These are Senior Living Providers’ Favorite Vendors

The vast majority of senior living providers rely, in some way or another, on outsourcing—whether that means tapping other companies to provide their ancillary services or using medical record software from third-party providers.

The most-preferred third-party vendors of many providers were outlined in a recent survey by Ziegler.

The Chicago-based specialty investment bank polled 143 chief financial officers and financial professionals from senior living companies nationwide. About 67% of respondents were from single-site organizations and 33% were from multi-sites.

Advertisement

Nearly 90% of providers said that they utilize an electronic medical record (EMR)/electronic health record (EHR) platform, and of those, 35.4% use MatrixCareAOD/SigmaCare, 29.9% use PointClickCare, and 15.7% use Netsmart/HealthMEDX.

Similarly, rehab and therapy services are widely outsourced by providers, with 83.3% reporting that they use vendors for these services. Forty-one vendors in this category were mentioned by respondents, with the top choices being RehabCare, favored by 17.2% of providers; Select Rehab, named by 7.8%; and SYMBRIA, named by 6.9%.

Home care services are only outsourced by 25% of providers, the survey showed. Of these, 17% use a preferred provider, sister company or are in a joint venture, while 9% allow residents to choose a home care company for themselves.

Advertisement

In response to questions about brain health and cognitive stimulation technologies, just under 25% of providers said that they have adopted these services, with over half of the affirmative responses citing It’s Never 2 Late (iN2L) as their preferred vendor. Dakim BrainFitness was mentioned by 21.4% and Posit Science BrainHQ by 10.7%.

Again, around 25% of providers said that they outsource remote monitoring technologies, such as wearables, biometric and passive sensors. The three most-mentioned vendors in this category were SARA, Philips and WanderGuard.

Telehealth was the least adopted technology in the Ziegler report, with less than 10% of respondents mentioning these solutions, which include remote physician visits and video consults.

When asked if they employ physicians or have outside physicians attend to residents’ needs, 84.6% of providers said they utilize outside physicians, 9.1% use a combination of contracted and employed physicians, and 6.3% employ their own physicians.

The top five other areas of outsourcing that respondents voluntarily mentioned were dining services, facilities (plant management, security, grounds), medical (doctors, nurses, clinicians), office (marketing, payroll, finance, IT), and laundry and housekeeping.

Written by Elizabeth Jakaitis

Companies featured in this article: