Testing kits, sanitization materials and personal protective equipment are essential tools in the battle against COVID-19 for senior living providers. Unfortunately, these resources are ballooning budgets for organizations already operating on thin margins. So as talks of further coronavirus relief packages continue in Congress, a coalition of senior living associations are pushing for direct aid to help cover these costs and ensure resident safety. AHCA/NCAL, Argentum and LeadingAge have taken a clear position: Billions of dollars in relief have already been given to health care providers, including skilled nursing facilities, but private-pay assisted living has so far seen no financial support. Their call for aid is being echoed by lawmakers too. Rep. Kay Granger recently wrote an editorial on The Hill requesting the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to provide help and resources to senior living facilities. “The administration did a good job of prioritizing nursing homes early on in the pandemic so that they could get the personal protective equipment (PPE) supplies they needed. But many of our elderly don’t live in nursing homes; they live in senior living facilities, like Sagora Senior Living in my congressional district,” Granger writes. “We need to focus on getting resources to help these vulnerable Americans. And we need to do it now before it’s too late.” To facilitate a potential distribution, the senior living group built an online portal where providers could enter their information. The data is now being packaged for the HHS, which has been allocated COVID-19 relief funding from the CARES Act passed in March. The associations want to stress that there is no guarantee the funds will be received, but the effort does bring the private-pay industry one step closer to seeing it happen. And although the current deadline...

For EHR systems, workplace training is essential. The software helps nurses deliver quality care, so it’s important that they become proficient in electronic charting and medication order management. Once they’ve learned the ropes, they get to spend more time with residents and less on technology. But when things change rapidly, as the case has been with COVID-19, it can be difficult to conduct enough hands-on training to bring staff up to speed, so it’s smart to provide extra learning resources to ensure they have the information they need, right when they need it. As a recent example, one senior living client of ours had the idea to create handouts for agency nurses who are supporting staff during the pandemic. Some of these new nurses were unfamiliar with Yardi EHR, so they were resorting to charting on paper. To get the nurses on track, the client created a two-page handout, featuring screenshots and instructions, that outlines what to do at the start, during and after a shift. It effectively guides the nurses through the essentials of a shift in Yardi EHR, and it even offers some troubleshooting in case they get stuck. The handouts have proven successful as a support tool across their communities. In that same spirit, we’ve created over a dozen job aids for Yardi EHR and Yardi eMAR to facilitate learning and help your staff be more productive. Each document covers one task (like adding new orders or updating a physician’s contact information) in clear, easy-to-follow language that caregivers can reference if they’re new to the process or just not quite sure about the steps. Here’s a quick rundown of what our new Yardi EHR and Yardi eMAR job aids explain: Adding, verifying and linking orders (both medical and non-medical) Navigating a...

Leaders in senior living know that you need to take steps to stay ahead of change, even when things might seem normal in the moment. The earlier you act, the better off you’ll be. That idea is a core practice for Richard Hutchinson, CEO of Discovery Senior Living. Throughout his decades’ long career, he’s taken innovative approaches to sales and data that have produced measurable results. And when the coronavirus first began making headlines in January, he started procuring as much PPE as he could for his communities, well before local health authorities were raising alarms. For these reasons and more, Hutchinson was recently recognized as a Changemaker by Senior Housing News. The interview series, sponsored by Yardi, highlights leaders across the industry who are helping to shape the future of senior living. In the excerpts below from his interview, Hutchinson shares his take on how the senior living industry faces change and what it means to be innovative. He also talks about Discovery’s proactive measures to keep residents and staff safe from COVID-19. You’ve mentioned that the industry is set in its ways, and also that the consumer is changing rapidly. Do you think the industry is changing fast enough? No, I don’t think so. I don’t know that many industries are changing fast enough, and it’s the pace and the tempo of consumer behavior and the way the consumers not only want to purchase things incrementally, but generational changes and technology changes, that make it difficult to keep pace. The fundamentals of our industry have been great, so [we have] the good-bad equation. The good news when you have such a great supply-demand equation is that you’ll end up with people who can replicate other people’s product and services and do quite...

