A next-gen senior living operations platform that combines data and insights for caregivers is key to improve community operations. Lindsey Daugherty, BTG Ambassador and Head of Community at Sage, explores how these innovative tools are shaping the future of senior living, enhancing efficiency, and empowering teams to deliver exceptional care.

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This episode was recorded at the NIC Fall Conference

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Produced by Solinity Marketing

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Listen to more episodes here

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Intro

Welcome to season seven of Bridge The Gap, a podcast dedicated to informing, educating, and influencing the future of housing and services for seniors. Powered by sponsors Accushield, Aline, NIC MAP Vision, Procare HR, Sage, Hamilton CapTel, Service Master, The Bridge Group Construction and Solinity. Produced by Solinity Marketing.

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00:43 - 00:55

Lucas McCurdy

Welcome to Bridge the Gap podcast, the senior Living podcast with Josh and Lucas here at the Fall NIC Conference with a good friend and a great guest and a wonderful partner. We've got Lindsey Daugherty here on the show. Welcome to the program.

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00:55 - 00:57

Lindsey Daugherty

Thank you. Glad to be here.

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00:57 - 01:46

Lucas McCurdy

Yes. So, a fascinating story. The majority of your career has been spent in operations. Until recently, you made this big move over to Sage. Big news, big transition. And one of the perspectives we really want to dive into today is your experience of being an operator and the challenges and the problems and all the things that you saw on a day to day, and how you're helping solve those today. For our listeners, a lot of people know you because you've been working in senior housing for so long. I've met you. Gosh, I'd say ten plus years ago, you met Josh probably longer than that ago, right?

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01:34 - 01:36

Josh Crisp

I'm older. Yeah. Go ahead and say it.

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01:36 - 01:46

Lucas McCurdy

Well, it's actually great. Both of you have such a long tenured career and are at a young age because you started. Is it correct to say you started your career in senior care.

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01:46 - 01:47

Lindsey Daugherty

When I was five?

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01:47 - 01:50

Lucas McCurdy

Okay. Right. Well, tell us more.

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01:50 - 05:31

Lindsey Daugherty

So I actually did start very, very young. My mom and my grandmother were in senior living. My mom was a nurse, and I would spend my days as a child and skilled care mostly. But I started to become really passionate about seniors and what they offered to us and the foundation that they laid. And they taught me so many lessons.

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And so as I grew, I became a caregiver and then a nurse and started to see the real issues, you know, how are we caring for people? How are we treating the team members that are caring for those people? How do we balance operations with true care services, which is really hard to operate a business with care and actually do it right for both the business and the caregivers and the residents.

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So I decided really young, I'm going to make a difference. I'm going to be able to learn all aspects from a caregiver to the business side, to help marry that balance, to make sure that we have successful businesses, that we can keep residents happy, keep team members happy, and really just change the way we care for our elderly.

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It was very, very important for me. So as I worked my way up, I went into a role of VP of operations, where I thought that was it. I thought that that was going to be my circle of influence. And then I started to notice some problems. Right. We are struggling with recruiting staff members, retention of staff members.

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Our resident acuity was changing. We were more reactive than proactive and we just didn't have the right tools. And we were still using the EHR systems, we had call systems. We are still very outdated and like our paper care plans, paper charting, our nurse call didn't give us really any. Like a lot of our residents would, you know, push for an emergency situation, the staff member would leave and they'd be gone for an hour, and we couldn't use them for care anywhere else, and we couldn't figure out, like, what are they doing?

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You know, what's going on with that resident? And so I started to realize that a lot of the missed information that we weren't hitting as a senior living industry. We were looking at care plans. We weren't looking at unplanned care, which is 90% of where our team members are and where the care was happening. And so I started really questioning that. And around that same time, I met a company called Sage, and they actually were boots on the ground in my community working with Dominion Senior Living. And so they spent weeks and weeks just learning about what the problems are, how we make solutions, and creating something I was really proud of.

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And so when I went to Senior Living, we brought Sage on and I got to see it firsthand, and work sort of as a consultant for them. And the reason was I was doing it for free. I was doing it just out of my heart to change the industry and finally give them a tool we needed. Not only that is like having insight into the stuff I didn't want. My executive director or directors of wellness have to look through database after database. We already didn't have time for that. So I really wanted automated insights, like really recommendations and support teams because even in a VP role, when you're looking at your teams, you have all this data you're trying to look at and how do you discern, right?

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How do you really understand what's going on? And so Sage worked with me to come up with some really intuitive reports and planning so we can make really quick decisions in real time. So it just started changing the game, and I think I never thought that my impact was going to be through tech. I really thought it was going to be at the C-suite level. And then I realized, no, I want to impact the entire industry. And that's really not done. Working in one another size.

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05:31 - 06:00

Josh Crisp

It's an exciting and fun story. You've had a great trajectory, and obviously it's just been everything you've done has been building blocks for what you're doing now. So, you gave us a lot, I would say, to unpack there. That's a lot to talk about and a lot of challenges. But what do you see as the most immediate need that you're able to with your background in operations right now? Like what's the number one challenge that you have an answer for?

