Turning Data Into Actionable Insights at Your Senior Living Community

Senior living communities generate a vast amount of data every day. Incident notes, social media engagement statistics, and other things help you evaluate and improve your organization’s performance. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need a team of professional data analysts or a Ph.D. in statistics to interpret and use this information. Turning data into actionable insights just requires the right knowledge and technology.

That’s where data analytics and management tools like ElderSmarts come in. This user-friendly software enables you to assess data, and empowers you with insights into resident acuity, occupancy trends, how to improve your team’s day-to-day work, and more. This guide explores how you can generate and apply meaningful insights to revolutionize your senior care community.

What Are Actionable Data Insights?

If you’re new to data analysis, analytics can seem mysterious and even intimidating. However, the concept is simple. Analytics can provide you with actionable insights or reccomendations by analyzing large amounts of raw data, forecasting what may happen in the future, and benchmarking against other sets of data. Organizations can then use these insights and findings to make data-driven decisions and solve problems.

In other words, actionable insights bridge the gap between data science and informed business decisions. They’re tangible and specific strategies that senior living communities can implement to develop better practices, improve the resident experience, and reach business goals.

Why Are They Important?

Actionable data insights are among the most useful tools for modern senior living organizations. They have many practical applications, including:

• Strategic Decision Making: Across the United States, senior care communities face serious operational challenges, such as declining occupancy rates and staffing shortages. Valuable insights help organizations pinpoint underlying factors contributing to these problems and develop effective strategies to overcome them.
• Customer Behavior Analysis: Keeping seniors engaged and healthy is a top priority for every care community. Actionable insights enable you to assess your residents’ needs and offer appropriate services.
• Staffing Optimization: Figuring out how to schedule caregivers can be challenging, especially if your organization is understaffed. Data analytics allow you to predict when residents need the most care based on changing acuity and assessed needs, so you can proactively allocate your resources.
• Increased Profitability: You can use actionable insights to develop more efficient marketing campaigns, increase resident retention, and reduce operating costs by benchmarking against other local communities and their successful marketing methods. These steps boost your organization’s bottom line, the efficiency of your sales and marketing teams, and promote growth.

How Senior Living Communities Can Gather the Right Data & Analytics

Using data to make better decisions might seem complicated, but don’t worry. Everyone can manage data and generate meaningful insights with the help of accessible software like ElderSmarts. Here’s a quick overview of the process.

Ask Questions Related To Your Business Goals 

First, you’ll need to ensure that you ask the right questions. For ElderSmarts users, you’ll want to equip yourself with the right groups of reports that will be the most relevant to your current goals and makeup of your senior living organization. Examples of questions you can answer with data analytics include:

• What occupancy rate should my organization be targeting to reach revenue goals?
• What are the most popular dining options for residents?
• Which digital marketing techniques generate the most conversions and leads?
• Which shifts and in which buildings do residents need the most attention from caregivers and need staffing adjusted?
• What factors lead to medication errors, falls, and other incidents? What is my current risk profile?

Data Collection 

ElderSmarts enables you to gather relevant information from every data source you rely on, bringing everything quickly into one place with nothing lost in data silos.

ElderSmarts can help you gather key performance indicators (KPIs) related to resident satisfaction, such as attendance trends for community fitness classes or survey responses.

Or, if you want to assess the effectiveness of your digital marketing campaigns, ElderSmarts can gather information from Google Analytics, Mailchimp, LinkedIn, and other platforms to help you learn more about the people interacting with your content, and what are the most impactful pieces of marketing collateral your team is producing.

Process Data

ElderSmarts automatically analyzes big data using machine learning algorithms, statistical models, and integrations with other Eldermark dashboards and software solutions. The software reveals patterns and trends in the data sets, such as numbers of tours or decreasing referrals.

Additionally, ElderSmarts enables users to narrow the results through segmentation. For instance, you might focus your analysis on a particular client demographic or geographic region.

Create Data Visualizations

ElderSmarts translates data analytics into accessible data visualizations like charts and graphs. These colorful images are much easier to interpret than vast spreadsheets or mathematical formulas. As a result, they allow business leaders, stakeholders, and other decision makers to understand the data and results quickly.

Generate Actionable Insights

Finally, ElderSmarts goes beyond just data dashboards, it actively suggests insights based on findings. It proactively provides new recommendations into your operations so you can actively work towards improving performance and pursuing business goals. Business leaders can use these recommendations to create new initiatives and quickly make impactful decisions.

Examples of Turning Senior Living Analytics Into Actionable Insights

Here are three examples of ways senior living communities can use data analytics to transform raw data into actionable insights.

Streamline Workflows 

Tasks like administering medication and completing move–in paperwork are complex and time-consuming. Data analytics can reveal inefficiencies in these processes and make it easier to schedule adequate staff during busy periods, making the routine better for both your residents and their caregivers.

Boost Occupancy Rates

Senior living occupancy rates have improved slowly in the last two years but remain below pre-COVID levels in many communities. Data analytics allows organizations to identify areas to improve to attract new residents. For instance, benchmarking with ElderSmarts could reveal that your prices are 30% higher than local competitors. Based on this finding, you can adjust pricing models to draw more people to your community.

Personalize Care

ElderSmarts can analyze electronic health records, changing resident acuity, and assessments to gain insights into a resident’s needs and preferences, and so you can make sure their care plans are up-to-date and the right staff are meeting their needs.

Reduce Revenue Leakage

Do you know how many of your residents have higher acuity levels than when they moved in but are not being charged based on their care plan? ElderSmarts won’t just give you a report, it will tell you which residents need a change, what their new level of care should be, and outline the financial impact those changes will make.

Finding the Right Software for Your Senior Living Community

The senior living industry is on the verge of a digital transformation driven by data analytics and other ground-breaking technologies. Join this exciting revolution by using ElderSmarts to gain new insights into your community’s past, present, and future operations.

ElderSmarts allows senior living professionals to harness the power of business intelligence tools and data to make smarter decisions and improve functionality. The best part? You don’t need a background in data analytics to use this simple but effective technology.

Get in touch with Eldermark today to learn more about how you can use ElderSmarts to boost performance and increase resident satisfaction.