Does the thought of Medicaid billing illicit groans from your staff? That’s understandable. Manual billing is time consuming, frustrating, and often riddled with errors.  Fortunately, you can boost staff morale and productivity with automated billing for Medicaid. Claim submission woes can lead to high turnover Medicaid provides consistent and vital funding for senior care. But the variables in filing processes and reimbursement can cause headaches for staff. Complicated filing practices can result in costly errors, wasted time, and delays in reimbursement. Those frustrations are just the beginning of more troubling issues. As employee frustrations add up, turn over increases. High Speed Training of West Yorkshire reports on the top five reasons for high company turnover.  A lack of innovation and overworked employees are two factors that drive employees out the door. When companies fail to adapt innovative practices and technologies to support their staff, the staff suffers. Staff members are unnecessarily burdened with inefficient, redundant, unfulfilling work and stress. As a result, turnover rates soar, and organizations fail to reach their potential. Simplifying Medicaid claim submissions Claim submissions are a pain point that developers with Yardi Senior Living have heard about for years. A game-changing solution is now available. Yardi Claims Manager, the newest update to our Yardi Voyager Senior Housing platform, streamlines and simplifies the claims submission process. With Claims Manager, you can: Get Organized Manage all Medicaid claims in a single, secure database. There is no need to shuffle between multiple software programs or websites. Improve efficiency Electronic submissions eliminates the need to sort, scan, and house files. All documentation is securely stored in Yardi. It’s easy to create, submit, store, and reconcile files. Improve accuracy State-specific billing templates make it easy to fill out claims with the information needed in your unique...

Will my loved one be happier and healthier in senior living or at home? It’s a question many families are asking themselves now during the pandemic. They’ve seen headlines about case numbers, but they also know they can’t provide the care and attention needed by themselves. “If COVID has taught us anything, it has taught us that we are health care, but it doesn’t mean that we have to be health care in the traditional sense of a hospital or a nursing home,” said Brenda Bacon, president and CEO of Brandywine Living. “We have to be able to convince the public or customers that their loved one will be safe and secure in addition to being happy.” A former board chairman for Argentum, Bacon has a lot of insight into the challenges and opportunities of senior living. She’s taken that unique experience to Brandywine, where she strives to make their communities the right mix of “health care and hospitality and fun.” Bacon has been recognized by Senior Housing News as a Changemaker for her contributions to the industry, and during her interview, she opened up on the difficulties posed by the coronavirus – as well as her strategies for keeping it at bay. Check out these excerpts to see how Brandywine is keeping its residents happy and healthy. What needs to be done to achieve that safety and security you’re thinking about? Any operational changes you’re implementing at Brandywine? On April 4th, we instituted a rule that says “one job only.” In the healthcare industry, employees traditionally work in two or three different healthcare institutions; they’ll work a shift at a skilled nursing and then they’ll go to an assisted living or the hospital, the doctor’s office. Nurses and care managers tend to have...

When you invest in your energy strategy, the rewards are proportionate. Simply put, the upgrades can pay for themselves. You just have to get the ball rolling first. That was just one of the key takeaways from our recent webinar on energy efficiency with McKnight’s Senior Living. Randy Moss of Yardi led the discussion on ENERGY STAR benchmarking and best practices for providers, and he was joined by Christopher Wright from Merrill Gardens, who shared his company’s own experience with tracking energy usage and reducing spend. Merrill Gardens’ road to energy success Starting in 2016, Merrill Gardens was required to record and report their energy usage by the city of Seattle. And at first, everything was done manually. Staff were pulling data from paper bills and accounting systems to upload into ENERGY STAR for benchmarking. Eventually, the city’s utility provider enabled automated data sharing, which simplified the entire process. The state of California soon followed with regulatory requirements, and seeing the writing on the wall, Merrill Gardens began rolling out benchmarking at all of their communities nationwide. Like in Seattle, many utilities needed manual data entry at first, but nowadays, the majority allow automated data transfer. By late 2019, Merrill Gardens had a year’s worth of data, which gave them great visibility into their buildings’ usage compared to one another. “Based on those sorts of trends, we already had the ability to identify buildings to focus special attention on for CapEx and operation improvements,” said Wright. Unfortunately, the pandemic brought new hurdles, but that only sharpened their focus. “In early 2020, like everyone else, we discovered our resources were suddenly and unexpectedly limited, while at the same time, savings and operational efficiencies were even more important,” said Wright. “Partnering with Yardi over the last...

