkit
Business software is a big category. One so big that there are almost too many options to realistically consider. Take marketing for example, which already has more than 8,000 solutions in nearly 50 distinct areas, the sheer scope of which is obvious from just a glance at the popular marketing technology landscape. Fortunately, when it comes to senior living, the picture isn’t nearly as staggering. Sure, you could choose one of the 7,000 marketing solutions for your community, and it may do the job. Or you could pick from a much smaller list of solutions that were designed specifically for senior living. Software developers have spent decades in the industry working directly with communities to build products customized to their unique housing and care needs. That said, the software market for senior living is growing in step with the industry as a whole. New innovations and features are routinely released, while entirely new products are entering the field. Digital leases, resident portals, online services, mobile charting — you get the idea. Things are changing. Your guide to senior living software This software transformation is likely a big reason why 83% of senior living providers feel that they’ve underinvested in technology. So what kinds of senior living software are available now? And what should you have? We’ve created a new ebook to tackle those questions for you. The Complete Senior Living Software Toolkit breaks down each software type you can find in a modern community, explaining how it helps and highlighting the important features. That way, you can easily flip through the ebook for tools you may not have, learn a bit about their advantages and decide for yourself if it’s something that would work for your staff and residents. Essential software for senior living providers In the ebook, we group the senior living software categories by level of value. There are options that take your community above and beyond but aren’t crucial to running things. And then there are the solutions that every senior living organization should consider adopting. Here’s a quick preview of the first chapter on the most important software for senior living. Property management & accounting – The core financial software that handles the back-office business tasks. Commonly includes a general ledger, resident billing and payment processing. Customer relationship management – Where your sales and marketing team work to grow the community. Key features are lead tracking, activity calendars and campaign management. Electronic health records – The efficient, modern-day answer to paper-based resident records for your caregivers. Look for health assessments, incident tracking and mobile charting. Be sure to check out the full ebook to learn more about the best software for senior living...