By Susan Saldibar

 

When you get to the admissions phase of a move-in, you begin a data gathering process unlike anything else. This is where you get all the details about a new resident including his or her financial situation, responsible parties, and so on. What could be a goldmine of information sits forever frozen in a pdf. So close and yet so far away in terms of ever doing anything meaningful with it. Or is it?

Darren Mathis, CEO of LincWare (a Senior Living Foresight partner) is out to educate operators about an opportunity that is being left on the table due to incorrect assumptions about admissions paperwork. “It’s important for people to know that, just because you’re using an interactive e-document signing program doesn’t mean your data is accessible. It’s not,” Darren says. “For example, if you use a pdf, the data remains trapped, no more useful than a piece of paper. eSigning solutions perpetuate this problem. They don’t save the data to be used in other departments.” 

Darren has unshackled that valuable data with his Admit+ platform that a) freezes admissions docs for security purposes, and b) stores each data entity in a way that enables access, analysis, and reporting in ways you may never have thought possible in the past. 

I asked Darren what senior living communities he works with are doing with fluid access to this data. Here are three key ways this previously locked up data is now able to be used:

  • Reporting on data points in the documents. One example might be how many people accepted or declined the arbitration agreement (this allows for quick access to the information without needing to open up and reviewing each residency agreement). Another example is to compare standard prices to discounts being offered to new residents — and have the ability to analyze them by community, sales rep, care level, season, etc. 
  • Workflow notifications with relevant information for multiple departments, or that automatically alert key people when a critical form is completed. This can help ensure that nobody is hanging up the process. It can also allow key information to be shared without re-inputting the same data over and over again. 
  • Time reporting — how long does it take to complete each step in the process? This could help management identify steps that may take longer to execute and/or documents that may be confusing and result in delays. 

It’s amazing to think how unlocking this data can add so much value. I asked Darren why more operators aren’t looking to automating the admissions process and enable collected data to be used by other departments throughout the community network. “There is a general lack of awareness for one thing,” he says. “People assume that using an e-signing solution is the furthest they can go from an automation standpoint. It’s just the tip of the iceberg in reality,” he adds. 

The bottom line is the ability to now have total visibility over the processes and data elements that comprise bringing a new resident on board without combing through each document separately and manually inputting data. “When I show people what they can access and how quickly they can use the information to correct weaknesses and create better admissions models, they are amazed,” Darren tells me. “All this time they were locking this goldmine of information away in file cabinets.” 

For more information about Admit+ you can visit their website