Part of addressing senior living’s perennial challenge, recruiting and retaining employees, is planning for the next generation of leaders. Douglas Olson, PhD, MBA, the new president and CEO of the Vision Centre and former director of the Center for Health Administration and Aging Services Excellence at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, recently spoke with McKnight’s Senior Living about how the new center will try to tackle that issue.

Q: The Vision Centre is a relatively new 501(c )(3) nonprofit organization. For those who may not be familiar with it, can you talk about the organization and what it plans to do?

A: The seniors of this country deserve the very best care and services possible, and one of the ways to help ensure that is to make sure that we have the very best leaders guiding the organizations. The supply of leaders in the fi eld today is a challenge for providers across the country, and we also know that the landscape of universities that provide training for senior living leadership is not what we would hope it could be.

The Vision Centre, at its core, is all about finding a way to get new students and mid-career students interested in this field and having the availability of training programs at universities and other creative ways to make sure that they can get into the field and provide the leadership, depth and talent that we need to help organizations. The Vision Centre provides a bridge between universities and providers to make sure that they’re working well together, because we believe that’s one of the “secret sauces” of providing an exceptional experience.

I feel privileged to be appointed as the CEO and president, but I also would be remiss if I didn’t share the fact that there has been a whole bunch of really talented, smart people interested in what we’re doing. We have a great group of volunteer leaders who started with this movement a number of years ago, and we’ve had a number of those volunteers step forward to serve as trustees guiding our efforts.

Q: What other organizations in the industry are involved with this effort?

A: We have eight endorsing organizations. We knew at the very beginning that this problem was not going to be solved by universities alone, providers alone or associations alone.

And so we are blessed that the NAB Foundation, the American College of Health Care Administrators, the American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living, Argentum, LeadingAge, the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care, the American Seniors Housing Association, and now also the National Association for Home Care & Hospice, all are stepping forward because they see the value of coming together to solve a problem that really is everybody’s problem.

Having an effort like the Vision Centre focused on this issue helps them support their members and their associations’ interests in a concerted way. All of the associations do some really great things around this topic. With the guidance of our trustees and advisory council, we’ll shine a light on some of those important efforts.

Q: The Vision Centre aims to create 25 university and college programs to prepare future generations of leaders for aging adult service organizations, and from those programs, it also aims to facilitate 1,000 paid internships in the field by 2025. Can you describe how the center plans to accomplish those goals?

A: We want to be able to provide the resources and support for universities and providers who want to advance their efforts. Some of the things that are front and center for us that we’re going to move forward with are an advisory council, a strategic plan and a directory that will include about 60 universities. The directory will share information about each university’s student base, field experiences, curriculum and programs, and engagement with the field.

We also have a website, visioncentre.org, which we will start to populate with other resources and tools that people can use.

Q: Are there any other points you’d like to share?

A: I and many other people who are involved believe that this effort will help the entire public image of our field in general.

The connections and partnerships with universities and providers across the country will lift up the entire spectrum of senior living and the importance of it to our country.

This is an abridged and edited version of a conversation recorded for a McKnight’s Senior Living Newsmakers podcast.

Joe Ricci, CEO and president of TRSA, the national association representing companies that supply, launder and maintain linens and uniforms, says increasing regulatory compliance pressure on long-term care facilities will continue to drive up the cost of their operations.

“Outsourcing to commercial laundries will yield cost savings that can be used to offset these rising costs” in areas such as recruitment and hiring operations, Ricci said. He also predicted that finding the workers to meet new staffing and regulatory requirements will be very difficult in a labor market growing more challenging by the day. 

Nursing homes have been experiencing these trends for years now, according to a recent report from the accounting and advisory firm Marcum.

“Laundry statistics suggest outsourcing of laundry services is very common in the hospital environment, and we are now beginning to see this slow shift in the long-term care arena as well,” Marcum noted. “We expect to see this increasing movement to continue in the years to come.”

Laundry hours per patient day consistently have been declining year after year, as much as 5% from 2018 to 2019. During the same time, the national average hourly wage for laundry staff consistently has been increasing. Meanwhile, regulatory and liability arguments against on-premise laundries are mounting.

