In this episode of Bridge the Gap, recorded at the LeadingAge Annual Meeting in Nashville, Scott Code, Vice President, Center for Aging Services Technologies (CAST) at LeadingAge, shares insights into the evolving role of technology in senior living, discussing the challenges operators face and the strategies they can adopt to stay ahead.

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Recorded at the Hamilton CapTel booth.

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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 eight of Bridge the Gap, a podcast dedicated to informing, educating, and influencing the future of housing and services for seniors. The BTG network is powered by sponsors Accushield, Align, NIC MAP Vision, Procare HR, Sage, Hamilton Capital, ServiceMaster, The Bridge Group Construction, and Solinty and produced by Solinity Marketing. Bridge the Gap in three, two.

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00:45 - 00:56

Lucas McCurdy

Welcome to Bridge the Gap podcast, the senior living podcast with Josh and Lucas. Beautiful day here in Nashville at the Leading Age National Conference. And today we have Scott Code of Leading Age. Welcome to the show.

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00:56 - 00:57

Scott Code

Thank you. Happy to be here today.

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00:57 - 01:46

Lucas McCurdy

We're happy to be here and this has been a lot of fun. Actually, I've been in the industry for almost 15 years. I have never attended the National Leading Age conference, and I'm definitely coming back. I mean, there's no way I'm missing this again. We're here in the exhibit hall, and I love how you and your team at Leading Age have really been intentional around the sections of vendors.

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And so if you're looking for sales and marketing, you can kind of go to a section and see everybody there. And if you're looking for tech, there's kind of a tech thing which is really the center of our conversation today. That you are head of over all of the tech and how Leading Age is really managing that. Tell us more.

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01:46 - 03:18

Scott Code

I'm the Vice President of the Center for Aging Services Technologies, also known as CAST. And our mission is to help expedite the adoption, a thoughtful and strategic adoption, of technology and aging services. Which is sometimes very challenging because our membership is very broad. It's not just congregant settings, but home and community based programs.

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So we've been working on creating a lot of tools and resources for members to navigate this space. If you look around this exhibit hall, the technology area is huge, right? And it's hard to navigate what’s out there, what's going to meet the needs of each and individual organization. So we have a lot of tools in our website to help navigate that by products similar to what's here.

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We have white papers and selection guides to help members through that process. So you don't have to go to 50 different websites to find out about a product. You can go to our website and look through a product matrix. What features and functionalities each technology is. We have an online tool where a member answers to 8 to 10 questions and gives them a short list of vendors.

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To give them an idea of where they might want to look, and then we also publish case studies where providers are already using the technology. We talk about how it's implemented, their approach, how it's paying for it. No one wants to talk about how they're paying for it, but we push them to do that. And then lessons learned to share with others. And that's one of the things I love about this industry is especially nonprofits they're willing to share, like what's not working. And that's one of the things I really stress in our case studies is how what's not working and how the next person that's going to be using this technology doesn't have to go through those same kinds of growing pains.

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03:18 - 04:03

Josh Crisp

Well, and you nailed it because I think, traditionally, in our industry of senior care who candidly, probably up until recently was kind of behind the times on technology. But then when all the technology started emerging it just made operators, management companies, executives, their eyes spin, thinking, oh my gosh, it sounds cool. It looks cool. But how did you pick what? Because you can't often do everything you want to do. But what's the most strategic move? So what a valuable resource. And Lucas, we’re having a blast here. And how does that translate into attendance? It seems like this is the place to be. This is where everybody is. This is the largest expo I've seen in quite a while.

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04:03 - 04:29

Scott Code

Yeah, it's one of the biggest aging service provider events there are. And we have a pretty robust track of sessions that we do in 14 to 15 sessions. A lot of them are provider driven. I think that's what makes our education a little bit different. It's provider driven. We have an education committee that reviews and is very thoughtful about what is picked during the session. So I think that makes a big difference in terms of the quality content that you're seeing in some of the sessions.

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04:29 - 05:04

Lucas McCurdy

So, Scott, let's go back to basically we have a proliferation of tech that's entering into the space. And you mentioned the website. I didn't know that. That sounds like an extremely helpful resource. In your role and as you are analyzing all of this, what do you think the biggest challenge for operators is today when they're trying to up their game and adding technology to their community. Obviously, the residents are wanting more. And certainly in the future that's going to be.

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05:04 - 05:05

Scott Code

And their staff too.

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05:05 - 05:07

Lucas McCurdy

Their staff. Sure. What do you see?

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05:07 - 06:00

Scott Code

So, I mean, to be thoughtful about it, you need to be strategic in a lot of organizations that don't have a strategic plan. They don't. They might have a plan that they do every 2 or 3 years, but they really haven't figured out that IT strategy. And so more forward thinking providers are looking at their overall goals and objectives, pulling them apart and identifying technology applications to meet them.

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Because if you don't do that, you're adopting technology kind of in silo, and you might not even have the infrastructure to support it. So I know some communities are like, oh, I'm going to do this new web hosted service, but I don't have Wi-Fi. And they implement it. And then when the staff try to use this application, it doesn't work because they don't have the infrastructure. So the first thing I do, because people come to me like, what should I be doing? Like, what are you? What are your overall goals or your objectives for the next 2 to 3 years that should be guiding you? Not that's not what's in this exhibit hall or how some salesperson is able to convince you to buy some sort of product.

