Soon, the assisted living industry may have its own version of ‘Nursing Home Compare.’
Raleigh, North Carolina-based senior housing analytics platform VisionLTC and Formation Healthcare Group (FHG)—a subsidiary of private investment management firm Formation Capital—recently joined forces to develop an assisted living quality database.
The new database will serve many purposes, according to VisionLTC CEO Arick Morton.
“For the first time, the seniors housing industry will have a single source for assisted living asset analysis, reputation evaluation, portfolio monitoring, operator benchmarking, clinical analytics, market analysis, and consumer education, with a key benefit being that the burden is not on AL providers to submit the data,” Morton said in a press release.
Specifically, clients who choose to subscribe to the service will have access to consumer rating data and aggregated regulatory outcomes for assisted living communities currently spanning 75% of the U.S. population.
It’s high time that the assisted living industry had a source similar to Medicare.gov’s Nursing Home Compare website, especially since “publicly available and readily available information on the quality of skilled nursing facilities”—but not the quality of assisted living communities—has been the norm for years, Jessica Curtis, vice president of clinical systems and analytics at FHG, told Senior Housing News.
“Our understanding is that there is really not another data source like this right now,” Curtis added.
At first, the new database will be available to customers who pay a subscription fee. It’s expected that assisted living operators, lenders, real estate investment trusts (REITs), private equity groups, investor groups and industry organizations will be among the first subscribers, though the information contained in the database may eventually prove useful to regular assisted living consumers, too, Curtis said.
“Operators could [use the database to] provide a one-page marketing tool to consumers who are looking at their facilities,” she added. “We definitely see many uses for this.”
Because each state regulates assisted living in its own way—and different states use different terminology—the database will normalize all of this information so that users can compare quality metrics across state lines.
The subscription product is anticipated to launch by the end of October, Curtis said.
Written by Mary Kate Nelson
Companies featured in this article:
