Smarter Senior Living: How Data & Analytics Are Transforming Care

In this episode of Into the Pines, Joe talks with Luke Stillson of SeniorLytics about how data is transforming senior living. They break down the key metrics that matter, common gaps in how communities use data, and real examples of better decisions in staffing, pricing, and care.

The conversation also explores how data helps operators move from reactive to proactive, improves the resident experience behind the scenes, and where senior living analytics is headed next with AI—plus one key metric to start tracking and a question every family should ask.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Welcome back to Into the Pines, episode six. I am here with Luke Stilson. As you guys remember, last episode we talked about emergency preparedness. And in this week's episode, we're going to be talking about the importance behind senior analytics. And with me is Luke, and he's actually from Senioralytics, which is an organization headquartered in Oregon. And we've been working with them now for about three, three years. And so excited to share a little bit about my experience with the group as well as you know Luke's background and learning more about their company. So thank you for joining us, Luke. Absolutely. Thank you for the invite. So I think you know, one of the things that I wanted to talk about today is, you know, why the data points really matter. For us, you know, I came from large REITs that we worked with, private equity. A lot of times we had in-house analytics, and we thought that was good and customizable. But what you guys have really shown us and developed is client-specific, and that's been invaluable to us, especially how we're in nine states now and all these different markets, and really looking at things that we need to know from competition to our care dollars to just our inquiries and everything under the sun in between, too. So I wanted to talk a little bit about for someone that's hearing about senioralytics or analytics in general, you know, why is it important?

SPEAKER_01 1:36

It's a good question. Um, just to give a quick background about senioralytics, um, we are 100% focused in the senior lytics space, as you know. Um, and what we've found as we've worked with owners and operators is in most cases, operators are picking the systems that work the best for them. So, you know, for us, one of our primary goals is simply to allow you to remain on whatever systems are working for you, bring all that data together, and then give you that single source of truth. Um, because we know right now it can be difficult to find out, okay, maybe I'm looking at my occupancy in one system, looking at my financials in another system, looking at my labor in another system. And it's hard to figure out what the trend is when I'm trying to understand, okay, I've got overtime that's spiking at one of my communities. Did something change? Is occupancy up? And I haven't accounted for that yet when I'm looking at my staffing. Um, so for us, our goal really is to be here as a partner and make sure that um we're enabling you to really um easily access your data. And then as to why it's important today, um there's an increased demand, which everybody in this industry is seeing, right? And so um as that continues, we know that for operators you have to be more and more efficient. Um we've got you know the struggles of of finding and keeping uh labor at you know at a reasonable cost. You've got the baby boomers aging right now and that huge demand. And so um for us, we're just seeing this increased need to make sure that you're able to be really efficient and provide your staff with tools that are effective.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

I could be. I think that's the key word, right? Is the effectiveness of it. We I think one of the things that's really stood out to me about senior lytics is the effectiveness. Whether you're on YARTI, RealPage, QuickBooks, whatever accounting system, you guys are able to pull from that and the accuracy and the promptness of it, right? And then you tie in the CRMs, if it's Welcome Home or Sherpa or whoever, you know, those things on a day-to-day to go to one resource and create the dashboard like you did for us is invaluable. It's something that we can pull up instantly, we can talk to our teams about, we can see the trends uh real time. And I just think that that's been the big advancement. And sure, you can have proprietary things where you do that, but not to the level and and really anything that we want to create to the minds that you've really helped us do. And I do agree, like the data has become more important for us on every level, you know. A good example is just looking at care and care revenue opportunities and seeing those trends. And you guys have really helped us with our you know, per resent day cost um from care, culinary uh inquiry cost, you name it. And I think that information will only strengthen over time. The other thing that I've been super impressed with is the seasonality. Now we have three years of information, how accurate it is. You know, you would always think, okay, well, we know after Christmas, for example, or uh New Year's holidays that we would see a decline. Not necessarily, we see a huge upside in five of our states of the nine. And so I think that that's a thing too is really thinking through the market and how we work with analytics to better serve um the growth and the revenue. So that's that's been really fun. I think that you know, one question I had, Luke, is people think of analytics almost as uh hard to comprehend or hard to understand. Maybe you can share about how you guys have really simplified that.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

