About the Author
Ted Teele is the CEO of Longevity Community Consultants. After experiencing a life-changing quintuple bypass surgery in 2019, Ted became deeply interested in longevity science. This inspired him to create Longevity Communities, which uses science, wellness and fun to help seniors live longer, healthier and happier lives.
In his blog, How Senior Living Providers Can Attract More Baby Boomers, Ted Teele, CEO of Longevity Community Consultants, explains his theory on how senior living providers can attract baby boomers by transforming their communities into Longevity Communities.
He emphasizes how scientific wellness can improve cognitive health, prevent dementia and make senior living more appealing to health-conscious seniors. By adopting similar strategies, many communities can increase their occupancy and residents’ satisfaction by aligning better with what today’s seniors want from the aging experience.
Shifting the Narrative: From “The Place You Go to Die” to Vibrant Longevity Communities
As mentioned in my earlier white paper on A New Blueprint for Supporting Healthy Aging (please click here) several surveys, including one by “A Place for Mom,” highlight a stark reality: about 90% of seniors say that they never want to live in senior living communities. Why?
Many perceive senior living communities as “the place you go to die.” This negative perception has steadily increased the average age of admission to senior living communities, which has resulted in significant lost revenue from empty apartments across much of the industry.
So how can Senior Living providers enhance their product to be attractive to significantly more than 10% of the market?
They can transform into Longevity Communities.
A Longevity Community will make it easier and more fun for seniors to live healthier, happier, and longer lives. This value proposition is immensely more attractive to Baby Boomers than “the place you go to die”.
In other words, a longevity community is an engineered Blue Zone
Scientific Wellness
The foundation of Longevity Communities will be “Scientific Wellness” as described in ‘The Age of Scientific Wellness‘ by the biologist Leroy “Lee” Hood, MD, PhD (a living legend for his groundbreaking contributions to DNA sequencing and for pioneering the field of Systems Biology), and his brilliant long time associate Nathan Price, PhD, both of The Buck Institute for Research of Aging
Scientific Wellness is 21st century approach to health and wellness utilizing rigorous science. There are 4 P’s of Scientific Wellness: redicting diseases before they manifest clinically, reventing diseases, ersonalized recommendations, and articipating actively in your healthcare.
So What is the Low-Hanging Fruit for Senior Providers?
Fortunately, existing Senior Living communities have a high ROI opportunity to begin the transformation into Longevity Communities (or at least to begin experimenting with the concept) by implementing a Scientific Wellness based cognitive improvement program.
The first Senior Providers to take this path will gain a strategic leadership position in the industry.
Combating Dementia and Improving Cognitive Skills with a Cognitive Improvement Program Based on Scientific Wellness
Dementia is a condition we all hope to keep at bay (including seniors), and now, emerging evidence suggests it can be delayed, slowed, or even (in some cases) reversed.
Even for those without the fear of dementia, preserving mental sharpness is a priority for many. The good news is that cognitive skills such as memory, attention, and mental agility can be improved, whether you’re dealing with a specific health condition or simply looking to optimize a healthy brain.
A cognitive improvement program rooted in Scientific Wellness could make a real difference for many seniors, integrating the essential Longevity Community elements included in my earlier White Paper, and as outlined below.
Rigorous scientific validation is critical to prove the health and cognitive benefits of these programs. With solid scientific analysis from a reputable research organization, such as the Buck Institute, the results will be trustworthy and valuable. This will not only be important for participants but it would also help immeasurably in the community’s marketing efforts.
These programs could be tailored and implemented across Independent Living, Assisted Living, Skilled Nursing, and Memory Care settings.
How would a Cognitive Improvement Program Work?
Assessment Using Digital Twins
A Cognitive Improvement Program would start with a comprehensive assessment of each participant, assessing key biomarkers for cognitive health, lifestyle habits (such as smoking frequency), and cognitive function.
Then, as described in The Age of Scientific Wellness (p248), we would “simulate each individual’s unique physiology (top down) and biochemistry (bottoms up) in a computer, creating a ‘digital twin’.”
This digital twin would identify both genetic and lifestyle-related risk factors for cognitive decline, pinpointing actionable areas that could benefit from targeted interventions.
The digital twin would also enable users to manipulate variables such as smoking frequency, avg. sleep, aerobic exercise frequency, blood pressure, alcohol consumption, and various blood biomarkers, etc, People could see the effect of certain lifestyle changes on their “mean time to dementia” graph. The visual impact of these changes might help turn abstract health advice into actionable goals.
Participants would receive personalized recommendations, including dietary adjustments, physical exercise, and cognitive exercises.
Keys to Program Success
It will be vitally important to work with a reputable scientific organization, such as the Buck Institute, that would utilize Scientific Wellness to set up a scientifically-valid program. The not-for-profit Phenome Health, founded by the aforementioned Lee Hood (who also is CEO), has extensive experience in this area. They have a mission to use a Scientific Wellness approach and to “pioneer the use of big data to enhance wellness and avoid disease”.
Behavioral change requires expert guidance, so there is a benefit to utilizing experienced professional resources to direct the programming at the community level. An example of such a provider is Active Wellness, whose founder and Chairman is Jill Kinney. It is additionally important to find friendly coaches ideally with both senior living and Scientific Wellness experience.
