As many of you know, this time of year I often do my “Twas The Night Before Christmas” roast of senior participants in our industry, picking on either REITs, brokers, provider CEOs, or anyone else. Somehow, this year it just didn’t seem appropriate. They have been picked on enough, but not in jest like I try to do, even though some seem to take it a bit too personally. You shouldn’t.
It seems the media, in particular The New York Times and The Washington Post, have decided to pick on the assisted living industry, maybe figuring nursing homes have already been through the media meat grinder, which they have. Last weekend, The Post came out with two articles blasting the assisted living industry for allowing too many “elopements” which sometimes resulted in death.
Yes, the numbers seemed high, and there is no excuse for this to happen. The reporters blamed understaffing and lack of training, which I am sure is part of the reason. But they also blamed the equity owners, whether private equity or REITs, for putting pressure on their tenants to boost profit margins by cutting costs, or any other means. Yes, wages remain too low, and some of you may remember my white paper on labor where I called for a $20 per hour minimum wage in seniors housing, if you can even find the staff. But how many jobs are there where if you make a mistake, or fall asleep, you can get changed with murder? That is not going to attract many new workers, and you are going to get what you paid for.
Argentum came up with the statistic that just 0.0015% of assisted living residents in the past five years (the time period studied by The Post), died from elopement. But if you look at it from a per resident day perspective, there will be a lot more zeros in front of that 15. The point being that it is quite rare, even though the number should be zero in a perfect world. What The Post also didn’t talk about was what might have happened to these residents if they had never moved into assisted living, stayed home and fell down the stairs, or wandered outside. Or died of loneliness.
There are some leading industry professionals who will have you believe that “by using technology to reduce the time workers spend on administrative tasks” you will make the jobs more appealing.” I say poppycock. You still have bathing, toileting, dressing, feeding, changing soiled sheets and other tasks that require a human touch, not to mention just plain conversation. And when you are charging $6,000, $7,000 or $8,000 a month, you better have that human touch.
There were too many errors in the stories to mention in just “60 seconds,” but I may do so in the New Year. But the stories do highlight the reality that we in the industry do focus too much on profits and margins. Yes, I know that no margin, no mission. But I am a firm believer that if you deliver on the mission, the margin will come, because you will be the community of choice. You don’t have to just cut costs, which is the short-term, easy way out.
As we continue to come out of the pandemic, there are many things we have to start re-thinking about our industry in order to best serve the baby boomers for the next 30 years, and beyond. Maybe we should start 2024 doing exactly this.
Merry Christmas and let’s have a Happy New Year.