It's a good point. Um, what I would say is when we think about analytics, we are thinking about a partnership with our clients. Um and so what that means is we could come in the door and say, hey, here are 100 KPIs, yeah, give this to everybody at your company, and you will win. But the reality is that's not gonna be useful. Um and so what we really focus on is working with clients like you to understand what are the current pain points right now, what are the areas that you're looking to tackle within the next six, nine, twelve months, and how can we tweak or build new analytics for you that are gonna help visualize that, not just for you, sure, but also for the folks on the ground. Yes. Because we know when we look at analytics, we kind of think about it as a tree, meaning at the top, we're gonna be pretty high level, and then we want to get more and more detailed as we go down. Yeah. So what you're seeing when you're talking about, you know, hey, I can see what my RevPore trend is, we want to make sure your EDs can see that. And then below the EDs, we want to know that each department can actually break out and say, okay, here's how my costs are looking. Because that all rolls up. Um and so, yeah, for us, it's really trying to make sure that it's useful. And that's how we run our business. Those are the questions we're consistently asking. Um, so that means, which you know you all have seen, that we do meetings with the executive team, we'll do trainings with the executive directors, we'll go um really to to any group that's going to be using the software and spend time with them to hopefully understand is this useful, is this effective? And if it's not, we'll rebuild it, we'll change the way that we're displaying that data.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

Um, which is a great example. So our executive directors tend to be what we call um high empathy, right? And maybe not so analytical. They're amazing with the residents, the families, but when it comes to analytics, you know, maybe not the strongest suit for some executive directors, right? You guys have done an awesome job of really listening to that and saying, okay, here's an easy way to see your KPIs at the click of the button and showing them, like, hey, you need to focus this week on culinary spend or overtime or labor management and really diving into the weeds for them so they can continue to be awesome with families, with residents, with sales. And I think that's been a huge win, too, is when I think about analytics, it's not necessarily just about trends and analysis, it's also about the end user, like you said, and how you can really work with them and create that for people. I think the growth and expansion is also a big piece of this. It's enabled us to grow quickly and still have the same KPIs, consistency, and bring in a level of effectiveness that's far superior to a lot of our competitors.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

I would agree. And it, you know, as you all have grown, it's been very fun for us to be there with you. Yeah, right? Because you, you know, you're having success, and that's really fun for us to see. Yeah. And it also means that we get to figure out new problems with you and figure out how to solve those. Um, and also, you know, if you make the decision to change systems or bring on new technology, that's another exciting opportunity where we can work with you and say, okay, you know, you're we're bringing in more data. What do you need to know? What are the challenges you have today? And can we help answer those questions? And once we answer them for the executive team, can we bring that to your point to the EDs so that they have that at their fingertips?

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Yeah, you know, it's a good example. So for us, you know, labor management was something that we looked at globally. I think everybody in the industry has that challenge at times. And by using the technology with you guys, we saw, hey, there's a huge opportunity to bring in Sage. And so we brought in Sage and upgraded our call systems to a much more efficient uh technology. And that was a good example of pairing that up together. It's been a huge win for all of us. So we've seen overtime come down, we've seen more effective care, and we've just seen better labor management practices as a result of that partnership with your group. So I think the other thing that I wanted to talk about too is that we're becoming far less reactive and proactive as a result. Absolutely. And I'm sure you see that nationally. I mean, you guys are with so many providers now, but maybe you can share a little bit about how you guys have approached that. It's a good point.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

Um, and I think when we are helping clients get to the proactive versus reactive, that's again when we get really excited. You can see, I'm passionate about this. This is this is fun for me. Um and so, you know, what we're able to do to your point is we're bringing in data every night. We are bringing all that together. So you have a dashboard every morning. Um, and in terms of being able to be proactive, what that is actually doing for many operators is it's replacing a meeting that was done in Excel once every couple of weeks that required a lot of data pulling from all these different places. Once every couple of weeks might be lucky. Maybe it's once a month. Um, and so by putting that all in one place, it just means that when you start seeing that overtime is ticking up, you can make a change today based off of yesterday's data. That's right. You know, you're not having to wait until the the quarter closes. You guys were never waiting until the quarter closes, but you know what I mean. Um, to go and look at RevPor and say, hey, hold on a second, we have something going on in one of these communities we need to be looking into. Instead, you're looking at those trends day over day. Um and we're seeing operators being able to make much more informed decisions much more quickly. Yes. Um, which is, yeah, to me, that's that's that's the goal, right? Is to put that in your hands so you can do that.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

