Prime Care Technologies has joined the Kronos Workforce Dimensions Technology Partner Network — an ecosystem of organizations using the Workforce Dimensions solution and Kronos D5 platform.

As part of this network, Prime Care will deliver its securely hosted archiving solution, primeARCHIVE, to Kronos customers migrating to Workforce Dimensions, enabling them to quickly back up and query historical workforce data.

“As a longtime Kronos partner and integrator, Prime Care Technologies understands the criticality of workforce data storage needed to easily analyze, report and comply with unique workforce rules,” said Jim Hoey, Prime Care’s president and CEO.

Professional services firm GHD has unveiled four technology solutions aimed at increasing the safety of long-term care residents through contact tracing, appointment bookings and early notification of COVID-19 trends.

SimpleTrack allows facilities to track and report symptoms and virus exposure; Contact Connect wearables help promote social distancing and perform rapid contract tracing among residents and staff; Appointio helps facilities bring their scheduling operations online; and the Wastewater testing service allows facilities to detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in the wastewater before symptoms are present.

McKnight’s 2021 Workforce Development Guide digital edition

A. Yes, but this conversion strategy requires the appropriate due diligence and is not without challenges and potential pitfalls.

Due to the ongoing pandemic, many hotels have been underperforming or have gone out of business. As a result, developers/owners are searching for alternative uses and see an opportunity to convert these hotels to senior housing.

The design and layout of suite hotels are similar to that of assisted living communities. They have similar core infrastructure areas, a kitchen, dining area and other common areas spaces and amenities. Although built to similar building codes, however, hotels may not fully conform to life safety codes, state licensing or zoning requirements. Therefore, resident living suites may need improvements such as showers instead of tubs, kitchenettes and accessibility for disabled individuals.

Due diligence will be required to verify development, demand and financial viability. For instance, will there be demand for new assisted living that will support the pricing needed to cover the capital costs of the retrofit and ongoing monthly operating expenses?

Having the right team of experienced development and operating partners will ensure that the resulting new product will be competitive, appropriately priced and properly positioned within the existing and potential emerging new assisted living communities in the market area.

Jim Moore’s column, “You’ve Got Questions? We’ve Got Answers,” appears in every print issue of McKnight’s Senior Living.

Moore is president of Moore Diversified Services, a national senior living and healthcare consulting firm based in Fort Worth, TX, that has been serving clients for 50 years. He has authored five books about senior living and healthcare, including “Assisted Living Strategies for Changing Markets” and “Independent Living and CCRCs.” He has published senior living monthly columns for the past 28 years. Jim Moore can be reached at (817) 731-4266 or jimmoore@m-d-s.com.

Having access to robust data sets, including infection rates, symptoms, medication distribution and more will help providers better coordinate care and plan for possible surges, said Steve Herron, Cerner Corp. senior director, long-term and post-acute care. Also required will be tracking, monitoring and demonstrating results, he added.

Claire Stephens, senior vice president, post-acute care, American HealthTech, said providers’ requirements for supporting documentation around disease and infection management with COVID-19 will expand across their workflows.

Among the many other COVID-related needs will be additional documentation on staff reporting and tracking across local, state and national levels, Stephens said. This likely will include providing pertinent and useful information on lab results and pharmacy-related data for medications and vaccination reporting.

Some long-term care facilities could expect some compensation for these newfound documentation efforts in the form of grants and financial incentives, but such funding may have strings attached, such as expanded documentation requirements to ensure transparency and reimbursement efforts, Stephens added. Long-term care facilities also will be looking for new tools as well as additional time and resources.

Finally, efforts to achieve data interoperability will accelerate as vendors scramble to make up for lost time.

“NetSmart will be focused on electronic health record integration, making data interoperable and sharing it across other healthcare providers,” said AJ Peterson, vice president and general manager of Netsmart, an IT partner with clients in the post-acute

States with the highest percentages of priority populations as a share of total adults included North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York and Ohio. The states with the largest number of people in those groups, however, are California, Texas, New York and Florida.

The American Health Care Association / National Center for Assisted Living encouraged governors and public health officials to ensure that residents and employees of long-term care facilities were prioritized before everyone else for COVID-19 vaccination so that they could receive both doses of the vaccine by March 1. Even as the end of the month approached, however, that goal had not been met. Skilled nursing facilities were further along in the process than assisted living communities due to their prioritization in the federal long-term care vaccination program.

A new toolkit created by industry clinicians aims to help long-term care operators directly address the questions staff members, residents and their families are asking about COVID-19 vaccines and getting vaccinated.

The kit includes a PowerPoint presentation that providers can share with employees and residents, as well as a sample medical director’s letter about vaccines, which can be sent to families.
Additionally, the kit covers strategies to boost confidence in the vaccines and includes a link to a new episode of the organization’s COVID-19 video series: “AMDA COVID-19 Grand Rounds: Pearls from Your Colleagues.”

At the beginning this year, the industry acknowledged that it would face several challenges with vaccine distribution, particularly as additional vaccines were expected to be rolled out.
When it comes to safety and efficacy issues, LeadingAge’s vice president of regulatory affairs, Janine Finck-Boyle, said that side effects and supply issues have been among the primary concerns.

In skilled nursing settings, she said, “Multidose vaccines will need to be carefully coordinated, especially as residents are admitted and discharged sometimes in a matter of days, meaning they may not have had a first dose and may need to get a second dose in another setting.”

Combatting the vaccine skeptics has been another battle, even as initial reports showed 90% and higher efficacy for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and other companies’ versions. As of press time, workers were lagging behind residents in their willingness to receive the vaccine. Finck-Boyle said LeadingAge will continue working with state and local partners “on the delicate question of whether vaccine mandates can or should be considered.” To date, senior living employers such as ALG Senior, Atria, Civitas and Juniper have mandated employee vaccination.

