LeadingAge: Building a Well-Rounded Senior Living Provider

Senior living providers are facing pressure from a multitude of sources—the economy, demographic changes, and reimbursements fluctuations, to name a few—and these factors are creating demand for new models to evolve and develop in order to keep up with what consumers want and need, writes LeadingAge

Trends likely to shape the industry include consumer preferences of staying at home, and government policy and payment systems that will help them do so; “traditional” communities continuing to service increasingly complex cases and a range of acuity levels; and managed care models that prioritize partnerships and networking along the care continuum.

These trends are not lost on smart mission-driven providers. They are rethinking their models and looking for ways to both diversify services and prepare themselves to partner with other entities in order to thrive in years to come.

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“I’ve always had an interest in community-based programs and what they can offer, and when the boomers hit we’ve got to be prepared,” says [CEO and President of the Los Angeles Jewish Home, Molly] Forrest. “We [the aging-services field] are so poorly prepared, this is like a ride at Disney. When it stops spinning we’ll come out of the ride and there will be some people who will not survive the experience. For not-for-profit providers, it’s a chance to get a tremendous mission fulfillment, to do wonderful things for people who live in the community, and we want to have a partner on the other side paying the bill. We can’t go on assuming we can only serve private-pay people, that is not the not-for-profit mission. … This is an opportunity for not-for-profits because we can partner, but we have to be excellent.”

The LeadingAge article mentions how some providers are continuing to serve traditional clients while preparing for new ones, or diversifying revenue while boosting community care offerings, or changing to survive evolving public health care funding systems. It is the first in a series of articles examining how nonprofit senior living organizations are navigating the changing inudstry. Read the full piece here

Written by Alyssa Gerace

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