The current rate of change in senior living is unprecedented. Even before the coronavirus outbreak spurred extra safety measures, providers were quickly adopting novel models and methods as the boomer generation has grown closer to becoming the core market. Mary Leary, president and CEO of Mather, has driven many such changes herself. A leader with decades of experience on both the for-profit and not-for-profit sides of senior living, Leary is unafraid to forgo tradition in pursuit of something better and bigger. It’s a core reason why Mather, under Leary’s stewardship, has grown from serving 5,400 older adults to nearly 60,000 in the 18 years she’s been at the helm. And it’s also why Leary has earned the title of Changemaker from Senior Housing News. The Changemakers is a Yardi-sponsored series that profiles senior living leaders who’ve helped redefine their industry. Leary’s interview with SHN goes into depth on how Mather has successfully transformed its operations during the coronavirus and what senior living might look like after things return to “normal.” Check out this excerpt from the interview: Obviously, this is something that’s shaping the industry. Is it changing how you are currently thinking about senior living in general? I think COVID-19 will absolutely lead to changes in senior living, and I think that it will speed up the pace of change in a way that is unprecedented. Everything that I do and think about right now is colored by the dramatic changes in our country and communities. I think part of innovating is forgetting, unlearning, dismantling and undoing what one does currently, and that is exactly what is occurring in senior living and our country right now. With virtually everything, the increased velocity and adoption of technology is already impacting everything we’re doing. It’s...

For the loved ones of residents in senior living, concerns about the coronavirus have not yet abated, even as states reopen and life gradually returns to “normal.” Residents in communities are at a higher risk for COVID, and restrictions on visits remain in place to protect them. So it’s not hard to see why family members would want transparency from senior living providers. Has anyone there caught it? What protocols are in place to help? How is everyone holding up? Since the start of the outbreak, dozens of states have instituted reporting guidelines that require assisted living and skilled nursing facilities to report their COVID numbers to public health authorities. But some states have gone even further by asking providers to share those same numbers with the family members directly on a daily basis. Of course, many providers have already taken great steps to expand their communications. They’ve added FAQs to their website, posted notices to their online resident portal, and have sent plenty of emails to loved ones, residents, staff and vendors. At Yardi, we’ve had clients reach out for help setting up email campaigns like these, so we’ve put together a quick tutorial video that covers how you can create emails that can be sent in bulk to a customized list of contacts. Senior living email correspondence in Yardi Both Yardi Voyager Senior Housing and RENTCafé Senior CRM offer email correspondence. Whichever you choose to use, you can leverage templates to pull in information like the recipient’s first name, today’s date and facility name from your database. That way, you can easily customize your emails in bulk. The video will walk you through how you can choose your information categories, format your text and then filter your contact list. It also explains...

For senior living communities, rolling out a new system interface is no simple feat, especially for a service as crucial as electronic medication management. And when you consider that pharmacy partners must be involved too, it’s not hard to see why implementations are often tricky. But that doesn’t mean they can’t go smoothly. Our Yardi eMAR team has years of hands-on experience in software implementation and building close relationships with both community and pharmacy staff. Where other software vendors may cut the pharmacy out of the process, we prefer to show caregivers how things work with a representative from the pharmacy right there with us. Implementation collaboration We’ve found that bringing everyone on site for the initial implementation helps the communities and pharmacies understand the workflow better. Since they can walk through the processes together, they get a clearer view of how the other side handles a medication order. Of course, if issues crop up down the road, we’re always happy to help out. “Yardi is always extremely responsive. I get answers very quickly and action very quickly,” said Taylor Smalling, manager of account support and enterprise projects at Guardian Pharmacy Services. “That enhances the quality of the relationship and helps build trust.” Guardian, the nation’s third-largest long-term care pharmacy, is part of the Yardi Pharmacy Network. We’ve integrated their pharmacy software with Yardi eMAR for real-time medication information sharing and automated prescription fulfillment. So when it comes time to implement the interface at a new community, the setup is much simpler. “With Yardi, we are usually in touch with one or two people. We can work with them directly to get all of the interface components set up,” said Taylor. “It’s a really efficient process, and I think it pulls in the right...

Change isn’t easy, especially when it comes to daily drivers like an eMAR. Habits are formed. Workarounds are found. And business as usual continues, even when new solutions offer better ways to get the job done. Take it from Ed Mason, director of technology and general operations for Mercury Pharmacy. “People don’t like change a whole lot. They just want to get through their lives and not have to worry about extra stuff. And that’s the hardest thing you fight. You have to have the mindset that this change is good.” With over a decade of experience in rolling out eMAR interfaces, Ed has seen their progression from products that required special equipment to services that only need a web browser. Ed was also an early adopter of ALMSA, the care technology that Yardi eMAR is built on. “Back then, ALMSA was the first of everything. It was the first real time, the first online, the first automatic update. It was really cool. I was just sticking ALMSA in every community.” Having set up eMAR systems so many times, he now knows the best way to approach change. When an implementation is underway, he tries to make time to get out to the site. He’s involved from the start to act as a resource and help the community get trained. This productive collaboration extends to his partnership with Yardi. At Mercury Pharmacy, which serves over 6,000 active residents in Washington state, Ed works closely with our implementation team to roll out Yardi eMAR. “What I like about the Yardi implementations is that you actually have trainers go on site to do it. With other eMAR vendors, most of it is done over the web,” Ed said. “Yardi spends a little more time training people,...

Nowadays, keeping an entire senior living community healthy requires stringent protocols, adequate PPE and, crucially, a dedicated team willing to take every step necessary. As part of their Changemakers series, Senior Housing News has been interviewing influential leaders in senior living, discussing innovation and asking for their insights on the industry’s challenges — including COVID-19. It’s a showcase of thought leaders, risk-takers and trend-setters, sponsored by Yardi. But, as our newest honoree makes clear, success in preventing an outbreak doesn’t rest solely on a leader’s shoulders. The second member of the Changemakers 2020 class is Dwayne Clark, founder and CEO of Aegis Living. Clark has over three decades’ experience in senior living. He rose through the ranks at Leisure Care and Sunrise Senior Living before starting Aegis 20 years ago in Seattle, looking to offer a combination of novel designs, disruptive operational concepts and exceptional care. Since then, Aegis has become a nationally known, award-winning provider. Despite his own accomplishments, Clark attributes a large part of Aegis’s success to his team and culture. “From the very beginning, we stood apart to be a very different kind of company, starting with the kind of people we hire. I think over 90% of our people come from the hospitality industry,” he said. “The bridge to get to your customers is your staff, especially your line staff. You’ve got to make those people delighted in their job every day. That is the whole point, and this [distinction] has been incredibly important to us.” And that commitment hasn’t wavered during the coronavirus outbreak. In this excerpt from the SHN interview, Clark expands on Aegis’s COVID-19 response, sharing how they’ve supported staff so residents continue to receive great care. How have you been able to attract that talent? What...

Occupancy in senior living may be trending low, but some providers are up to the challenge. Case in point, Stage Management. With a little help from Yardi Senior CRM, this senior housing owner and operator has fast-tracked its sales cycle and boosted its occupancy rate. “With Yardi Senior CRM, we can see where we are in our sales cycle and what activities we need to complete to help move more people in the door,” said Troy McClymonds, partner at Stage Management. “Our numbers prove that over and over again.” Meet Stage Management Based out of Centennial, Colorado, Stage Management is committed to care. “Our mission for staff is care comes first. We’re not a real estate business — we’re a care company,” said McClymonds. This focus on quality care is clear at Stage Management’s full-service retirement community, Golden Pond, which offers 115 units of independent living, assisted living and memory care in Golden, Colorado. The staff encourage residents to follow their interests while providing comforts to make everyone feel at home. Paperwork presents challenges When new prospects used to walk in the door at Golden Pond, front-desk staff would capture their information on paper cards, making handwritten notes on the back. The hand-off to sales took extra time as a result. When prospects did decide to move in, they were asked to share similar information repeatedly. “There was a lot of duplicate work,” said McClymonds. So Stage Management turned to Senior CRM. The senior living sales and marketing solution ties the resident record together from lead to lease, so staff at Golden Pond no longer need to re-enter details or search through paper files. Measurable, profitable results Thanks to Senior CRM, the paper trail is now just a memory for Stage Management. The mobile,...

