Candid Care: 2025 Pulse Report

Candid Care Ep 15: 2025 Pulse Report

Welcome to Candid Care, brought to you by M3. I’m Sarah Kekula, M3’s Director Of Senior Living And Social Services practice, along with Talia Fletcher, Risk Manager at M3. Each episode of Candid Care promises to challenge your current thinking about the long-term care industry and introduce concepts to improve your organization and advance the field from executive risks to key strategies. We’ll approach each topic from multiple angles and invite leaders with unique perspectives to join in the conversation.

Please be advised this podcast and the recommendations throughout are not intended as legal advice and should not be used as or relied upon as legal advice. This podcast is for general informational purposes only.

00:47 Sara Kekula

Today we’re getting together to talk about kind of the key trends that we are anticipating from our perspective for long term care providers. And the fun part about today is I actually have no idea what you’re going to say and you have no idea what I’m going to say is that that’s right, I mean, just to verify for the listeners?

01:04 Talia Pletcher

Yep!

01:08 Sara Kekula

So what we did is we pulled together kind of our top four to five areas that we think long-term care providers should be thinking about, again, as we look at 2025, but from emerging and evolving risk perspective or said differently, as I always like to say, what’s keeping you up at night. This could be one of those very topics. Talia, Are you ready?

01:33 Talia Pletcher

Well, I can kick it off. My first trend to take note of for 2025 is climate change and weather-related events. So that’s for our industry and healthcare, certainly from an insurance standpoint, it affects the property market.

However, from more of an emergency preparedness standpoint, I think we have seen in the last year, quite a bit of weather-related events, floods, hurricanes, fires, across the country and that has been impacting business operations. Evacuations, you know, making sure practices are tight, staff understand what to do if these weather-related events do affect your buildings. And working through that and putting strategies in place to mitigate risk I think is going to be huge for 2025 and beyond. So that was my first,

02:25 Sara Kekula

OK. So that is on my that’s on side. We got one for one. It’s funny that you say that because I think in addition to what you just said. I’m also thinking about the budget implications for providers because all of that is a capital spend like you mentioned. With respect like staffing and or improving some betterments that groups might have to make within you know respective buildings. But also you’ve got an increased cost for the property placement from insurance perspective.

So, the other piece I would say in that regard is the what’s the antidote? Providers should be thinking about maybe what workforce in the past doesn’t make sense for the future.

So it’s so funny. We at least got one for one, I’m excited.

All right, now I’ll go. This feels a little bit like maybe I’m stating the obvious, but for me, one of the items that’s just continues to be top of mind is network security strategy. Keyword being strategy. I think providers are you know I’d certainly encourage them to continue to get away from that, I’m going to say, “whack a mole approach,” and be thinking from a strategic lands. What is this like for us 12 to 18 to 24 months and beyond?

What’s the investment we need to make in our infrastructure. Who are our third-party vendors that we’re contracting with. What is our risk transfer strategy look like via the insurance policy? And what is our ongoing and consistent employee education and training look like?

Because more often than not, when there’s something that happens with a breach or incident, it’s employee driven. We click on that link that we shouldn’t have.

I again I focus on the keyword strategy. It’s about that forward-looking kind of perspective. What do we want to consider doing? What do we want to invest? How do we prevent severity events from? And so forth. So I don’t know if that made your list but that’s always on mine.

04:10 Talia Pletcher

That is definitely on my list.

I had a few other items because I knew that would probably be, you know, one thing that both of us wanted to talk about because it’s ever changing. It’s ongoing. You can’t open up your e-mail or the news without seeing you on alert or some sort of you know cyber security event happening across the healthcare.

So I  definitely thing continue to strengthen that and investing time into understanding where you’re currently at as an organization and where you need to be is huge for your incident response planning.

04:41 Sara Kekula

Absolutely. And those tabletop exercises, kind of goes back to emergency preparedness comment from before.

04:47 Talia Pletcher

I think emergency preparedness is going to be a theme throughout just because every aspect and trend go forward does have that that piece to it. So my next trend that I think to be very important to the operation is supply chain disruptions and inflation.

I think from a trending perspective, the impact overall on a business operation is huge. We have so many different things outside of our control outside of healthcare that are occurring. We have other industries being affected. You know, I think of the Food and Agriculture industry being affected by bird flu. How is that impacting your food costs at a building level. Labor issues is other industries also affecting the work being done within your buildings with third party vendors.