With their economies of scale, outsourced laundries say they spend 34% to 40% less per pound on the most costly items in on-premise laundry production budgets: plant labor wages, employee benefits and natural gas. Those account for 60% of all on-premise laundry production expenses. Examples culled from a cost estimator tool at trsa.org/oplsavings show that a 50-bed nursing home in California with a 90% occupancy rate would save $35,714 a year by outsourcing, whereas the same facility in Illinois would save $28,138.

UNX Industries and Christeyns USA have announced they plan to merge as UNX-Christeyns, a new company delivering a broader range of chemicals, detergents, engineered equipment and cleaning solutions to the commercial and industrial textile care market.

The merger will combine Christeyns’ supply chain capabilities with UNX’s domestic manufacturing and distribution platform. UNX was founded in 1958 and earned a reputation for providing companies with superior, commercial grade cleaning products for their laundry, housekeeping and warewash needs. It has been a long-time healthcare supplier. Christeyns USA was part of a $300 million Belgian manufacturer of cleaning, hygiene and disinfection products for laundries, the food industry, the medical sector and more.

The goal for the new company is to be one of the top three chemical providers in the textile care sector, leaders said.

» Laundry fires prove need for precautions

A dryer at a Pennsylvania long-term care facility went up in flames recently, leaving one worker injured and several residents relocated. Authorities credited a sprinkler system and quick response by staff with controlling the incident and providing a mostly favorable outcome. In June, a similar incident occurred in Los Angeles.

“Fires in healthcare facilities, and particularly those that have historically occurred in nursing homes, have been catastrophic and resulted in multiple fatalities prior to federal regulations requiring the presence of fire sprinkler systems,” Stan Szpytek, president of the national consulting firm Fire and Life Safety Inc. told McKnight’s. “While these fire protection systems undoubtedly save lives, there is still more that providers can do to prevent fires from occurring, especially in laundry rooms.”

Szpytek pointed out that regular operational deficiencies in laundry routines can create unsafe conditions that ultimately lead combustible materials to ignite. Long-term care laundry room fires are often caused by improper use of commercial clothes dryers, he added. 

“The other common denominator is lack of maintenance,” said Szpytek, a life safety/disaster planning consultant for several state associations.

Have you recently mystery-shopped the senior housing communities in your market area? You should. You may have more competition than you think.

Having a detailed understanding of the other senior housing communities in your market area always has been important in the sales and marketing process, but it may be more critical than ever as such communities continue to struggle to regain occupancy.

Our recent mystery shop in a busy metropolitan area indicated that tours were occurring at communities, and many are aggressively competing for the same customer in terms age and affordability profiles. This means that operators must communicate clearly what they do (or don’t) offer and how they differ from the other senior living communities in the area.

The lines between the living arrangements in senior housing have been blurring and are becoming grayer. Independent living communities, without licensed assisted living, tell prospective residents and their families that older adults can receive assisted living services from home health agencies in their apartments without moving to assisted living. Assisted living communities often position their base level of care (without personal care assistance) as independent living with the ability to age-in-place and access services when needed. And, of course, there is the continuum of care that offers all of living arrangements within the same community.

None of this information is new to those of us in the industry. But many senior living consumers and their adult children do not have the same understanding and perceptions regarding the nuances and operating differences between the various living arrangements, and many may not understand what they actually need. As a result, everything can be perceived to be competition, and selecting the right option can be confusing and challenging for them.

Savvy marketing personnel are working hard to communicate a unique market position for their communities in a way that clearly communicates the benefits of what they have to offer and how their operating philosophy is different and better than other communities. Mystery shopping the competition will provide the information and ammunition needed to develop your strategy and fine tune your sales and marketing program. You can be sure your competitors are doing the same.

Lynne Moore is president of MDS Research Co., a national senior living and healthcare consulting firm based in Fort Worth, TX, that has been serving clients for 48 years. MDS is a two-generation company; Lynne Moore is following in Jim Moore’s footsteps. She is responsible for all MDS market research-related projects involving all aspects of senior housing and healthcare. Lynne Moore can be reached at (817) 731-4266 or lynnemoore@m-d-s.com.

This column appeared as “You’ve Got Questions, We’ve Got Answers” in the October 2022 print issue of McKnight’s Senior Living magazine.

The opinions expressed in each McKnight’s Senior Living guest column are those of the author and are not necessarily those of McKnight’s Senior Living.

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