As for training and education, selling the importance of the vaccine would seem easy given the experiences of 2020, but many stakeholders have noted that they have had their work cut out for them.

“If the data show a 90% efficaciousness with the vaccine, then a full detailed effort behind vaccine education has to occur,” said T.J. Griffin, PharMerica‘s chief pharmacy officer.

Although vaccines are free to recipients, the costs the industry has endured for personal protective equipment and other expenses have been “crushing,” said LeadingAge President and CEO Katie Smith Sloan.

“This is COVID’s darkest hour — and a final test for the conscience of Congress,” Sloan said as she implored lawmakers to free up additional Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act funding.

Q: You’ve been president and COO of Enlivant since 2013. What excites you the most now about becoming CEO?

A: We have a definitive culture that we’ve put into place. Our mission, our vision, our values are why I’m here, and what excites me, frankly, is just the fact that I know they’re going to be safe. There’s a vote of confidence from our board of directors, from [outgoing CEO] Jack [Callison] and from our employees that I, too, have been able to live the values and can be the person who is entrusted with them. I’m here because of the team and the purpose.

Q: Enlivant undertook succession planning for just this kind of situation. Could talk a little bit more about the importance of succession planning in senior living in general? 

A: The most important asset, I believe, in senior living and healthcare businesses in general is your employees. It’s not only the “what” of having the technical abilities; it’s the “how.” How do you connect with the customer, how do you connect with employees, how do you build relationships with residents, patients and families?

If people are your most important asset, then the selection, development, growth and maximization of those assets are the most important thing you can do as a business. Are you able to identify those individuals who have an outsized effect, especially when it comes to leadership? Can you give them the right opportunities to grow in their perspective and improve themselves? And as you create those channels and niches, they’re going to grow within the company.

It’s incredibly important to the senior living industry. It’s the lifeblood of Enlivant. It’s something that we see as driving stability. It protects our culture, and it protects our most important asset, the employees. 

Q: Outgoing Enlivant CEO Jack Callison, who will be CEO of Sunrise Senior Living, is going to chair Enlivant’s board. How do you envision working with him in the future?

A: We have always had a great relationship. Now we have set up a set of structures internally so that if something comes up that we think may be a conflict of interest, that’s an easy conversation for us to have.

Otherwise, I think it’ll be a fantastic situation. He’s probably one of the most tenured CEOs in this space, and he has an incredible amount of historical knowledge around Enlivant in particular. And he has a passion for our employees, the business and the direction.

While he’s going to be more removed from the operations, we’ll be able to tap into that perspective and talk about things from the broader perspective of, ‘What do you see in the industry?’ and ‘How do we continue to define Enlivant as a great place to work within the industry?’ I see it as a better, more evolved version of what’s already been happening for the last couple of years. 

Q: What will your top priorities be as CEO? 

A: Immediately, COVID-19. Given our mission of making sure we’re taking care of seniors, keeping them safe, there’s nothing that’s higher on my agenda today.

A subset of that is vaccinations and infection control. We’re hoping to be through our third vaccination clinics by the end of March or the first week in April. We’ve set an internal benchmark of getting 95% of all residents and employees vaccinated.

Q: Will the company mandate vaccination for employees at some point?

A: We set an internal benchmark of June 1 as the date employees need to be vaccinated by. There obviously are nuances to work through, but we are going to work with everybody who can and should be vaccinated. We realize it’s a deeply personal experience, but we believe that vaccination is probably the best thing that we can do to ensure safety, especially after seeing what happened in the last year.

Q: What will your longer-term goals be?

A: We’ve really focused on diversity over the past year. We call it DIB at Enlivant, for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging.

Last year really opened my eyes as to how much more we could and should be doing to fight not only systemic racism but to be a more representative workforce of what you see in the broader economy. And so we have started what I would call a long journey. Across the United States, not only at Enlivant, it’s something that we need to spend time working on.

We’ve put together a diversity council. We’ve brought in some help from the outside, knowing that the executives within Enlivant were not as specialized or as aware as we should be. And we’ve begun a number of different activities and tactics to be able to create the right strategy to move forward.

I’m really proud of the group that’s come together. It’s representative from the staff levels on through people at the most senior levels of our firm, to make sure that we’re getting a wide swath of insights. We’re going to be working on strategies around recruiting, developing and identifying people so that we have a more diverse and inclusive workforce at Enlivant.

I say this not only because it’s the right thing to do, but I believe that for essential business reasons, it becomes a competitive advantage, and it becomes something that aligns really well with the culture and the focus on people and enriching lives that we have. It’s a natural extension of the foundation we’ve put together, and it’s something that really has invigorated our people.

Q: What do you think have been the biggest changes in senior living during your career, and where you see the industry headed?

A: We’ve seen a rise in the sophistication of senior living. The needs of individuals and the expectations of families are changing. That requires changes in customer service, changes in sophistication of processes and systems, and changes in the physical product and how it looks and appears.

COVID-19 is going to change employee, resident and family preferences after they’ve experienced a pandemic for 12, 15, 18 months by the time this is done. One obvious area is technology, whether it’s for telemedicine or for interaction between residents and their families. It’s going to be incumbent on senior living to be able to help facilitate those things.

But there could be other things that come out of this that we don’t have a clue about today. People realize that there is an opportunity for innovation. And that’s one of the things that excites me about the next couple of years. While I don’t have an agenda and a point of view, necessarily, on those changes, I do believe we’ve got the team and the fabric of the culture that’s excited about change, and we’ll be able to tackle it as it comes along.