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06:00 - 06:01

Lucas McCurdy

Not the hottest.

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06:01 - 06:36

Scott Code

Yeah. So there's so many different things, you know, buzzing around right now and what's important. And I always encourage you to go back to your plan, what's important to you. Make sure that you have something that's going to enhance the experience for staff and also for residents. Because there's and to me, the most important thing is to build tools and resources for your staff.

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So if you don't have staff, you're not going to have residents because it's a very human centered industry, but there's so many technology applications and tools that are available. You can't ignore it. At this point, you're going to be left behind if you're not having some type of digital strategy for your staff and for the resident side of it as well.

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06:37 - 07:16

Josh Crisp

Well, and even to that point, you all have done a wonderful job at curating the right companies to be here to support that, because what you mentioned with the technology strategy and plan, so many organizations don't even have an IT division. You know, they're outsourcing. And oftentimes it's to a maybe a local, managed service provider that really other than that community maybe doesn't even dwell in the senior living space here. We've ran into even in the Expo Center, many different technology providers, managed service providers that are all in on the senior housing industry, and they can actually come alongside your organization and map that out for you 100%.

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07:16 - 08:05

Scott Code

I mean, there's a big industry for that. Because people don't have the internal capacity to do that, where you can outsource it to some of these consulting firms. Also, the other thing I'm starting to see, which is really exciting in our industry is the evolution of it, that role within senior living, it's evolving to to have those kinds of leaders be more involved in the overall decision making.

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So instead of being information technology, it's innovation and technology. So you're seeing roles of chief and of Hertz, chief information officer being chief innovation officer, where they have that more strategy type role. That's elevating technology to move away from like a cost center to something that's driving new business, new opportunities, new experiences for staff and residents. And you're starting to see that trend happening, though for the larger communities right now. It's really exciting because it's happening in other sectors, but it's really coming to our silo.

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08:05 - 08:15

Josh Crisp

So as intentional, as strategic as you are as your team at leading edges, I have to believe you're already all in on a snapshot, a foreshadowing because everybody that's here is already thinking, gosh, I just got here. You know, I can't leave yet. There's so much good there. So what what can you give us some teasers

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08:24 - 10:17

Scott Code

These three things are probably not a big surprise. The first one is that cyber security is always something that members are challenged with. You know, we learned a lot this year around, you know, CrowdStrike and Change Healthcare and other other types of things. And then also there's a new bill that's out around, having covered entities have some type of minimal cybersecurity, and that's going to potentially affect our members.

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Data integration and interoperability is always an issue because you have communities adopting all these different technologies, but they don't always talk to each other. And that's why it continues to be a huge problem. But some vendors are understanding that and creating APIs to make that integration a little bit more seamless. And then not surprising, it's everywhere.

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It's in my mind. It's getting over marketed. And the thing that I've been talking with a lot of members about is, the most important thing in my mind are these large language models. And how it can, it's not going to change or transform our organization, but it can transform individuals’ daily tasks. And, this summer we released a resource on large language models and aging services.

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How you can use these frontier models like ChatGPT or Gemini, to help a maintenance worker understand an error code, or a social worker come up with a new activity calendar. These are free tools that can almost that can that can help everyone within the aging services, save as a resource that kind of goes over 12 different roles and aging services, gives example prompts of how they they can use it, to give them a jumping board to like where to start because, it can really enhance the quality of life.

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And, you know, these tools aren't helpful if you're really good at something, but they can be really helpful if you have something you hate. So that's what I tell you. It's like if something you don't really like, use it, try it out. And that, you know, we're going to see more of that as these tools evolve. I just did a session this morning on large language models and there's still resistance to talking about it. I made the reference to it's kind of like – have you seen the movie Fight Club? What's the first rule of Fight club?

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10:17 - 10:18

Lucas McCurdy

Don't talk about Fight Club.

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10:18 - 10:20

Scott Code

What's the second rule of Fight Club?

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10:20 - 10:20

Lucas McCurdy

Don't talk about Fight Club. 

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10:20 - 10:41

Scott Code

Yes. So it's kind of like that's how I feel about large language models. People are resisting talking about it because they feel like they're not going to be authentic or they're cheating, but people need to be more transparent about how they're using it, where it works, where it doesn't work. It has a lot of capabilities, but also has limitations. And the more we talk about, the more we use it. I think it's going to help out  everyone within our workforce.

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10:41 - 10:47

Josh Crisp

Wow, Lucas, what a wealth of information. How lucky are we to get to sit down, Scott, and just talk about all things Leading Age?

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10:47 - 11:09

Lucas McCurdy

It is. It's awesome. Even the crowd here loves it. Everything you're saying, they're cheering in the background. They're just loving it. Leaning into it. No, we're obviously in the expo and the vendors have all sorts of games and booths and it's a lot of energy here. We've had so many great conversations, and we appreciate you taking time out of a very busy schedule here. We're going to let you get back. But, we really appreciate your time today, Scott.

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11:09 - 11:10

Scott Code

Thanks for having me.

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11:10 - 11:21

Lucas McCurdy

And for our listeners who want to learn more, you can contact those links or hit those links in the shownotes. You can go to btgvoice.com. Download this content and so much more. 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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