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Discovery Senior Living is officially the nation’s largest senior living operator. It’s set to grow even larger in the coming years.
The company just announced the planned acquisition of Sunshine Retirement Living, which will help set the stage for future growth in the Pacific Northwest. For Sunshine, joining the Discovery ecosystem gives access to technology and corporate support without losing sight of the company’s strong operating culture built over the last 15 years, Sunshine President Luis Serrano said.
Discovery Senior Living blazed a unique trail in the industry by growing using a strategy that helped companies like hotel management firm Aimbridge Hospitality expand. The company’s portfolio is organized into multiple smaller operating companies with brands and operations geared toward their respective markets.
The Sunshine acquisition makes Discovery CEO Richard Hutchinson’s priorities from earlier this year a reality by building density in new markets and expanding Discovery’s business intelligence platform.
“We’re actually seeing the thesis play out now,” Hutchinson said during an interview with Senior Housing News at the Fall NIC conference in Chicago. “As we grow in the segmentation model and the separated [management company] model infused with all this data and analytics, we’re accelerating performance.”
Leaders with the Bonita Springs, Florida-based senior living provider also are honing the company’s approach to middle-market communities and communities in secondary markets after launching a four-tier operating structure earlier this year.
These efforts serve as the next stage of an evolving operating model that Hutchinson and the Discovery executive leadership team built over the last decade. Now, they see a critical challenge in translating national resources into stronger operating performance without losing an edge in local market appeal that makes communities part of its 10 regional management companies successful.
Discovery now has 420 communities under management spanning 47,000 units in 40 states.
The distinction “puts more responsibility” on Discovery to “help lead and provide considerations for others” while also “taking some chances that we can afford to take” given the company’s scale, Hutchinson said.
“The designation is less important and a waypoint on a journey that’s going to continue,” Hutchinson said.
Sunshine acquisition sets stage for growth
The acquisition of Integral Senior Living in 2023 and the consecutive launches of regional operating companies such as Arvum Senior Living, LakeHouse Senior Living and Provincial Senior Living continue to expand the company’s horizontal growth strategy.
To succeed in the Pacific Northwest, a region densely populated with older adults and an area that dates its senior living roots back to the industry’s early days, Hutchinson said Discovery needed “scale and mass,” rather than pursuing one-off transactions to establish a patchwork foothold in the region.
The Sunshine acquisition sets the stage for future growth in the region with an operating partner that older adults trust, Hutchinson and Serrano said. This approach mirrors Discovery’s rationale behind the ISL acquisition in 2023, in that the company is acquiring an intact platform managed by a specialized operator able to navigate stringent state and federal regulations.
Preserving Sunshine’s culture, identity and community relationships was critical to making the acquisition possible, Sunshine President Luis Serrano told SHN.
Having experienced leaders within regional management companies matters for Hutchinson, and Serrano fits that mold, he noted. Luis Serrano and his late wife, May Sunshine Hasso Serrano, founded the operator in 2009 to manage a portfolio of communities following the Holiday Retirement sale to Fortress Investment Group in 2007. Serrano brings experience from management consulting work with McKinsey & Company and JPMorgan Chase, and he was the senior vice president of business and corporate development for telecommunications company Boingo Wireless during its effort to go public on the NASDAQ in 2011.
The Sunshine-Discovery transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year, and the company’s project management department and its dozen-member business assimilation team will work with Sunshine communities to handle their transition. This includes moving contracts, coordinating systems and managing an overlap period where leadership and community teams gain access to Discovery’s corporate support and business intelligence resources.
This strike team to help Sunshine communities join Discovery is emblematic of the company’s past growth, keeping operational decisions closer to the community level and shifting the administrative burden to executive leaders tasked with “removing the friction” transitions can sometimes bring, Hutchinson noted.
In 2027, Hutchinson sees an important test ahead for the industry in balancing the pursuit of stronger operating performance with the growing complexity of risk, regulation and public scrutiny on the sector. Workforce issues remain a persistent challenge, but beyond staffing, Hutchinson believes operators must pay more attention to protecting the performance they are working to improve.
Hutchinson, who also serves as chair of the American Seniors Housing Association, sees an opening for the industry to build stronger connections between state and federal advocacy as public scrutiny of senior living grows. He said that during ASHA’s strategic planning process in 2026, member companies identified coordination and education as important priorities to inform lawmakers and the public on senior living. Moving the industry forward will also require changes in how policymakers and consumers understand senior living, Hutchinson said.
“This is going to be a decades-long conversation,” Hutchinson said. “But we need to start recognizing the differences, and then proactively create that connectivity.”
Data overhaul shifts from setting the foundation to execution
Discovery’s leaders are overhauling the company’s data and business intelligence systems to improve performance while creating a technology ecosystem that can share data across communities. The goal is to give regional leaders actionable data on a real-time rather than on a trailing basis.
This spring, the company’s technology ecosystem included 22 platforms, and the company is whittling down that number by creating a data lake via technology company Snowflake that brings information from all systems into a shared environment which can give more insight into financial performance, clinical outcomes and resident engagement that can then be used by communities to fit their needs.
Earlier this year, Discovery appointed Tom Costello as chief performance officer, tying the technology effort to its operating priorities of strong performance and resident satisfaction, Hutchinson said.
Instead of requiring new operating companies or acquired communities to adopt the same software, Discovery can pull data into its data lake from existing operating systems without the need for an operator to overhaul its range of technology partners. Using a three-tier data “cleansing process,” Discovery’s growing IT team takes community-level data and transforms it into common business terms that can be understood across communities and property types in digestible reports.
Discovery is also exploring AI applications in marketing, customer service and pattern recognition in analytics. The ability to retrofit a data infrastructure into an operator’s existing technology ecosystem prepares the company for future growth.
“Our thesis is that as more sophisticated capital comes into this space, you’re going to get a lot more stress on being able to provide that data-backed decision-making model,” Hutchinson said.
Segmentation, operations set up next phase of growth
In 2027, Discovery is focused on matching community services, staffing and spending to specific cohorts of older adults as they seek out senior living.
As seen in the company’s market-by-market approach for setting resident rental rates and lean operating models prioritizing back-end support for its regional management companies, Discovery reorganized its brands into select, classic, premium and distinguished tiers in July.
These segments take into consideration differences in revenue potential, resident rates, staffing, care complexity, services and physical amenities.
“You get better when you have a more bespoke and customized playbook based on the needs and desires of your customer,” Hutchinson said.
He sees opportunity in changing how Discovery organizes operations across smaller communities, and a small-community operating playbook is under development that focuses on activities and operations, instead of treating each community as a separate operating unit. The premise behind this is to create a different economic profile for middle-market communities, where the ability to generate a return is still needed to attract capital investment, Hutchinson said.
“We’re going to continue to build on this, and we’re going to continue to take care of as many seniors as humanly possible,” Hutchinson said.
Fueling all of this is an emphasis on leadership development and staffing. In 2023, Discovery announced plans for a learning and training center, and now the company is working to further career development opportunities for motivated leaders across the company. Discovery is taking lessons from hospitality and other industries as it looks for ways to improve retention and create practical advancement opportunities across its web of regional management companies.
Discovery has almost 28,000 employees, Hutchinson said. Through September, thousands had volunteered to participate in self-advancement coursework during their own time.
“Inside of your workforce are your next leaders,” Hutchinson said. “I am convinced of that.”
Companies featured in this article:
Discovery Senior Living, Integral Senior Living, Sunshine Retirement Living