As the COVID-19 crisis drives up labor and equipment costs in senior living, providers are looking for sure-fire ways to save without sacrificing on care or quality. One avenue that few providers have pursued is energy management. Not considered a significant challenge by many, utility spend actually ranks as the third highest expense, after payroll and food. It’s also much easier to tackle from a cost-control perspective than you might think. Yes, swapping in LED light bulbs is one way to shrink the energy bill, but the real advantages (and savings) start with just knowing how much energy is used. By benchmarking your communities’ energy consumption, and you open up many possibilities to conserve. There’s more value in a cohesive energy strategy than just saving money, too. Many residents appreciate and look for a building that follows sustainable practices. In fact, the baby boomers are more eco-conscious than their Gen X and millennial counterparts are. Those over 65 are three times more likely to say they live in environmentally friendly ways “all the time.” If that weren’t reason enough to revisit your energy approach, consider that state, county and local jurisdictions are increasingly asking real estate operators — senior housing included — to record and report on their usage. Take Seattle for example. Back in 2013, the city passed a resolution in pursuit of carbon neutrality that requires non-public buildings larger than 10,000 square feet to disclose their utility benchmarking data. For Merrill Gardens, based out of Seattle, that meant they had to quickly roll out centralized utility tracking. So how’d they pull it off? And what benefits have they seen since? Join us on Tuesday, June 16, at 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT) for a live webinar with McKnight’s Senior Living to...

Changemakers is back for 2020 with a whole new class of senior living leaders! Published by Senior Housing News (SHN) and sponsored by Yardi, the series spotlights industry pioneers who’ve taken unique approaches towards shaping the future of senior living. And this time around, these are also leaders who’ve shown what it takes to safely navigate their communities through the current health care crisis. For the first inductee, meet Michael Schonbrun, founder and CEO of Balfour Senior Living. Schonbrun got his start in senior living while researching communities for his mother to live in. He decided he wanted to build one that she herself would love. So in 1997, he founded Balfour in Colorado, and the company has grown steadily since. They now have nine locations, with three more under construction. Prior to senior living, Schonbrun had spent a decade in charge of National Jewish Health, a leading respiratory clinical and health care research center. That experience has helped position Balfour well for the pandemic. From the first signs of trouble, Schonbrun and his team have taken the coronavirus seriously. In this excerpt from the SHN interview, see how Schonbrun’s unique background and proactive measures have kept Balfour’s residents and staff safe. How has COVID-19 impacted Balfour and influenced your thinking — and the industry’s? Do you think people are going to see more value in having on-site health care? The answer to that last question is yes. My first 10 years after getting out of law school I spent in the public health and health care regulatory environment. I think one of the benefits of COVID-19 — if you want to call it that — is that there’s going to be a willingness to invest in public health and to appreciate that, as...

For the latest installment in Voices, a Yardi-sponsored interview series, Senior Housing News spoke with Lisa Conrad, manager of the clinical and compliance team at Yardi. The series features different leaders’ views on trends, topics and issues in the senior living industry. In this case, Lisa’s experience gives her a unique perspective on not only technology changes but the COVID-19 crisis as well. Lisa’s background is actually in health care, not software. She’s a registered nurse who has worked in several different practice areas, from oncology to sports medicine to long-term care. Before Yardi, She was a director of nursing at a facility that had adopted electronic medical records very early on, which spurred her interest in the technology side of care. That role directly led to her position today at Yardi. Keep reading to see what Lisa had to share in her interview with SHN: Generally, how do you apply that clinical background to the technology in your day-to-day work at Yardi? My role is on the clinical compliance team, which focuses on supporting our implementation and customer service teams. We interact in the background with the various departments, whether it be assisting with a sales demo or working with an account manager on client workflows. We develop and do the quality assurance check on all the clinical software to make sure that it meets federal and state regulations. We keep up with federal and state requirements to make sure the software is always compliant. The team itself is composed of health care professionals from different specialties. It’s a really unique group in that we have team members from a variety of backgrounds who bring their own specialized skill sets to the projects we work on. What are the challenges and solutions that...

Throughout the year, we’re talking to clients, developing features, squashing bugs and upgrading usability. Once everything’s been tried and tested, we bundle the improvements together for a new release. Well, that time has come. We’re excited to announce that Yardi Voyager Senior Housing 7.12 is now available. From new permissions and shortcuts to reports and features, you’ll find a lot to explore. Here’s a rundown of the enhancements added across the Yardi Senior Living Suite: Yardi Voyager Voyager received a variety of simple but meaningful improvements. Among them, you can now record your residents’ preferred names in Voyager. These nicknames will then show up throughout the system on your census records, resident ledger and elsewhere so your staff always know how to refer to your residents. Here are the rest of the updates at a glance: New data fields for a unit’s floor and building Shortcut links for maintenance services Faster access to work order information Watch the overview video Read the Voyager new features guide Yardi Senior CRM Senior CRM had quite a few updates in the Senior Housing 7.12 release. One of the biggest, you can now switch lease types during the leasing workflow. So if one of your communities is still under construction, for instance, sales staff can easily start a pre-lease agreement, rather than your standard template, for prospective residents. Other highlights include: New email opt-in/opt-out tokens Lead score enhancements Email notifications for scheduled activities Linking for duplicate records Watch the overview video Read the Senior CRM new features guide Yardi EHR EHR saw changes in task scheduling to add flexibility and save time for shift managers. A new scheduling column now shows when a caregiver is busy with a task, and you can easily update the schedule from the...

