In an increasingly competitive marketplace, senior living providers are seeing data, collected throughout their communities, is driving their ability to manage through the competition. 

CEOs say data collection and analysis is a major game-changer when it comes to operating efficiencies, but it also means finding solutions to managing it. 

Information systems are critical in providing a data-driven understanding of a community’s operations, agreed a panel of senior living CEOs and executives during the 23rd National Investment Center (NIC) conference in Chicago on Thursday.

Having an information system in place can help centralize various pieces of data being recorded throughout the community into one singular platform, said John Moore, CEO of Atria Senior Living.

An operator of 140-plus generally assisted living licensed communities in 28 states, Atria has committed roughly $15 million to information systems over the last five years.

“As a data-driven organization, we needed to automate and streamline the way we obtain information,” Moore said.

The solution became a software called CXO Cockpit, a tablet-driven application that sits on top of Atria’s current database management system, allowing the provider to do away with its old ways of dropping information into a number of Excel files.

CXO Cockpit enables Atria staff at both the executive level and those working within the communities, to view data such as rent rolls and expense reports across different operational segments.

Expense reports related to food costs, maintenance, as well as sales activity that records tour inquiries can be accessed within the one software tool. This allows the community’s executive directors to have access to an array of information, said Moore.

“It was getting to a point where we had so much information we couldn’t use it under our old system,” Moore said. “This centralized solution let us put it into a single package.”

An information system can even be used to zoom in to a specific department within a provider’s company. For example, Vi, a high-end senior living provider uses an HR database to track and manage employee information.

Vi’s Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS) is only one of the technologies that have helped run the provider’s business more efficiently, says company President Randy Richardson.

The HRIS has effectively made the company greener by eliminating paper use in employee record reporting, Richardson said.

The system employs various dashboards that a provider’s HR department can use to look at key metrics such as staff turnover, even

“I’m a big believer that if you measure something and put that out in front of people, they start to look at that,” Richardson said.

As healthcare reforms increase the need for organizations to track and improve the quality of care they provide, information systems look to play a critical role in a provider’s survival within the shifting healthcare environment.

“There are a bunch of smarter web developers and user tools out there, and its getting better and better everyday,” said Moore. “Senior living isn’t rocket-science. There are a lot of moving parts, but knowing those parts is the name of the game.”

Written by Jason Oliva