Despite economic pressures, 48% of long-term care providers that offer skilled nursing plan to keep doing so for the foreseeable future, according to responses to a newly released Ziegler CFO Hotline survey.
The chief financial officers and other financial professionals responding to the survey primarily work at not-for-profit senior living and care organizations, “with a heavy bent toward life plan communities” as well as a few freestanding nursing facilities, Lisa McCracken, Ziegler’s director of senior living research, told the McKnight’s Business Daily.
Thirty-six percent of the survey participants whose organizations offer skilled nursing said that their organizations already have downsized their skilled nursing footprints, with just 2% saying their organizations have exited skilled nursing entirely. The remaining 13% of respondents who work for organizations offering skilled nursing said that their organizations have not yet downsized their skilled nursing footprints but plan to do so soon.
One respondent noted that the downsizing of a skilled nursing component was the result of staffing challenges, especially related to registered nurses. “Also, hospital chains getting into skilled nursing, skilled nursing at home, home health, etc., has decreased the number of referrals,” the participant said.
Another respondent said: “We would like to downsize our nursing home, but state government is slow/unwilling to give approval. If we are able to downsize our nursing home, then we can build more independent living apartment homes.”
For the current survey, respondents also were asked a question that was asked in March 2020, August 2020 and March 2021 about their growth plans over the next two years. Data show that interest in affiliations and acquisitions is at its highest since March 2020.
Overall, workforce shortages were among the top challenges respondents said their organizations face, followed by construction pressures and financial costs associated with growth. One respondent expressed a need to add more independent living units “to spread fixed costs over more units, keep fee increase down and improve margins.”
To read more about the survey results, see McKnight’s Senior Living.