How can technology help senior living providers overcome their biggest challenges? To get the answer, Senior Housing News (SHN) recently interviewed our own Ray Elliott, vice president of senior living at Yardi, as part of their Voices series. The content program, which we’re a sponsor of, asks executive leaders for their insights on trends, topics and issues that are shaping the industry. With almost two decades at Yardi, Ray has extensive experience working on software solutions for property management, initially supporting Yardi’s public housing product before taking charge of senior living. He’s seen how technology has grown in both sectors, transforming business as usual in powerful ways. Read on for an excerpt from Ray’s interview with SHN: What do you see as the most impactful way a property management platform such as Yardi can move the needle for senior living providers? Yardi goes beyond just being a property management platform. If you look at our history, that was where the company started, but today we do much more than that. We provide an end-to-end solution that our clients can use from the first engagement with a prospect all the way up through the care of residents. With the Yardi Senior Living Suite, everything is automated. If you’re using our CRM (customer relationship management), and you enter prospect data, details about that individual will make it through the sales cycle. When they end up in your community, you’re able to see everything in our EHR (electronic health record) product, down to their hobbies and interests. All that information flows automatically. Nobody has to transcribe it. Nobody has to enter it again. There isn’t a risk of that information being lost. It’s that sort of value-add that helps move the needle for providers. It helps them...

The vast majority of older adults in America want to remain in their current residence as they age, a recent AARP report shows. Despite the safer accommodations and social benefits of senior living communities, nearly 80 percent of people age 50 and over prefer to stay put. These numbers are nothing new. It’s been widely recognized by the aging industry at large that most seniors desire to age in place, and government regulations and reimbursements have increasingly supported in-home services for those who do. Buoyed by these trends, the home care industry is now one of the fastest-growing trades in the country. For senior living providers, home care offers an attractive yet challenging opportunity. There’s clearly demand for extra services, but how do you ensure the same level of care outside your community as you do within? Without clear oversight, providers leave themselves open to risk and lost revenue. Introducing Yardi At Home Care Yardi is making it easier for senior living providers to offer non-medical in-home services. With At Home Care, your remote staff spend less time filling paperwork and more time supporting clients, while you get real-time visibility of every service provided. Wherever someone chooses to stay, you can be there for them. At Home Care is powered by the same trusted, cloud-based technology that runs the Yardi Senior Living Suite. Built-in safeguards make sure staff follow HIPAA recommendations, enhancing compliance and protecting your clients’ privacy. And seamless integration with Yardi Voyager’s accounting platform simplifies billing — so you can quickly turn home care into another service for your business. “Yardi At Home Care further extends our single connected solution across the continuum of care,” said Ray Elliott, vice president of senior living at Yardi. “It closes a service gap. Senior living...

Good leadership depends on good data. Because without data, as the saying goes, you’re just another person with an opinion. Thing is, everyone wants good data for making better business decisions. But not everyone wants to collect, clean, graph and dissect their datasets. Part of the issue is the sheer abundance of information, especially in senior living. From your standard financial metrics to qualitative measures like care level, there’s always something extra to track down. Some staff may not even know where to find the right numbers in the first place. Then there’s the lack of clarity. How do you accurately organize and analyze what you have? Giant spreadsheets of columns and rows are not the easiest to understand, nor are they very shareable. The current state of senior living business intelligence It’s a tricky situation that senior living providers have approached in a couple ways. Manually creating reports: The most common method. You (or your staff) spend days’ worth of preparation before big meetings, pulling numbers from siloed systems, cutting and pasting inside spreadsheets. When you have monthly or even weekly calls that require up-to-date numbers, this is a significant time sink. Adapting third-party tools: Today’s business intelligence software options are powerful, but they are general-purpose tools. Which means long implementation and customization, trying to fit the product to senior living. Some organizations even require a dedicated full-time employee to manually upload data and manage the solution. Thankfully, the future of business intelligence in senior living looks brighter. Introducing a smarter solution for senior living data analytics Your data is now open for business. Make smarter, faster decisions with actionable information for your entire portfolio through Yardi Senior IQ. Designed specifically for senior living providers, Senior IQ surfaces your data in dashboards, tiles...

