Fairwinds – Ivey Ranch, a Leisure Care Assisted Living Community located in Oceanside California recently implemented the Caretime Analytics process.  This community has 163 units with 172 residents.  I spent some talking with Jessica Sommer, the general manager, about how the program works in real life.

Fairwinds – Ivey Ranch, a Leisure Care Assisted Living Community located in Oceanside California recently implemented the Caretime Analytics process.  This community has 163 units with 172 residents.  I spent some talking with Jessica Sommer, the general manager, about how the program works in real life.

Anticipation

She said that when this “yellow box” with all the equipment showed up, it was a bit intimidating.  She was worried that her staff would be overwhelmed with the technology and that the process of capturing the data would consume too much of the care givers time.  She was also concerned that how to explain to the residents the new barcode outside their room. In practice, care givers with minimal training, took to the devices and not a single resident asked about the bar codes by their doors.

The Results

The study identified about a dozen residents who were in aggregate receiving more than $10,000 a month in care they were not being charged for.  The amount per resident ranged from $300 – $1,300 per month.  What was happening was that resident’s needs were increasing over time, and the resident care staff was not accurately estimating the amount of care being provided.  This in turn, this  meant that the nurse was not notified that a new assessment was needed.

Turning the Results into Dollars

There are several scenarios for turning the uncompensated care data into increased revenue.  What Fairwinds choose to do was, to wait for the next change in condition in identified residents. When a change in condition occurred the community nurse did a through reassessment, then Jessica, the general manager,  armed with both the nurses report and the Caretime data, meet with the family to explain the need to increase the rates to reflect the levels of care actually being provided. She found that because she had hard data there was real no resistance on the part of families, to the rate increases.   At this point, she has implemented $5,000 – $6,000 per month of the possible increases.  She expects to resurvey her community every six months. There are a couple of ways to look at this management tool. 

The first is that except for the cost of doing the survey, this is essentially free money to the community since the cares are already being provided.  It also means that for many communities it represents the same amount of incremental revenue as renting one to three additional units without any marketing or sales costs. Ultimately capturing payment for these costs, allow communities to have the resources they need to create great programs for their seniors. How do you handle the variation in level of care in your communities? How do you manage the need to adjust your charges as needs increase? What would you do with an extra $60-$120k per year? If you like this story it would be a great honor to me if you would subscribe to our email list.

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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.