A senior living operator in Pennsylvania is making moves to grow and evolve for the future, including by meeting more middle-market demand.

The operator, Providence Place, is in its 25th year of business. In that time it has grown to include seven communities. The company has in 2024 had positive operational momentum, and now it is plotting its next moves, according to David Leader, president and CEO.

“It’s really only in 2024 that we’ve gotten back to full staffing across our company and coincidentally also pretty full census everywhere,” Leader told Senior Housing News. “We’re really feeling like we’re getting back to pre-Covid.”

Providence Place has improved staffing by changing its hiring and training practices to provide a better understanding of what the job entails, such as to the intimate nature of caring for another person. The operator also has shifted hiring responsibilities from the nursing department to a dedicated full-time hiring manager.

Throughout the past few years, Leader said a valuable lesson learned has been to “never let a good person leave the building,” which has been valuable for hiring a younger demographic of workers.

“We found that if you didn’t make them at least a conditional offer after the interview process and the tour that somebody else would before the end of the day or by tomorrow,” Leader said.

As a result, turnover for the company has stabilized. The operator also has an occupancy average of 95% company-wide, with one community at 70% due to transitioning from assisted living to memory care.

According to Leader, Providence Place has a dedication to aging in place and does so largely through a one-building model, which offers the full continuum of care to residents under one roof. In order to support residents entering into memory care services, the company utilizes a program called the Connections Club, which helps ease residents in the early stages of dementia into making the transition.

“What we have found is that’s the time when they really can benefit from a support person,” Leader said. “So they have somebody [with them] seven days a week during the daytime to just assist them with navigating activities, navigating meals and interactions so they don’t feel confused.”

Looking ahead, Providence Place has plans to continue growing its presence in Pennsylvania, though Leader said if the opportunity arises there could be opportunities in Maryland and Delaware as well. The goal, he said, is to keep locations within two and a half hours of the company headquarters in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania and specifically target the middle market.

Over the past decade, the company’s growth rate has been a new community roughly every two to three years. In the coming years, Leader anticipates that rate to hold steady.

“One [goal] is to to go into a market with a lot of top of the market players that are providing high quality care at a high price, and come in at a much more moderate price with, we hope, a pretty similar level of care, but without maybe some of the [extra amenities],” Leader said.

To fit in with this goal, Leader noted Providence Place goes into wealthy suburbs and “offers something for people that aren’t wealthy,” which has proved to be an effective strategy so far.

Additionally, the company is looking to expand into “third-tier” markets where other larger providers may not be and become “the best game in town.” In most cases, the company is building communities from the ground up, which slowed in recent years due to rising construction costs and interest rates.

Moving forward, Leader said the company is keeping resident asks and wants in mind.

“One thing we’ve learned over the last 25 years … is everybody wants great service, and we all believe in that, but nobody really wants to live in a resort,” Leader said. “This is still a challenge for us to make sure that residents are part of how we go forward as a community and as a building.”