The first tour a prospect takes is not at your community. It’s on your website. Nearly 90% of senior living prospects will visit a community’s website before they ever reach out. For senior living marketers, that means the community’s online presence needs to be as impressive as its physical campus is. We’re talking clean, modern designs. Engaging content. Interactive floorplans. These elements are essential for educating and converting visitors to prospects. But building out these features is easier said than done. Not many senior living providers have staff with web expertise or the resources on hand to run such a crucial project. That’s where Yardi can help. Our RENTCafé team doesn’t just work on online portals for residents and family members. They also have a team of creative professionals who design and develop senior living websites for providers. That includes community-specific websites as well as brand-level corporate sites, all of which can be managed by the senior living marketer from a single solution. Senior living website themes galore To make things simple, we’ve already built out over 70 website designs for senior living providers to choose from. There’s a wide range of styles to fit any market, and the themes are configurable too. Unlimited pages are included with any RENTCafé website, allowing marketers to promote their values, activities or anything else about their communities. If the senior living community wants something uniquely theirs, our RENTCafé creative team can design a full theme to represent the brand’s vision. The team works together directly with the senior living provider to determine goals, feature requirements, content needs and, of course, the look and feel. Mobile optimized for modern devices Websites used to have an entirely separate site dedicated for viewing on mobile. But as Google has updated...

The health care industry has never been that big of a player in senior living, despite what you’d think. Since Medicare traditionally does not cover long-term care, many hospitals, physicians and service providers have largely overlooked the opportunity that independent and assisted living communities can provide for better health outcomes. But regulations are slowly changing, conversations are quickly starting — and the NIC Spring Conference is at the center of it all. Set for San Diego, March 4-6, this year’s event once again explores the intersection of senior housing and health care. Thousands of industry professionals, including operators and investors, will have the chance to shake hands and forge the relationships that will push senior care forward. But what makes the NIC Spring Conference unique is the growing number of health care providers who also attend. As supplemental benefits under Medicare increase and Medicare Advantage plans gain momentum inside senior living communities, more and more health care decision-makers now recognize the value of partnering closely with senior living providers. To top all that off, we’ll be there too. We’re sponsoring the general session luncheon, and we’ll be around to chat each day, so we hope you make it as well. This year’s conference promises to be another standout. New ways to network at NIC Interested in connecting with a potential health care partner at NIC? Plan a braindate. The app-enabled networking service is new this year. Essentially, you search for a topic and then schedule a quick one-on-one conversation or group meeting with fellow attendees. It streamlines the process of finding the right person for the discussions you need to have and the decisions you want to make. The networking lounge also returns this year. But you can now reserve dedicated meeting spaces in...

How do you efficiently run an affordable assisted living community? We spoke with Nicole Graham to get the answers. Nicole is a licensed administrator for Nevada HAND, the largest nonprofit for affordable housing in the state. They’ve helped thousands find a place to call home – including older adults. Nevada HAND owns and operates two affordable assisted living communities in Las Vegas under the Silver Sky brand. Nicole’s in charge of their location at Deer Springs. Nicole revealed how they grow their community, connect with family members and provide the best possible care for residents through the Yardi Senior Living Suite. We’ve transcribed a few highlights from the interview here, but be sure to catch the video below too. Q: What Yardi products have been most transformative for you and why? We have definitely enjoyed Yardi EHR and Senior CRM. On the marketing side, it’s about knowing where our prospects are coming from and if we want to go back to that market area. But then once they are a prospect in the lead database, it goes all the way through the workflow on to the care side with EHR. Just being able to visually see that whole process has been really great. Q: How does your team maximize lead conversion with Senior CRM? Because you’re able to see the reports and analytics in Senior CRM, we know how long each lead takes and why they might not have moved in. We understand where we are at with that prospect. Are they in rehab? Are they still at home making the decision? Are they over resource because of our affordability and our income limits? Or are they waiting on other resources because they need to make the rent limit? So knowing those lead conversion...