And I think you know it's important to note that the analytics now are not just the four big buckets of culinary labor management, um, care, and then just overall op-acs, right? You guys are able to go so much deeper. And so maybe you can share. I think when people think of KPIs, they think of like just four. Sure. But you guys can do almost everything, correct?

SPEAKER_01 11:12

We can. Um, and the way that we usually think about it is yes, you have your big financial ones that everybody's gonna be looking at. Um, but as we dive deeper with our clients, as they're you know, kind of learning with us, um, we can start really pushing into let's dive into care deeply. Let's look at both your you know, your care report and let's look at your care costs. Let's figure out what your care margins are across all of your communities so you have a general baseline that you can then use to compare communities against and say, hey, hold on a second. Our our care margin here in this one community is really off from the rest. Let's see if we can understand. Um, so we can go very deep there. We can also, on the CRM side, say, all right, let's look at your funnel of who's coming in the door. And let's not just look at you know, the lead to move in, the lead to tour. Let's look at all of your lead sources. Are you getting what you're paying for for these paid leads that may be coming in the door? Are they actually converting in the way that you would want? And are they staying? Because that's one of the things that we are seeing is you know, a consistent area that folks are looking at is when we're bringing people in the door, we're bringing residents in, to your point, the whole goal here is to find residents that are going to enjoy the experience and that are gonna have a really good experience at your communities. And when you have folks that turn around within 90 days and are back out the door, yeah, that usually means that something in that in that lead analysis didn't, you know, didn't match up and give you a a resident or give a resident the the experience they wanted. Um, so we definitely go very deep in there.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Um and that's a great, great example. So, you know, what that helped us do as an organization is get rid of third-party referrals, right? And so we were paying, I don't know, millions of dollars a year for groups like a place for mom and other third-party referral sources, carrying.com. When we eliminated that, thanks to your reporting, we could really see the depth of our stronger inquiries that were more organic and where we could go fish in the pond, as they say, to find those folks. The result was we grew occupancy stronger because we weren't just getting people out of rehabs and discharge planners, but we went so much deeper and found them in all those other great areas in the market. So I think that's been invaluable in itself and that one component. Uh so huge advocate of that. But yeah, I think that's a great example because we can just continue to go deeper with that. And that's really the difference between that reactive and proactive that we saw with that. And quite honestly, you know, the impact for our residents on that is we're bringing in stronger people, people are enjoying our services and the lifestyle longer. So, all that's really aided to, in my opinion, to a better lifestyle with our partnership. So, thank you for that. I really appreciate that. Hey, we're we're excited when you're excited. Yeah, and I think, you know, as I look ahead and I think about you know, the silver tsunami that everybody talks about and everything that's kind of coming, what do you think analytics plays a role in all of that?

SPEAKER_01 14:12

That's a good question. I mean, like we talked about earlier, the demand is really coming. Um, and so making sure that as that demand peaks, you're still able to bring residents in that are really gonna have a good experience. That's clearly gonna be important. Um, and I think as we're looking forward, you know, what we're seeing is having a cohesive data and analytics strategy for operators is gonna be become a differentiator. And those you know who do have that, I think are gonna be standing out from those who don't.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

Um and the other piece, you know, when we talk about a data and analytics strategy or an AI strategy, we'll talk about AI in a minute. There's lots to talk about there, um, is you know making sure that analytics are not just numbers on a page for a team to review once a week or whenever you sit down. It's really, like we said, trying to make that useful and make sure that you know, as as you're you're building that analytics program, it's going all the way down. It's coming from the top, and you're saying, hey, this is what we're this is what we're really going to be doing. And these are the metrics that we are all looking at together, yeah. So that, you know, that's so that everybody's reading from the same same sheet of music.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