I certainly also think geopolitical issues can also affect your supply chain and then therefore increasing costs of where you get your products from. That’s another big piece, I think, to watch and plan to prepare for go forward. What is our plan? Do we have backups to our backups for supply chain? Let’s not put all of our eggs in one basket, so to speak.

That’s to me huge. No matter what happens throughout the year.

05:58 Sara Kekula

Yeah, that’s a good one. That’s a good call out just to think about those things outside of your control in essence. And so this is kind of funny, this is tied to my one of my themes is not exactly the same, but one of the things that I think is of paramount importance for providers to continue to think about, and this is kind of squishy and soft, if you will. It’s more philosophical, but the ability to be nimble and pivot so very, very much to your point Talia.

I think providers are resilient. We got through a pandemic. It was so hard. Providers, they’re still continuing to show up serving our mission. Their clients, residents and so forth, but.

Now it’s about how do you respond to that environment? So in addition to maybe those emergency situations, what are you identifying as a new opportunity?

New service lines, new growth areas, you know, like I know the concept too, of longevity communities and emphasis on improving brain health. I’m not saying that’s something everybody should consider, but does it make sense for your organization go forward? What are those new areas of opportunity? What’s revenue generating etcetera?

I think the ability to be nimble and respond quickly will be the differentiator. And then, how does your risk strategy align, you know that’s what I always think about.

So that’s kind of my how I looked at that was how do we build on the resiliency that we’re you know and have established. How do we continue to nimble and pivot when the market conditions are forcing us? That’s my lens.

OK, I’m gonna speak to my next one. And I kind of put this under technology optimization, specifically how to impact quality outcomes. And I look at this as a continued emerging trend, it’s not new Per SE, I should say evolving trend, excuse me, it’s not brand new, but rather it’s how do we continue to familiarize ourselves with the new technologies that are out there. How can it result in better quality outcomes for the services that we’re providing? Which of course affects you know, our ability to do business.

So that was something that I had had thought about. And that includes AI, I mean that to me is predictive analytics generative AI as a component of that wearable devices. How can you track health indicators? Monitor red flags, etcetera. Just as an example, the technology is coming out so quickly it can be hard for providers to stay up to date.

So how do you respond to that? Do you develop some sort of work group or cohort to help get an IDT approach to looking at technology that might be able to impact your business? Build better efficiencies, better quality outcomes. That to me is just under that bucket of technology optimization, and I think there’s continued opportunity in that regard.

So I don’t know if that made your list.

08:39 Talia Pletcher

That definitely made my list that was on there I think, to your point, it’s not a new trend, it’s evolving. AI and technology is here and it’s here to stay. And I think we need to embrace it in healthcare and in long term care.

You know, going back to your point of like the strategies to put in place having in the acceptable use policy, your staff are going to use AI whether they think using ChatGPT is the right method. They’re going to want to use AI technology for efficiency, so making sure there’s acceptable use policies and procedures in place so they understand the right way to use AI. And not violate, you know, HIPAA or any other kind of privacy issues.

So that I fully agree is an evolving trend. I also think too from an efficiency standpoint going back to that, looking at how we can use what we already have in place, our, tech providers, our EHR providers probably already have AI use to help you leverage your medical record technology. So calling on your current partners and vendors who are already working with you, I think is a perfect place to start  to see where we can implement AI within the operation.

09:51 Sara Kekula

It’s such a good point. What’s the new add-on?  What button can they turn? What haven’t we used in the past? Etc. Yeah I so agree with you there.

10:00 Talia Pletcher

Leveraging what you already have, you know, I think that’s the biggest bang for your buck in my opinion.

I also think too are stakeholders, the residents, families, I don’t think, or I do think that they will be asking operators and administrators and leaders in healthcare. What are you, doing? What are you using? What do you protections do you have in place if you are using AI? So being prepared to answer those questions for your stakeholders will also be a way to prepare for use of technology and AI.

I also think too from, you know, going back to a labor perspective, which I suspect labor and employment is going to be one of the things we talk about today. But looking at that perspective and using AI technology, you know, certainly AI can’t replace everything. Every job that we do or not even replaced or enhance everything that we. But certainly I think family members will ask, you know, what are you doing to make your work flow more efficient?

