Erin Shadbolt was named the new CEO of Ascension Living in early July, and already she has a vision for the coming years as an organization.

Shadbolt joined the organization in 2022 and has held a variety of roles in her time with the St. Louis, Missouri-based nonprofit, including chief nursing officer of post-acute and at-home services and interim COO.

She’s also picking up the reins during a time of change.  In July, Ascension Living’s parent organization, Ascension, sold four senior housing communities and nine hospitals in Illinois to Prime Healthcare.

With the sale, Ascension Living’s senior living footprint now includes 32 senior living communities. The downsize allows the nonprofit to better align its hospital and care footprint, Shadbolt told Senior Housing News.

Moving forward, Shadbolt said her immediate priorities are to bolster the organization’s workforce initiatives, particularly for attracting younger talent into senior living, and improve the organization’s operations in part through the use of new technology.

“As we come through stabilizing Ascension Living as an organization, we’re really thinking about what comes next for us in terms of people, technology and processes,” Shadbolt said. “There’s a lot of really hard operational stabilization that we’re doing, but then there’s really fun stuff that we’re thinking about too.”

Building a ‘culture of connection and transparency’

Shadbolt said focusing on the people who work at Ascension Living is top of mind for her as she seeks to start a new chapter with the organization. Transparency and communication are paramount to that effort.

To that end, Shadbolt has already hosted town hall meetings for frontline staff to ask questions of the executive team. In addition to the town halls, Shadbolt hosts weekly “office hours” with the organization’s chief nursing officer and COO. The processes encourage community leaders to put their heads together to solve issues, and helps employees see the bigger picture.

“I am pretty transparent with associates about what I’m thinking, what our challenges are, why we are or are not able to do certain things,” she said. “I think that’s been helpful.”

More flexible scheduling practices for workers wherein staff can also work in different areas of a community is another way Ascension has looked to improve staffing, and the results are already showing. Turnover for certified nursing assistants (CNAs) has dropped to 31% in July, down from 45% in June 2023. In the same timeframe, direct care contract labor reduced by 50% The organization also has been able to better prepare staff for its ongoing portfolio changes using these approaches, Shadbolt said.

Before joining the senior living industry, Shadbolt said she worked for a healthcare system that routinely used anonymous, real time questioning in meetings like town halls. As she gets deeper into the CEO role at Ascension Living, she is building on these practices to connect differently with associates.

“I watched that create a real culture of connection and transparency and commitment from the associates,” she said.

Tech overhaul underway

Alongside staffing changes, Shadbolt wants to help the organization ramp up its technology budget in an effort to modernize and optimize its practices and enhance services. The organization is enhancing electronic health records to move towards a “narrated documentation,”which operates similar to voice transcription but charts for the clinicians while they narrate their care verbally. The practice should in turn lead to increased associate satisfaction.

The organization also is stabilizing and improving the bandwidth of Wi-Fi, particularly in older buildings where tech infrastructure is more outdated. Shadbolt said she is thinking how to budget for new technology, though wants to focus on strengthening the existing infrastructure across the organization.

“Across healthcare, we have something and we don’t always do the work to make it really great before we just invest in the next thing,” Shadbolt said.

Other ways to aid staff members will come from additional technology investments, particularly in the realm of robotics and artificial intelligence.

“Where do we implement technology that makes that easier, that really reduces that friction? We know that AI and large language learning models are going to be an important part of that,” Shadbolt said. “We’re thinking a lot about where robotics are today, and where it is going to be in five years and in 10 years … I think there’s real potential for some care to come through that.”

Rethinking care for the future

Shadbolt’s dream for Ascension is to have full occupancy at its communities, and have an additional waiting list for new employees. To get there on the resident side, the company is looking to improve its higher-acuity services like memory care with an eye on future demand.

Operators have historically offered memory care services within standalone communities, but senior living residents outside of memory care often live with some levels of cognitive decline. Residents are also thought to be arriving in senior living communities needing a potentially higher level of care than before the pandemic.

“What we know from the industry data is that whether you’re an independent living, assisted living, memory care or our skilled nursing setting, you more than likely have some sort of cognitive deficit that is starting or is going to occur to you,” Shadbolt said.

That is why the organization is broadening its memory care services by better supporting residents’ cognitive journeys no matter where they live.

The company is adding new experiences, diets and health screenings geared toward allowing residents to age in place and not move to a higher care setting. Ascension implements an aging life care management program, which is tailored specifically to the individual resident and is done in conjunction with physicians and medical groups to support care continuity within the health system.

“We really are working hard so our seniors only leave their homes for vacation, not higher levels of care,” Shadbolt said.