So you mentioned AI, which is the big buzzword, especially in your industry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So walk us through how does AI play a role. I mean, people always tell me, Joe, just go Google it on AI. And you know, maybe you can talk a little bit about how AI isn't everything the be all shore, right? So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

Yeah, no, what I like, what I'm proud of, to be honest, at Senior Analytics is that we are a very pragmatic company when it comes to AI. Um, I've worked in a number of different industries, as you know, as have um the rest of the leadership team, and we've all seen these hype cycles where something comes up and everybody says, if you do this, it's gonna be the most amazing experience ever. And we've been watching the real capabilities in AI and basically saying we are gonna bring AI to our clients when it is going to be useful. We're not gonna bring it beforehand because our job is to is to provide value for you. And so in the last you know, six months, there has been this seismic change in what's available. And so for us, that has been really the indicator of okay, now's the right time to really move forward in AI. Not saying we weren't you know moving forward and tracking before, but we're really pushing forward now. And so we are currently rolling out both a file analyst, which if you have, like many companies do, uh documents and okay, you're in how many states now? Nine. Okay. So you probably have employment policies for nine different states, and as you grow, you're gonna have more and more and more. Um, and we you know offer our clients the ability to put all those in one place and easily ask questions. Hey, you know, we we had a resident fall at this community, you know, what's the policy? What do we need to do there? Um and it's within minutes, right? It's with oh, this is yeah, this is instantaneous. This is chat with your you know, chat with your docs.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Anybody that's ever had a state surveyor in the building knows those five minutes mean a lot. So to be able to get it like that is just incredible.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

Yeah, and so so that's kind of the one side, and the other one which we're working on and rolling out right now, and I'd say that one we're iterating on every week is the data analyst. And that is chatting with your own data. Okay. Um, and that's the one that I would say is really, really exciting right now because it's providing real value.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

So let's walk us through an example of that. So people that are maybe are not so familiar with that, how that works and what that looks like. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

What that really means is you can ask in natural language a question like, which of my communities had the best performance last quarter?

SPEAKER_00 17:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

And what the data analyst is going to do is it's gonna interpret that question, what does performance look like? And we fed it a lot of um prompts to make sure that it understands what people are actually asking. It will probably come back with a result looking at NOI and say, here were your top three communities based on NOI. And you can continue diving in and asking, okay, tell me why the NOI was so high at these communities. Is there anything that stands out? And it does an incredible job of giving you back whatever you're asking for. So if you're someone like me who says narrative is great, but like show me a table, it'll show you a table. It'll have all your communities and all your NOIs ranked, and you can say, you know, show me the top percent. And then from there, you can dive in.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

Got it.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

And you can really start what I would say, like what I would call pulling the thread and saying, okay, NOI was low. That's probably a better example of when you'd really be doing this. Can you help me understand why? Sure. And it'll point to maybe occupancy is below where you expected. Maybe you have something going on with your cost, but what it's doing is it's looking at your full, you know, your full data set of all the KPIs that we have, and it does a really good job of understanding how they interact. So it will probably pull out, hey, your overtime is up a little bit more than you'd expect over the last quarter. And then what's really, really neat to me is you can say, cool, graph that for me. Show me what that looks like in a visual, um, and it'll put it on a page for you. And as we continue developing, where we're going with that is to be able to provide our clients with an experience where they can pull that thread as far as they want, come up with a visual that they like, and tag it to a home page for them that refreshes every morning. So you can come in and say, you know, maybe maybe you want to look at um, you know, a matrix of, like I said, performance by community, and you want to highlight anybody that is trending down more than 5%. Okay. You could put that in a graph that you should you see every day. And you could also ask for a narrative of explain to me, you know, how my business is doing. Um and which is invaluable, right? To be able to just do that so quickly. And it's it is at the point now where it's it's legitimately incredible. Um and so for us, like I said, it's useful. So we're getting it out to clients um and letting them you know really start to dive in. And as we learn more, you know, we're continuing to tweak it. But um I'm very excited about where it's going. Very, very excited.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

