At the recent Fall NIC Conference, NORC at the University of Chicago presented the findings of a recent study of seniors housing residents. We are sure Medicare Advantage plans have combed through the data, as much of it was an eye-opener, even for us.
The study cohort included more than 250,000 seniors housing residents and more than 325,000 in nursing homes enrolled in fee-for-service. In seniors housing, the residents were pretty evenly split among majority IL (32.5%), majority AL (31.6%) and CCRC/LPC (30.0%).
The most shocking discovery was that CCRC/LPC residents have an average of 12.2 chronic medical conditions. In theory, these are among the healthiest of residents in senior living communities and have to be “independent” when moving in. What was interesting was that assisted living residents had an average of 14.4 chronic conditions, slightly higher than independent living residents at 13.2. One would think since assisted living has become increasingly need-driven, with an increasingly frail resident population that the average chronic conditions would be much higher than in CCRCs/LPCs and IL.
Moving on to behavioral health conditions, more than half of all seniors housing residents, across the continuum, have a mental or behavioral health diagnosis. This ranges from alcohol and tobacco disorder (tobacco is a stretch) to autism, schizophrenia and depression. The study did not indicate how many of these disorders seniors housing residents suffered from. This is just one reason why more senior care providers and investors have been looking into behavioral health businesses.
Finally, the study looked at how much residents of the various types of seniors housing communities spend annually on healthcare services. CCRC/LPC residents spend on average $19,948 annually (the low end), while assisted living residents spend an average of $31,010. Generally, a little less than 85% of the spend was from Medicare and the remainder out of pocket. The spend in nursing homes was almost double, which makes sense. It is the Medicare spend that has MA plans looking to see how they can utilize seniors housing to keep their
members healthier and lower the amount spent on health care.
As we have been saying for along time, seniors housing is a health care business with a large real estate component. This is not changing and will only become more true in time.
