The Perfect Time for Senior Care Strategy Is Now

The COVID-19 pandemic has been especially hard on the people we serve: seniors in congregate housing, a field already facing significant challenges with reimbursement, labor challenges, and regulatory oversight. The pressures of the pandemic exacerbated these existing pressure points, and many operators are struggling to find a sustainable path forward. Here’s the good news: Now is the perfect time to reset your organization’s senior care strategy. Let’s break down four reasons why:

• You must: The strong will survive the tailwinds of COVID-19, and you need to redesign your financial and operating plans, market positioning, and long-term future strategy to compete in very tight markets—for census, for staff, and for preferred partnerships.
• People are expecting change: Use this as a time to take a deep breath, decide your path forward, and implement with confidence. We all know the world will never be the same, and those of us in senior care are not excluded from that.
• As leaders, it’s our responsibility: When we look to our clients’ core values, we often see principles such as respect, integrity, honesty, accountability, and trust. These all point us toward a responsibility to provide sustainable, high-quality care. To do this in our current environment requires careful planning, strategy development, and execution of initiatives.
• Our minds are open: The “normal” and “how we’ve always done it” were both rocked when COVID-19 hit our communities. The days of mask-free resident parties and visitation without screening quickly faded. We had to rapidly pivot the way we provided care, interacted with key stakeholders, and maintained safe operations. We have now proven to ourselves that we can change, and we can change quickly. As we continue to face COVID-19 challenges, our minds are open to new ideas. We are not stuck in a new normal—there isn’t one.

As you reset your organization’s strategy, Health Dimensions Group (HDG) recommends looking at the following three key areas:

• Mission: Define and double down on your mission. Understand the goals of your organization, whether financial targets, vision and values, or the type and number of people you want to serve. The work beyond this will correlate back to what you want to do. Until your mission is clear, the path will be foggy.
• Market: Clearly identify your market and how you serve them. To do this, you must combine current and projected demographic data with objective and subjective feedback from the market on needs, and then possess an ability to synthesize this into a market understanding. Likely this will change paths laid just two years ago and push your organization beyond traditional service lines and payment models.
• Money: Understand the options available to you in your current financial position. When you take into consideration your cash position, debt structure, and projected ongoing financial performance, you will better understand what strategies are feasible for your organization. This can help guide plans on repositioning, rebuilding, or new development to support identified market needs.

HDG has developed strategies for many organizations across the country—from rural, stand-alone skilled nursing facilities, to big continuing care retirement communities, to some of the largest providers in the nation. We would be honored to support you as you redefine your senior care strategy through high-quality market insight and analytics, strategy development facilitation, and financial modeling. Please contact us at info@hdgi1.com or 763.537.5700 to learn more.

Authored by: Erin Shvetzoff Hennessey
CEO