BLOG

The National Investment Center (NIC), gathered luminaries from senior housing and healthcare at its Spring Conference a few weeks ago. Industry conversation at NIC’s semi-annual events is always current, but this meeting felt like a unique turning point as stakeholders from housing and healthcare workshopped new ideas together, both on stage and in one-to-one conversations.

The animating change in the industry is a fresh focus on how senior housing operators and healthcare providers can collaborate for value improvement in the care of senior residents.

We left the Spring Conference with four healthcare themes to inform our work across the rest of 2023:

• Healthcare innovators are seeking strategic partners in senior housing.
  NIC MAP Vision provides market intelligence to healthcare providers seeking connections to senior housing, and we are fielding robust interest in our offering from leading providers. This intense interest in senior housing from healthcare providers was echoed at the Spring Conference: the providers leading discussions, including representatives from Optum, the SCAN Group and Health Plan, and Pine Park Health among others, highlighted the importance of defining new types of relationships with housing operator partners. Healthcare and senior housing have always worked together to improve residents’ health, but today’s opportunities for aligned value-based incentives from payers have the potential to reshape the structure of those relationships.
• Likewise, senior housing operators are ready to engage with healthcare providers and payers.
  NIC runs a regular short pulse-check survey of senior housing operators. In the February 2023 survey, NIC added a new question to query senior housing executives about their healthcare partnership strategy. Around 1 in 5 senior housing operators report engaging with an accountable care organization or a Medicare Advantage plan; around a quarter of respondents are in active discussions with potential healthcare industry partners. It’s still early days for even the most-innovative organization with an appetite to share risk for health outcomes, but we expect everyone to build fluency very quickly.
• Wellness has emerged as an important community differentiator
  As the senior housing industry embraces a newly-standardized definition of the active adult category, we expect more emphasis on wellness and preservation of good health from senior housing owners and operators. For many older adults, healthy living means much more than condition management or access to services; it’s a whole lifestyle. Healthcare providers who can offer consumer-friendly, engaging services to enhance community programming will win this category of business.
• We’re advising no-regrets moves to underpin your future strategy
  NIC MAP Vision serves both operators and healthcare providers. We recently wrote to senior housing operators advising them that in advance of any entry into value-based contract arrangements, they should establish closer, data-driven relationships with prospective partners – get to know each other better before sharing risk or reward. We have similar advice for healthcare providers. Sophisticated risk-sharing agreements depend on data, so a good first step might be to approach prospective partners and start a conversation about what KPIs drive shared outcomes and how you might track those together.  NIC MAP Vision provides market intelligence including contact information for key decision makers inside senior housing organizations and incumbent providers by community and by spend. This will get you aimed with new partnerships.

We enjoyed all of the panels, presentations, and the facilitated networking that NIC conferences are known for. If you are a healthcare provider interested in learning more about the insights and connections with senior housing operators that we provide, please fill out our “contact us” form here.