When I sat down to write this article ended up writing two opening paragraphs. I honestly couldn’t figure out which one to use, so you get both.

Paragraph One

In the olden days . . . . there were hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, board and care homes, assisted living facilities and independent living, senior housing apartments. While competitive, the process of finding your place as a provider of senior housing, in the senior housing ecosystem was pretty easy. Where to look for new residents was pretty well defined. Today, our healthcare delivery system is rapidly changing those changes will impact all levels of senior housing. While the major driver for this change is cost, there is also a parallel desire to use a more holistic approach to caring for seniors. This changing environment is already creating new marketing challenges and new marketing opportunities.

Paragraph Two

A few months ago I was at a senior housing trade show breakout session that focused on the new healthcare paradigm and how assisted living fits into that paradigm. During the course of the discussion, someone in the audience raised their hand to ask how PACE programs fit into the mix. Not a single one of the “Experts” on the panel had any idea what the PACE program was, how it worked, or what impact the PACE program has on assisted living. At least one of those experts should have at the very least know what the PACE program is.

New Healthcare Paradigm Series

Even if you are running at 100% occupancy with a waiting list, you need to be paying attention to the changes taking place in the healthcare delivery system. If your building is full, these changes will have at least some impact on your community. If your community is not full, these changes will either make your occupancy headache worse or solve it.

This is a good news / bad news deal. . .If you operate a skilled nursing community, for perhaps the first time ever, you have the ability to make your services indispensable to your local hospital, by actively helping them to reduce 30 day readmissions. If you operate an assisted living community you have, for the first time, the opportunity to tap into both federal and state dollars. The bad news is that taking advantage of this shifting paradigm will take a lot of work. Not only that, it will feel confusing and messy. There will be lots of chasing rabbits down holes, only to find the rabbit has already moved on. This is mostly because the marketplace is extremely fluid and everyone is still trying to figure it out. There are fewer dollars to care for more seniors, who are living longer and expecting high levels of care. The regulations are getting more complex. No one really knows how it is all going to shake out. The opportunities and challenges will vary greatly from state to state and even from marketplace to marketplace. This series will provide you enough information to give you a starting point to figure out if you want to play. This series will likely run to 10 or so articles and there will be other articles interspersed with the series. The articles will all live under the tag “The New Healthcare Paradigm” to make them easy to find. I welcome any feedback you have along the way or suggestions on topics you would like to see addressed.

The next post will paint a theoretical picture of how an Assisted Living Community might take advantage of these changes. Steve Moran

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Finally: If you know anyone who is looking at emergency call systems I would appreciate the opportunity to talk with them about Vigil Health Solutions.