Also critical is a supportive, knowledgeable, and passionate community and (provider) corporate level staff, who would work closely with the program administrators to implement the programming and to foster a supportive, inclusive environment, ensuring that participants feel motivated and engaged.
The longevity-focused technology underlying the program would provide:
- AI-driven coaching that knows your medical history and biology
- Personalized recommendations with educational detail
- Gamification (makes it fun)
- The ability to invite your friends (more fun)
How does the Community make improving cognition easier and more enjoyable; while also improving results?
For most people, having access to a scientifically valid cognitive improvement program would be difficult. Which is why so few people do it.
The Community makes everything easier by organizing all aspects of the program, so participants just need to show up.
And it is more fun because you would be doing it with your friends. Imagine a group of friends heading to a brain training session together, followed by a healthy meal. Lots of fun and camaraderie!
Results will also be better because of the support the group will provide each participant.
Simply, the Community Concept is tailor made for creating an effective, easy, and fun cognitive program.
A Brain Training Example- BrainHQ
While there are a number of brain training programs on the market, BrainHQ from Posit Science has been utilized in hundreds of studies. It was founded by Dr. Michael Merzenich, a University of California, San Francisco research scientist who discovered that your brain remains “plastic” (capable of chemical, then structural and functional change) throughout your life.
Tom Brady’s experience:
Tom Brady won three Super Bowls early in his career, then went 10 years without winning another. At that time, according to a story told in The “Age of Scientific Wellness” (page 168), Brady was concerned that his cognitive processing wasn’t as quick as early in his career and he started using BrainHQ “in an attempt to sharpen his mind and believed it was improving his on-field performance.”
Brady went on to win four more Super Bowls, including one with Tampa at age 43- five years older than any other Super Bowl winning quarterback.
My personal experience:
While I sadly have no aspirations to win a Super Bowl, I have recently started using BrainHQ to improve my own cognitive skills. Amazingly, I started noticing improvements within the first couple of hours of training. I’ve been carving out 15-20 minute “brain stretches” at different points in the day (even while sitting at an airport), and the cognitive benefits are noticeable.
As they say, individual results will vary, but if you think of brain training as comparable to physical training, most people benefit from regular exercise.
Why Would Resident Satisfaction Increase?
Most of us derive happiness from social engagements with people who care about us.
Participants in this program will bond and create a caring, supportive group of friends.
This camaraderie not only makes the process enjoyable but boosts satisfaction, especially when participants experience noticeable improvements in their cognitive abilities.
There is a pervasive narrative that memory and other cognitive processing worsen steadily with age, but brain training can actually improve cognitive skills, which would certainly increase resident satisfaction.
Three Components of the HIGH ROI for Senior Living Providers
1. Recovering lost revenue because of an Enhanced Value Proposition:
While occupancy in Senior Living has been increasing, most providers have a material amount of lost revenue from unoccupied apartments. Recovering this lost revenue would likely significantly improve profitability since the incremental revenue would have a high gross margin (since fixed costs are already paid).
Unoccupied apartments could be filled by seniors interested in improving their cognitive skills, while also enjoying the other benefits provided by Senior Living.
A cognitive improvement program can significantly enhance the community’s value proposition. Senior living no longer needs to be seen as “the place to go to die” but as a vibrant community where residents can make friends, enjoy activities, and work on their cognitive and overall health.
Imagine a sales person asking: “are you interested in a fun, easy way to improve your cognitive skills?”
While not every prospect may be attracted by this value proposition, a substantial segment will appreciate this shift, improving occupancy and potentially lowering the average age of new residents. One option would be for providers to offer free participation in the program to incentivize someone to move in earlier than they otherwise would.
2. New Sources of Revenue from Non-Residents:
Communities could open the program to area residents and adult family members as “non-resident members,” generating revenue and creating a pipeline of prospective future residents.
3. ROI benefits of Enhanced Resident Satisfaction:
Cognitive programs offer clear benefits to residents, allowing them to experience improved memory and cognitive skills, which will add to their daily joy and satisfaction. This would no doubt positively affect average length of stay, and provide a highly desirable and distinctive benefit throughout the marketing and sales processes.
Profitable Turnaround Investment Opportunities
There is a big opportunity for new ownership to leverage Scientific Wellness and longevity to transform poorly performing communities.
Such underperforming assets could be purchased investors and revitalized as Longevity Communities. In other words, the acquirer could improve the product and value proposition by adding a cognitive improvement program based on Scientific Wellness.
This strategy can lead to increased profitability through improved occupancy, additional revenue streams, and higher resident satisfaction.
Final Thoughts – For my colleagues and friends in the Senior Living Industry
Would you like to help improve the industry’s public perception? Would you like our market attractiveness to be more than 10%?
The high ROI low hanging fruit is a cognitive improvement program based on Scientific Wellness as described above.
Are you convinced?
Do you feel that a cognitive improvement program based on Scientific Wellness could boost resident satisfaction, lower the average age of admission, increase average length of stay, and improve occupancy?
If so, and if you are interested in brainstorming about your company, please reach out to me on LinkedIn (Ted Teele) or email me at ted.teele@gmail.com.
No matter what, please feel free to reach out with questions and/or feedback.
Please share this post and please follow my company Longevity Community Consultants on LinkedIn.
Thanks for reading this. And here’s to your good health!
Ted Teele
CEO, Longevity Community Consultants