The passion shines through.

unknown 20:20

I hope so.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

Um and so yeah, we're we're we are um we're all on that out now. That's great. So, Luke, one question I have is often people come up to me and they're like, well, why would you use an analytics firm? You know, AI can just do everything, right? And first thing I say to them is, do you honestly think that our workforce, especially in senior living, we've always been kind of IT challenged, let's face it, me included. But I think that, you know, AI isn't just something you go use in senior living. So I think one, that's like a point worth mentioning. But two, you know, can an ED pull the same information? Not really.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

It's a good point. Um, there is there's definitely a lot of really good information out there about AI. And and you know, for us, when we're thinking about the AI experience for our clients, there are a couple things that come to mind. One, data security, right? You know, great point. Yeah, data security is huge. Right. There are models out there that you can feed data into willy-nilly if you like. I would not recommend doing that personally.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Um, and so as we're thinking about the AI experience, we're making sure that your data is secure. Um, we are also doing a large amount of data curation, right? A lot of what we do with clients as we kick off and through the entire relationship is making sure that our KPIs are really matching your expectations and are tweaked for you all. Um so the data that the our you know AI models are hitting is your exact data. It's what's being curated for you, which I think is really critical.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Um so, yes, you could go out and just use um and feed your data into AI, but I do think there's a value in having a partnership. Um, and as we continue developing you know our models, there is there's a lot of training that goes on to make sure that when someone asks a question like, How are my communities doing, it has some context to answer that. And so there's a lot that goes on in the background to really make sure that um the AI you know agents that we're working on are really going to respond with effective answers for Senior Lytics.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

Makes sense. Thank you for that. So, in closing, if there's anything that you wanted our listeners to hear about Senior Lytics and kind of the next phase of what you're all developing and doing that you're comfortable sharing, please, by all means, I'd like to just share that with our listeners.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

Okay. Well, that's a good question. Um what I would say about our company and who we are is I think I mentioned this earlier, but we're 100% focused in the senior living industry.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

Um Which is very key. It is. I want to be clear. We've worked with other analytic firms over the years, but the fact that you guys are just doing senior living speaks volumes because you're not only seeing what our organization is doing, you're seeing so many other providers, and you never break confidentiality, but you see trends and you learn knowledge. And that's invaluable to all of us. So that's a really important point.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

No, I appreciate that. Um but yeah, as we are thinking about growing our business and and working with owners and operators, you know, as as this demand continues to increase, we are really a partnership model. So what that means is we're not drop-off software. You know, we know each other because we're on meetings together, which is the goal. Um, and so yeah, if you were to think of Senioralytics and where we're going, we're really an analytics partner. We do analytics, we do AI, we do automation. I've talked about the analytics and AI side. Um yeah, and we're just we're excited to be here and to continue working with you know the best in the biz as you all continue to grow your portfolios. Thank you. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

One last thing I'll touch upon is you know, every provider knows now that families are far more educated because of AI. Uh, they Google, you know, the questions to ask. And families really are coming with their own data points now, right? So analytics to be able to even train sales team on and and care models and average care revenue and just general terms in the sales process are becoming far more sophisticated than we used to. And if RJ was here, he would have just volumes to speak on that. But I think that, you know, one thing we know is that again, for a salesperson to be able to pull that up at their fingertips, it's been invaluable too. So as we look ahead, it's not only our operators, but our nurses, our salespeople, and helping them be educated to speak on things that our consumers and end users are really looking for too, especially in our independent living product. So yeah, sure. But I really appreciate your time today, Luke. It's been a pleasure to see you in person. Yeah and of course, work with your firm. We've had such a great experience and truly, truly value the partnership. So thank you today. Same. Thank you so much. As we get ready for the next episode, uh, I'll give you a little bit of a teaser. We have a partnership coming with um LHC Therapy, but also with UHC, United Healthcare. And our next episode will be really intriguing around Medicare, uh, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and just how that's really shaped the senior living industry today. And also some really good pointers for our senior listeners out there as well. So look forward to sharing more about that with our surprise guest on the next episode. Thank you for joining to the Pines.