By: Zahida Siddiqi

Senior living referral giant A Place for Mom is launching a new website meant to serve as a “one-stop-shop” for families in search of nursing homes.

The new website, Nursinghomes.com, also marks the debut of the online referral giant in the nursing home sector. It puts vital information at prospective residents’ fingertips for evaluating and contacting skilled nursing and long-term care facilities quickly, according to Miho Jacobs, general manager of NursingHomes.com, who spoke exclusively to Senior Housing News sister publication Skilled Nursing News ahead of the website’s official launch on Wednesday, Sept. 6.

By carrying more robust information about skilled nursing facilities, Nursinghomes.com will be filling a void, Jacobs said.

Similar efforts such as Care Compare – an online tool for comparing nursing homes that is overseen by the federal government – have often received criticism from experts and industry insiders alike for not being very user friendly while offering limited information. And Nursinghomes.com aims to change that, Jacobs said.

“In working with families, we found a significant gap when they are trying to identify and evaluate short-term and long-term skilled facilities under a tight timeline. Our new offering will much more effectively provide families with the information they need to make confident skilled care decisions with a greater peace of mind,” said Jacobs.

The directory has been built to serve the 15,000 skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) that, until now, didn’t have the opportunity to properly feature the right differentiating information about their facilities. The launch also is part of A Place for Mom’s (APFM) ongoing growth and evolution under CEO Larry Kutscher.

Kutscher became CEO in 2019 and quickly shared plans for how APFM would be “reinvented” over a 2-year timespan — including by improving the sometimes contentious relationship between APFM and its client base of independent living, assisted living and memory care facilities, as well as home care providers.

While Covid-19 complicated APFM’s trajectory, the company has continued to secure growth equity, expand its team, and pursue strategic objectives. And while the launch of Nursinghomes.com is another milestone, the new website will function differently than APFM’s existing senior living advisory and referral service in several ways.

Basic versus premium subscription

NursingHomes.com allows access to information such as the name of the facility, its address and Medicare star rating, for all skilled nursing facilities currently operating in the United States, free of charge to families or facilities.

Moreover, Nursinghomes.com will also feature premium profiles with verified reviews, custom descriptions, photos, videos, 360-degree virtual tours, and the ability to book a tour and request a brochure for facilities that sign up for its premiere subscription membership.

For a limited time, NursingHomes.com is offering skilled nursing facilities a free trial of its premium profile subscription, with 300 skilled facilities already signed up, Jacobs said. For facilities interested in maintaining the premium profile level beyond the trial, a subscription will be offered for a fee, which will be in a range of about $500 per month per facility, executives shared with SNN.

This differs from the model that APFM has in place for senior living communities, which pay fees tied to successful placement of residents. Another key difference is that APFM advisors work with families on senior living placements, while the nursing home service does not connect website users with a human advisor.

In launching Nursinghomes.com, APFM is leveraging its relationship with 1800 hospital care management teams as well as the organization’s experience in the review collection process, Jacobs said.

“[A Place for Mom] has a relationship with the families, the SNFs and the hospitals … And we have over 20 years of experience providing families with the information they need to ultimately make a confident senior care decision. And in order to build this site, we leveraged a lot of this expertise,” said Jacobs. “And we coupled this with our experience building leading online businesses.”

The online SNF directory is also aimed at becoming an important resource for care management teams at healthcare systems and hospitals across the country, executives said.

“Now patients will be able to more easily navigate the process of researching, comparing, and contacting skilled facilities all within one comprehensive tool,” James Thorman, SVP and general manager of APFM’s Healthcare and Home Care business, said in the press release announcing the new website.

Verified family reviews key to successful placement

Verified reviews will be a key feature of the new website down the line, giving prospective residents pertinent information that goes beyond just having a more user-friendly experience relative to Care Compare, APFM leaders told SNN.

When nursing homes sign up for Nursinghomes.com’s premium services, they will be connected with additional services to help stage their facilities and manage the review collection process, for instance.

“We will be providing review cards at the facilities so that people can easily provide a review into our platform,” Jacobs said. “These are verified reviews from families, and that is something that differentiates this offering from what’s out there,” said Jacobs, noting that Care Compare provides a “great initial framework.”

Jacobs said that in conducting research on the needs of the families and evaluating the referrals from hospitals to SNFs, she discovered that future residents are not often provided timely and comprehensive information that is easy to access.

“[Families] are in a crisis mode. They have 24 to 48 hours to make that critical decision on where to send mom, and the hospitals are giving a photocopy of a printout. And it’s usually a photocopy of a photocopy of that printout of lists of nearby facilities [that is often outdated],” said Jacobs.

And even though Care Compare is a good starting point, providing residents with the name, location, contact information and Medicare rating of facilities, it lacks a complete picture that makes for successful pairings of nursing homes with resident desires and needs, Jacobs said.

And for that reason, Nursinghomes.com aims to go deeper, including by providing verified reviews and 360-degree virtual tours of the facility.

Family reviews are of particular importance, Jacobs added, sharing a statistic her team gathered in the course of developing the new online tool: Families on average are six times more likely to move into a community with recent reviews than those without.

For skilled nursing facilities, the website offers a marketing capability that is missing in the space, according to Jacobs.

“Coming out of Covid, SNFs are focused on rebuilding their occupancy, into thinking about their brands, their offerings, how they make themselves more unique, and market more holistically,” said Jacobs.

Indeed, while skilled nursing and long-term care is a needs-based offering, facilities increasingly are launching new programs, services and amenities meant to serve particular health care conditions and upgrade the resident experience. For example, many SNFs are introducing specialized care such as on-site dialysis, cardiac specializations, or expertise in respiratory or behavioral health conditions.

And yet, she said, too many SNFs lack strength in marketing and are under budget constraints that make it difficult to present themselves in the best light to consumers.

By stepping into the SNF space, Jacobs said, APFM hopes to provide the ability for facilities to market themselves.