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06:00 - 06:04

Lindsey Daugherty

Okay, I'm going to take it to the main foundation of what we do. And that is the caregiver.

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06:04 - 07:31

Lindsey Daugherty

So the caregiver I really honestly feel has been overlooked for a really long time. And they are the biggest source of our results. If they give good care and they're happy, then we're going to have happy residents and we're going to be able to have a market space where we are needed.

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So, I felt like the biggest problem that we're solving is giving the caregiver an ability to be seen. They can seem like we can give them credit for all the work they're doing. We can understand the needs of the residents and how to align staffing correctly. We can understand there's underperforming teammates and it's really bringing down morale. We can understand when someone's going above and beyond and we're able to high-five them and add gamification. I do a lot of product research and I get to speak to these caregivers. I've had caregivers cry when I demo stage. They're like, we have never been given this kind of tool. When they open up the stage, they can see the resident's profile.

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They can see what the resident needs in their ADLs. They can see the resident has memory issues, who's supplying their incontinence products. They can call a teammate for help or escalate for a teammate's help. They have the residents, families, information, the hospital information. You know, walking into a community brand spanking new like you can't find this information. It's in all different locations and it doesn't give our main foundation of care the tools they need to really perform

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07:31 - 09:19

Josh Crisp

I think that may be coming full circle for us here. Nick. Lucas, we've had so many amazing conversations with different providers of different types of services. A big portion of our conversations here have been around labor, recruiting the talent, attracting the talent, retaining the talent, equipping the talent. And you just brought up the, you know, your focus is on the caregiver, which I think is, like it should be one of those moments where like, duh, you know, like but we often miss it and I think I don't want to overlook something that you said.

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That doesn't seem very common to me, but it seems like it was just natural to you, which is what you said you had. When you show caregivers your demo and I think, wow, how many operators, how many providers are actually including caregivers in the demo? That is a very interesting thing because from my experience, and I'm even guilty of it right through the years, it's like, hey, you've got your C-suite that sets the objectives right and the strategy.

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Then you've got maybe someone on your C-suite operational team working with regionals, maybe some clinical management that are really essentially vetting and choosing, and then sometimes forcefully implementing whatever tools that your caregivers are going to try to take ownership of. So what a missed opportunity. If the caregivers aren't buying into that, I'm wondering for you. So I know maybe it wasn't the intended purpose of what you sought out to do, but you see this as sort of an opportunity to close the gap on helping. If you provide better tools that are more meaningful and rewarding to the caregiver, more effective. Do you think that also could potentially tie to helping to recruit and retain talent.

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09:19 - 11:33

Lindsey Daugherty

100%? So we did a case study with Kingston Bay with Agemark. It reduced turnover by 50%. And you know the most turnover is in the first 90 days. You have to be careful. But why is that? Well there's a lot of things. It's culture right. So it's the orientation and the onboarding. But most of the time if I've ever interviewed in exit interviews, it's because they did not have the tools they needed and they felt like they were caring blindly.

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So if you come in and you have an intuitive tool that shows them exactly the resident's profile and what they need and who's on shift to help you, because anybody on shift is green, you know, and they can click on them and ask for help. They don't have to go try to find things. It's really in their hands. So I was interested, and I still plan on doing more case studies around it, because I do feel like it's a good recruiting tool. Even one of our clients, Serena, is using it in their actual job descriptions. Yeah. So I'm just really excited to see where this goes with retention and recruiting. I think that, like you said, and I did mention overlooking the caregiver, I don't think that when you start a new position as a caregiver, you are looking for, of course, a paycheck.

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But caregivers have heart, they have passion, and they want to do the best job that they can possibly do. And if you don't equip them with that, they are going to leave and people are like, oh, they only left for $0.50. It's not $0.50. Now, they may not be honest with you about why they're leaving. Right. But we're communicating. That cool thing with Sage is you can see the disengagement within the app and you can look and see wow, Betty started 60 days ago, and her engagement in this app is really low. Maybe we will chat with Betty. And so those also provide insights. It's because we're so busy day to day. You know like after Covid everyone's doing ten jobs. So the caregiver is overworked and really understanding. Are they happy? Do they have enough tools? We're just like praying. Yeah. Like please say they have enough. So they can do their jobs. But if we are actually getting quick insights fed to us like, hey, they're disengaged or they're not doing, you know, their call time has increased their claim time. It's starting to give us some quick things that we can do to start slowing down. People just leaving or not showing up to work.

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11:33 - 12:27

Josh Crisp

When I think of the tens of thousands of dollars that most organizations, most operating platforms are putting into recruiting, not only just the different advertising methods, pay-per-clicks, whatever they're using, but just in general, the recruiting retention efforts. But wow, taking a little bit of that dollars and that strategy into how can we actually, meaningfully impact the caregivers value, to the team and show them that value is huge and critical. Lucas, this is pretty cutting edge stuff. And I think this is something that you guys are doing that will become and should become normalized in the industry. And, I think those providers that are sort of on the cusp of this and implementing this early will be the early success stories that we look forward to sharing right here on the network.

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12:27 - 12:56

Lucas McCurdy

Yes, absolutely. I mean, even the data piece, I think that seems to be a consistent talking point right now. It's certainly revolving around tech. And I look forward to and maybe I don't know if you already have, but I know that the industry really looks forward to benchmarks. And I think I'd love to see that in the future. Have you all talked about that at all, to see if there's a way to kind of like, take, massive data and run some kind of best practices.

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12:56 - 14:15

Lindsey Daugherty

So, yes. Okay. So I do think that's coming down the pipeline because we do do a lot of client success coaching. We do. We stick along with our clients. We don't just like to let them go. Like we want to be able to help them and help them achieve their goals. So yes, we'll start to work on some benchmarking on, claim times, resident care, acuity changes. You know, we will start to do that and develop that. I think it's very, very important, especially as we grow and we have that data. So it's going to be exciting. This is just the start and it really is just a start. And I don't want to dismiss either my role as head of community, which means that I'm representing senior level.

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I'm representing what they need and what they're asking for. And we're so nimble and we're paying attention and we're creating what we are for the needs of the underserved, which I feel is opposite of vendors I've used in the past. It's more like, here's our product, use it or not. And then it took forever an act of God to like, change it. So that's another reason why I think, hopefully we inspire vendors to come more at partnering with the industry as partners to help relieve some of that pressure and all the demands on the industry.

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14:15 - 14:39

Josh Crisp

Here, NIC, it's where the who's who in the industry is here. So I know you're having a lot of high level conversations, getting tons of great feedback. You guys are shaping solutions to help solve some of the challenges in the industry. This is a huge and great topic. I'm wondering for you, what are some of your maybe 1 or 2 of your key opportunities or takeaways or positive things from NIC that you've gathered from your conversations here?

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14:39 - 16:25

Lindsey Daugherty

NIC has been really positive. This is in DC. I'm really happy to see the tone changing. It's starting to inspire me because I know the last two years we've kind of just been under a lot of pressure, right? So some of the things that I've been hearing and the trending is honestly being proactive instead of reactive, really bad at that and managing chronic diseases better.

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And that does fall into that proactive reactive. I do think you need the insights to manage those and the correct partners to do that, but I love that we're having the conversations. Another big topic that came up was really preventing your emergency department visits because a lot of our residents are lost, right? They go to the emergency department headed towards like, really us creating and defining how we provide care and really being able to present that to CMS and other entities as we start going to value based care.

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But again, it goes all back to how do we capture the data, how do we capture our value and how do we present that? I love that we're thinking ahead instead of reacting, because I do feel like over the last 26 years, I've been handed a lot of reactions and like, let's make solutions quickly. And if we all work together like where we're strong and present something really great, I think we can turn the industry to where it needs to go for the trajectory of all of these new aging folks coming in wanting different services. Yeah. So I've been talking a lot about that senior housing in general without service, levels of care changing. I'm just loving the conversation and the evolution of the way that we take care of, of those around us that are aging

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16:25 - 00:16:45:00

Josh Crisp

Lindsey, you've been having awesome, engaging conversations for many, many years and thought leadership in the play. In our industry, you have a huge following on social media. Many of our listeners already follow you. But Lucas, it's always fun for us to introduce our listeners to new, exciting, emerging, great thought leaders. And that's what BTGvoice does.

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16:45 - 16:51

Lucas McCurdy

That's right, that's right. And I enjoy your car talk. That's been a theme for a while. Right. You've been doing that a good number of years.

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16:51 - 117:13

Lindsey Daugherty

It's about two years. I love it, honestly. And I get those ideas from people that I talk to. I keep my line open. So if someone messages me and wants to chat or brainstorm, that feeds my soul. So I will bring those up anonymously. So a lot of the subjects are actually from real people with real issues, and I just want to get feedback so that they don't have to have a sounding board.

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17:13 - 17:33

Lucas McCurdy

Yeah, exactly. Well, for those of you that don't follow Lindsey, you can find her on LinkedIn and probably some other places, too. She does her car talk, little videos that are very, very helpful and quick and helpful to the industry. Thank you for all you're doing. And, thank you for being a great partner to bridge the gap also.

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17:33 - 17:34

Lindsey Daugherty

Thank you, I appreciate it. Thank you.

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17:35 - 17:45

Lucas McCurdy

So, Josh, you know, we say you can get a btgvoice.com. Download this content and so much more. Connect with us on LinkedIn and other social platforms. And thanks for listening to another great episode of Bridge the Gap.

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Outro

Thanks for listening to Bridge the Gap podcast with Josh and Lucas. Connect with the BTG network team and use your voice to influence the industry by connecting with us at btgvoice.com.

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