Providers cannot be so tied to their initial technology investments that they miss the opportunity to innovate or improve workload for their staff, according to a recent discussion among operators and investors at the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care 2024 Fall Conference.
“As operators, we have a bigger voice than we realize in the vendor space,” said Morgan Graphman, director of business intelligence at Ascent Living Communities, which operates campuses in Colorado. “We have to use that voice, and we have to push vendors to integrate, to innovate and move forward.”
And if they won’t, Graphman said, don’t be afraid to find a new technology partner that will better meet your needs. In a two-year period, she said, she led the evaluation and conversion of 11 technology services to new platforms, and her organization is planning to reevaluate more in 2025.
“If you’re using a system that you’re not happy with, don’t stay with them,” she told an audience. “Either force them to innovate or find a new solution.”
“As the operators in the room, we can drive the business forward in ways we never would have thought of,” Graphman added. She said interoperability is one area where operators can force change. For providers who have two systems that don’t work together, she suggested setting a meeting with both brands to force them to integrate — or lose a customer.
But, others on the panel warned, evolving technologies take a mindful approach, given how each new process adds to the workload of staff prone to turnover.
“We do think we have an issue as an industry,” said session moderator Joe Daniels, vice president of business development for Direct Supply. “There’s this general fatigue around technology adoption.”
Advice on adding or switching tech
The speakers reviewed criteria for new technology uses and how to pilot it before a portfolio-wide adoption. They also offered tips on adding a platform or switching partners, aiming to build buy-in and make transitions smoother for users.
Chip Gabriel, partner at Senior Living TransFormation Company, shared insights about using data dashboards to engage more in value-based care partnerships, but he also warned about moving too fast.
“If you’re going to change a technology, do it, train it, live it, but don’t try to change four things at one time,” he said. “It’s overwhelming, and it’s tough to keep good labor anyway.”
His approach has been to know, before implementation, how the technology will be used and by whom, and how any data collected will be put to use by the organization. And, Gabriel said, providers must be mindful of technology overload and look for ways to minimize burden. For one, he recommended to stop the pain of repeated log-ins and create a single log-in for staff members who routinely work in multiple systems.
Panelists also discussed the importance of sharing insights with other operators, who also may spread understanding of available solutions.
Jennifer McGurty, head of senior housing asset management and director with AEW Capital Management, said her firm had begun surveying its operators about the technologies they use, what they are planning to add and what challenges they have experienced in adoptions.
“Operators, more and more, they want to know what we’re seeing elsewhere in our portfolio, what might be working and what isn’t,” she said. “We can offer that collaboration between our operators, which I think has translated into opportunities to have a system of technology.”
Avoiding gimmicks
For Graphman, a solo review meant looking at “every single part” of the company’s tech stack.
“A lot of operators I talk to, they say, ‘We already have a CRM [customer relationship management system], we already have an EHR [electronic health record system]. We’re good. We have the foundation,’” she said. “But what we did at Ascent … We tried to evaluate: Is it doing what we want? Are we innovating with this technology, and is it integrated so [we] can use it in and it’s not siloed into that system? When we looked at our tech stack, the answer was really no.”
They made the leap for long-term gains that will provide better control over data and outcomes.
NIC MAP Vision CEO Arick Morton spoke to the possibilities that artificial intelligence tech brings to providers. He said that AI soon should be able to help address life safety and falls, but its better immediate power will be in harnessing data that still remain too spread out to be valuable.
For example, he said, large-language models might be able to process survey outcomes and run them against an administrator’s tenure to help measure job candidates. Whether those kinds of uses surface will largely depend on vendors, he added.
And providers need to ask serious questions about AI to make sure what they’re being sold isn’t just a gimmick — or that your other technology can feed it what it needs to work.
“Everyone talks about AI, but if you don’t have a good tech stack to facilitate that AI, it’s just a buzzword,” Graphman said.
This article originally appeared on McKnight's Long-Term Care News
