Rising labor costs during the pandemic are hurting the bottom line, but there are solutions.
As you may have heard, we will be hosting a webcast next week on the labor problems affecting seniors housing and care, and we hope to provide you with some solutions.
The panelists include the founder of Matchwell, a relatively new company whose goal is to rid every community of agency labor and overtime. Wouldn’t that be nice. Plus, we have someone from Benchmark Living which has some of the most innovative practices out there to keep and recruit new employees. Finally, the manager of a 105-unit community will explain how for 25 years she has kept annual turnover at just 20%, something most of you only dream of.
I bring this up because ASHA and HealthTrust came out with a report on the financial impact of the pandemic on seniors housing. In another story we go into some of the other details, but based on the responses of over 30 providers with more than 180,000 units, labor cost increases as a percentage of revenues averaged 2.4% during the first four months of the pandemic. For the worst quartile, it was 8.3%. This is just the increase, and is just one of many reasons why we need to address the problem, and fix it.
We hope staffing in senior care will stabilize and that providers will be able to benefit from the current high unemployment rates. In the meantime, join me next week as we try to help you maintain and recruit the staff you need.
