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The COVID-19 pandemic has created an urgency for insights on data and trends in the seniors housing and care sector. NIC has long held that transparency, accuracy, and timeliness are key factors for well-informed decision-making.In response to the quickly developing situation presented by COVID-19, therefore, NIC has launched a number of initiatives to provide relevant data on an accelerated timetable, including last week’s release of NIC MAP^® Intra-Quarterly Data.

The NIC MAP Data Service team, working with diligence and passion, has produced a new monthly time series. The April data, released May 19, marks the inauguration of the new NIC MAP Intra-Quarterly Data series.

With the launch of Intra-Quarterly Data, the NIC MAP Data Service will now report three-month rolling time series data on a monthly basis. The data represents performance for the three most recent months, labeled as the final month for the reported period. The rolling period for April 2020 covers February, March, and April 2020. This first data release includes 13 months of three-month rolling data on stabilized occupancy for both seniors housing and nursing care properties. The data series begins in April 2019 and is reported for the Primary Markets, Secondary Markets, and other aggregated geographic levels.

The NIC MAP Intra-Quarterly Data will be delivered as an Excel file for NIC MAP clients and will also be featured in NIC’s Intra-Quarterly Snapshot, a new monthly publication offering highlights from the data. The Intra-Quarterly Snapshot, available for download on NIC.org, includes key takeaways on the reported time series data, visual representations, and statistics for the past 13 rolling three-month periods, plus three economic indicators to provide some perspective on the current economic conditions.

Note that the publishing of the Intra-Quarterly Data and Intra-Quarterly Snapshot report will occur on the third Tuesday of each month.

In April 2020, following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, stabilized occupancy for both seniors housing and nursing care properties dropped significantly. Nursing care properties experienced the largest decline, falling 220 basis points from the prior month to 84.7% for the rolling period of February-March-April 2020 in the NIC MAP Primary Markets. The seniors housing stabilized occupancy rate fell a lesser 110 basis points over the prior month to 88.7% for the NIC MAP Primary Markets. Prior to April, both the seniors housing and skilled nursing stabilized occupancy rates had been relatively stable.

The impact of COVID-19 was clearly reflected in the rolling period of April 2020, with a greater toll seen in skilled nursing than in seniors housing. Specifically, the drop in stabilized occupancy for both skilled nursing and seniors housing is indicative of the effects of the pandemic on existing properties without the effects of competition of new properties on market conditions.  In addition, some of the sharp decline in skilled nursing occupancy was likely driven by fewer hospitals discharging patients to post-acute care settings for rehabilitative therapy as hospitals defer elective surgeries due to the pandemic.

Going forward, NIC will continue to expand the NIC MAP Intra-Quarterly Data set and report on additional metrics, geographies, and data subsets in the third quarter of 2020.

In the meantime, NIC will continue to respond to the pandemic by doing what we do best − delivering data, analytics, and connections – to continue to provide transparency to the sector. Details can be found on our COVID-19 Resource Center which puts new data initiatives, as well as COVID-19-relevant commentaries, regulatory updates, and popular webinar details all in one place.

NIC would like to recognize those directly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and those on the frontline keeping residents of seniors housing and skilled nursing communities safe. We understand that seniors housing and skilled nursing operators are bearing tremendous burdens, and applaud their efforts to protect and serve their residents.

Beth Burnham Mace is the Chief Economist and Director of Outreach at the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care (NIC). Prior to joining the staff at NIC, she served as a member of the NIC Board of Directors for 7 years and chaired NIC’s Research Committee. Ms. Mace was also a Director at AEW Capital Management and worked in the AEW Research Group for 17 years. While at AEW, Ms. Mace provided primary research support to the organization’s core and value-added investment strategies and provided research-related underwriting in acquisition activity and asset and portfolio management decisions. Prior to joining AEW in 1997, Ms. Mace spent ten years at Standard & Poor’s DRI/McGraw-Hill as the Director of the Regional Information Service with responsibility for developing forecasts of economic, demographic, and industry indicators for 314 major metropolitan areas in the U.S. Prior to working at DRI, she spent three years as a Regional Economist at the Crocker Bank in San Francisco. Ms. Mace has also worked at the National Commission on Air Quality, the Brookings Institution and Boston Edison. Ms. Mace is a member of the National Association of Business Economists (NABE), ULI’s Senior Housing Council, the Urban Land Institute and New England Women in Real Estate (NEWIRE/CREW). In 2014, she was appointed a fellow at the Homer Hoyt Institute and was awarded the title of a “Woman of Influence” in commercial real estate by Real Estate Forum Magazine and Globe Street. Ms. Mace is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College (B.A.) and the University of California (M.S.). She has also earned The Certified Business Economist™ (CBE), which is the certification in business economics and data analytics developed by NABE. The CBE documents a professional’s accomplishment, experience, abilities, and demonstrates mastery of the body of knowledge critical in the field of economics and data analytics.