You know, using the term of, well, we just don’t have enough staff that may not cut it anymore in certain departments. Family members are also tech savvy and seeing what’s out there and may may inquire like, hey, can’t you use AI to do XY and Z function with an HR or business office or other departments that might not be direct care? Thinking about how you may answer questions from stakeholders in the public about your

11:24 Sara Kekula

So appreciate what you said and yes, I do have workforce on my list, although we have not talked about it yet and I kind of elaborated a little bit. I said workforce innovation. Like to me as we know, we’re going to, we’re going to struggle to find talent like we are going to continue to do so. So if we know that to be a continued truth, where do we find efficiencies through things such as adoption of AI?

And then how do you, you know, in essence build those guard rails so you can help your team better understand what’s acceptable or what’s not acceptable us of AI, to your very excellent point.

Also think about like upscaling. And if we’re going to bring employees in, how do we redefine success within, you know that employee’s time with us? You know, maybe we redefine success and maybe it’s only a few years. Maybe it is looking to improve an employee’s skill set with us. Maybe it’s a increased focus on an apprenticeship model, if you will.

To me, innovation from a workforce perspective, I think everybody’s talking about all the industries and you know, I would even encourage looking outside and of long-term care and thinking about what is working in the food and agricultural space as an example or manufacturing companies.

And the other component of this is when I think about innovation, it’s very much correlated to how do we respond to the current workforce demands. And I go right to generational differences. You know, we have to have a balanced approach. What may have worked five years ago, the question you need to be asking ourselves is, does that work for our employee population today? Are we meeting their needs or are we putting them at risk of going down the street to another provider. So kind of considering your workplace culture, your Wellness strategy, what are some things you can put into place to continue to recruit and retain the top talent in the industry?

I think it’s a question to continue to ask ourselves what makes sense. And be aware biases and assumptions that we might have. How do you gather the information from your employee population so that you as a provider and an employer can make better, more informed decisions of that spend when it comes to work, site benefits offerings, etcetera, etcetera.

So yes, I had workforce on here. I feel like that could be a whole other conversation.

13:44 Talia Pletcher

I have that labor, employment, workforce of the above. And I I fully agree with the points you made and I going back to the workplace culture, I think is huge thing moving forward.

You know union activity is also something that we always watch monitor in health care and going back to your culture piece. Having a pulse on what’s going on with your employees and what they want. I mean that that could make or break their decision to bring in a Union. I couldn’t agree more Those are all excellent points.

14:14 Sara Kekula

Do you have anything else on your list? Any final comments?

14:16 Talia Pletcher

I do have one more. Board activity and governance. I think that is a trend that we’ll see go forward of how your board responds to what goes on within the operation. The board activity, I think too from a generational perspective as we see board members retire, new board members coming on, different generations joining boards together.

I think that the questions or things that they may ask or see or want to talk about within the organization will vary from maybe years. Generations coming up, Gen. Z and the millennial generation that are coming into leadership roles or wanting to join boards and be active in their community. They may ask questions or may push back on traditional models.I think being prepared for a change in generation of your boards if you do have a board that oversees your organization, I think that’s a trend to watch out for as well.

15:11 Sara Kekula

Yeah. And that’s kind of following the heels of the activity that happened in 2024 because I know we talked to a number of groups and clients that were really reassessing kind of their governance structure and totality. And again on the heels of risk conversation, what does that look like.

So I think that’s a really good point and something you think about kind of general to your just like the workforce how to respond to our boards or even subcommittees and what have you appropriately.

I am so impressed. OK we were pretty good. We’re like almost aligned with all of our things, which is pretty good.

I think you know at the end of the day this industry again is one of the most resilient that I know. I mean yes, I have a bias. I’m fine with that, but it is and so I think it’s about, you know, looking to the future, understanding what we anticipate as potential roadblocks and then determine what’s going to be our practice strategy to respond or how do we want to tackle this, you know before it comes up.

But I’m grateful for your time Talia, as always. I love our conversations and I look forward to the next one.

Thank you for listening to Candid Care brought to you by M3. Connect with us at m3ins.com for access to more resources, more insight and to join the conversation