- There's no real value-based care without completely understanding the person and completely understanding the experience of the person. - Welcome to season seven of "Bridged the Gap," a podcast dedicated to informing, educating, and influencing the future of housing and services for seniors. Powered by sponsors, AccuShild, Align, NICMAP Vision, ProCare HR, Sage, Hamilton Captel, ServiceMaster, the Bridge Group Construction and Salinity, and produced by Salinity Marketing. - Welcome to "Bridged the Gap" podcast, this senior living podcast with Josh and Lucas, a great day in our nation's capital, DC, here at the fall NIC conference. I wanna welcome Charles and Rob to the program. Welcome to the show. - Thank you, Lucas. - Thanks for having us, Lucas. - Yes, welcome back, Charles and a newcomer, Rob, to the show, and this is an interesting merger. It's not a new merger, necessarily, but some really cool information coming out between linked, senior, and life loop. And today we're gonna be talking about some updates there on the merger, and then also we're gonna go to resident engagement, and also some value-based care. So now that the merger has taken place, what's day-to-day life for you, Charles? - It's quite amazing, actually. It, you know, I spent years building Link Senior. I'm so proud to find this new and amazing home in life food. You know, for the side note, I've always had a lot of respect for Jack York for starting IN2L years ago. Anyway, he started in pioneer resident engagement, and so I'm very grateful for the work that he's done. But then this new team at Life Loop, including Rob, obviously, is just amazing. So it's really inspiring to have some of the best of the best, to be now building what is already the leader in the category, in what we think is, and obviously it is true, the hardest category in senior living. And so does it bright future? I'm so excited to be building it. - Very good. So Rob, you're a bit of a newcomer into the senior housing marketplace. What's the introduction been like? - It's been much different than I actually expected, but in a good way. I come from healthcare, about 20 years in healthcare technology, and running SaaS businesses. Jumping into senior living, I thought it was just on the fringe, and it is, but it's pretty significantly different than the way that healthcare operates and is financed. That said, we are seeing that with value-based care and the movement of the acuity levels getting higher within senior living, the need for healthcare being provided at the residence home is important. And so it's a fun time to be here. I've been a benefactor of only being in the role for about five months. I've been the benefactor of the work that both Charles, and as he mentioned, Jack York, 25 years worth of resident engagement technology in building a business and building a whole marketplace for it. And so obviously the opportunity is fantastic for us, and we're just gonna continue to go deeper in the resident engagement space and continue to make an impact in this market. - One of the reasons that really excites us as well, me and the rest of my team is that, senior living obviously is a people's business. The heart and the brain and the mind are equally as important. And on day one, when I met Rob, the first thing he said is how he operates, which is leading with a heart, balancing with a head. And he talks about it, but he does it day to day. And I think there's a bright future for him and the company because that's how the industry operates. And that is, I think, a huge advantage, which is have such great leadership in place. - In my opinion, resident engagement is really a key component in the culture of a community and also the reputation of a community. And I'm fortunate enough to be able to visit so many different communities and from different operators, different levels of care, memory care, assisted living. And I get to, over the years, past 15 years, I've seen all the different iterations of resident care and really starting with Jack, you are conceing the TV screens and the engagement. And there's so much that has changed. And so what is Link Senior bringing to the marketplace that's different, what's on the horizon in the future for resident care to make it even better? - Link Senior, one of the things that we did really well is really understanding the core process when it comes to programming and engagement, especially memory care. One of the advantage and huge aspect with Life Loop is that it is the most complete solution to manage the whole senior living experience. And so going forward, it feels like a very good and complimentary fit because of the fact that we can help deepen without deep understanding here of the engagement side, knowing that we're contributing to, again, the most complete experience tool or platform for the industry. - I was gonna add to this in Charles and I, we're just actually talking about this over lunch, is the fact that the needs from an engagement standpoint are going to be different and independent than assisted and then obviously in memory care. And what we're trying to do is to start to build more personalization into that, both at the community level, but then also at the individual resident level. By the community level, what we're trying to do is take the likes and dislikes of the residents as a whole and start to position activities that support the likes and stay away from the dislikes of the members of the community. And then to get real deep, go one on one in memory care for personalized engagement. So a lot of the tools that we're starting to create are around AI, which is no surprise, but really cool experience that we've got ahead of us. And again, with the subject matter expertise of Charles, we've got a beautiful future ahead. - Giving the caregivers the tools that they need to be able to take every day and make it excellent is so important. And again, I've been going into these communities for 15 years and it's all the way from a little bitty TV where people are just kind of sitting there in front of the TV, like the days have changed so much. Like that's not the norm anymore. That's not the standard. The standard has got to be programmed engagement, but the operators need to have the tools to be able to do it and manage it. - The way we look at it is that every touch point with a resident, that's an opportunity. And there's no reason to say that today's resident, today's client and tomorrow are going to have the expectation that these ought to be almost like magical. So I personally believe in magic, but besides that, with the idea that all of these touch points are opportunities, we at Life Group believe that we should, we have the right to own these to help the operator and make them not only personalize, but happy moments, magical moments, because obviously, the operators, that's how they went. But I personally believe all people are cool, like every resident deserves that. And we spoke very briefly about the caregivers. The bulk of the caregivers, they shop at work because they love all people. Like when I started seeing people were saying why all people and so on, but there's something to be said about these moments. If you can make a caregiver like today, they'll come back tomorrow because they want more of these purpose-driven moments. - Absolutely. And again, giving them the means, the methods, the tools, the training to be able to do that, because the labor force, I mean, you can have a heart for wanting to do it, but it's a very difficult job, way more difficult than handing out chicken sandwiches at Chick-fil-A down the street. It's a difficult job, you've got to have the heart to do it. But if you can match that with the correct programs, training and tools, it makes it a lot easier. - Absolutely. And we all know about the labor issues. And one of the surveys that we've done, we do an annual survey both around tech, but then also from a customer standpoint. And 94% of our customers have seen hours of savings from their staff by leveraging both the engagement capabilities, but also some of our operations platform as well. So we're really trying to stay focused on keeping the job easier for staff so that they can go spend time with residents as they're desiring to do. As Charles said, a lot of the folks that enter the market are there for the right reasons and they're leading by their heart. - Without giving any secrets away, but are there any big initiatives for Life Loop this year or going into next year where it's like, hey, we really have these big goals or we have this new kind of idea that we want to bring to the marketplace of resident engagement or value-based care. Any thoughts on that? - Yes, as the answer, as far as how far we're gonna go into the conversations, it goes back to the personalization and finding out more as residents enter into a community, finding out more about them on the front end so that we can use that to better prepare the activities as they desire as both a community, but as residents and the individuals themselves. And then furthermore, continuing to get their families involved and getting family involvement, whether they're contributing pictures and sharing what's happening outside of the community or they're just sending them a note. So we're big on wanting to get the families involved and that's some of the legacy Life Loop technology that we have that will continue to evolve. - I love that, you know, it kind of made me think of, and I'm sure you all think of this every single day, but somebody needs to be the voice for some of the folks that are living here that may not have a voice. And I think technology can help bridge that gap somewhat is we can kind of help be their voice and to communicate back and forth with families for maybe some older adults that are not able to communicate. - You know, one of the things that we're very excited about is just to continue our very successful deployment of technology. So obviously AI is a big buzz word. We believe we think about AI slightly differently, which is that it's just an extension of what already exists in the sense that it's driven by business outcomes. It continuously delivers on value. It's just not once, you know, segmented thing. It should touch everything that's being done. And again, like Rob is saying, well, we'll wait a little further in the year to have large announcements. But one thing we were very excited to share also is that we're coming with a new ebook when it comes to the state of technology. And that's going to be released before the end of the year. And a lot of insights there. So very proud of that work as well. - We'll make sure we stay in touch because we're going to want to link that so people have easy access to that. I think, you know, being a part of that education and continuing to put out that great content so that the whole industry can really reap the benefits of that. And I'm sure, you know, Rob, you're probably already learning very, very quickly how collaborative the senior housing industry is as compared to other verticals. That was a big eye opener for me when I came into this marketplace. I thought, gosh, all these people are competing against each other, but they sure do talk a lot and they sure are friendly. And I have learned and you've probably learned the same thing is that it's really the overall goal is, you know, it's the care of the older adults and how no one person can do it. We need everybody. - Yeah, and there's enough out there, especially with the growing population aging into 65. What is it, 10 million more 65 year olds coming and before 2030? There's enough opportunity for everybody to win. And I do believe that if you stay focused as a marketplace on the right ideals, it's everyone's gonna win. - So Charles, any final comments? I know you guys have a busy schedule here at the Palm Nick conference. Anything to send us off with? - Yeah, sure. I mean, for us, like defining the future, like we discussed very briefly, this idea of value-based care is extremely important. And so, I mean, obviously, things are starting to happen now. And I find it really exciting because this is what's gonna accelerate everything for senior living. I mean, healthcare in general. But when you consider senior living, it is gonna be one of the fastest aspect of our industry. And I think that there's no real value-based care without completely understanding the person and completely understanding the experience of the person. And again, continue to talk to toward our little horn here. But this is where I think that Rob is bringing such invaluable insights because he has decades of experience from the healthcare side before coming to the industry. So if you wanna share anything about value-based care. - Well, we've seen it before, but only 20% of the well-being of an individual is made up of clinical-related items. The other 80% are typically what you would refer to as social determinants of health. We have an opportunity to play a part in that 80% for sure. In fact, we are from a financing standpoint or how do we help operators be rewarded in that? That's part of what the cycle that's going on right now within senior living. On the flip side, the expense and how much goes into that, about 82% goes to clinical-related items when it's only 20%. So we have 18% going towards the other 80%. We need to be able to find a way to balance that and be more proactive and preventative in healthcare. So there's a good, really good opportunity and engagement is just one of those opportunities, but we feel very strongly that we're well-suited for that and to make an impact in this marketplace. - I know that we're coming into the fall season and I know everybody wants to finish this year strong and I know we will, the demand for senior housing continues to be a big factor. The demographics are definitely compelling and one of our big sponsors, Nickmap Vision, will be excited to get an update from them here at the Nick Conference about this, all the new data trends in the demographics and what we are gonna be seeing in the years to come. So, very great to meet you, Rob. Charles, great to see you again. A Bridge the Gap Ambassador and just an awesome friend. We appreciate you and to all of our listeners that are interested in connecting with light loop. We'll put that in the comments and then connect with us at BTGVoice.com, download this content and so much more. And thanks for listening to another great episode of Bridge the Gap. - Thanks for listening to Bridge the Gap podcast with Josh and Lucas. Connect with the BTG Network team and use your voice to influence the industry by connecting with us at BTGVoice.com.
