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Voices: Rob Lewis, President of Fynn

This article is sponsored by Fynn. In this Voices Interview, Senior Housing News sits down with Rob Lewis, President of the senior living operating platform Fynn, to talk about how Fynn makes a value-based care approach possible in senior living by providing deeper resident insights to improve care efficiencies and experience. He also explains ​​how with improved efficiencies and a better care experience, residents can live happier and healthier longer, employees can succeed, and operators can improve margins.

Senior Housing News: What career experiences do you most draw from in your role today?

Rob Lewis: For the past 20-plus years, my career has been centered on leveraging technology to drive efficiencies. I’ve worked in various industries from logistics and e-commerce to health care, but the common thread has always been finding ways to minimize unnecessary work while maximizing value. The most valuable career experience that I draw from is the simple strategy of asking “Why?” until you get to the root cause of a problem or a fundamental objective.

Once you get to the root, then you can really start formulating a plan to address the issue rather than treating the symptoms alone. That’s my “Consulting 101,” and it helps everyone involved to open up and think about the problem instead of the immediate need.

I draw on so many elements of my professional life in the day-to-day, but my personal experience is probably more influential in the work I do.

My mom passed a number of years ago, and when she did, my father, who had Parkinson’s and dementia, moved in with my family and me. We cared for him for a year and a half until his disease progressed to the point where he needed to move into a memory care community. He moved from South Carolina to a dedicated memory care community outside of DC, which is close to one of my siblings, but several hundred miles away from me.

I quickly started to see firsthand some of the issues that others in this industry face — the most important being the difficulty of understanding a loved one’s day-to-day wellness. Communicating with my father was obviously challenging, and when I had questions about his health, trying to get someone at the community on the phone without distracting them from what they were doing was quite frankly a problem. That experience had a direct influence on me and subsequently Fynn, the product as well. A better understanding of the resident, and their well-being, and the transparency and sharing of that information are fundamental to what Fynn is doing.

Why should value-based care be a top priority for senior living leaders?

Value-based care is about driving better outcomes and care efficiencies for the residents. This is important in senior living for a couple of reasons. One of which is pretty obvious — the financial implications. But there’s also an emotional benefit to value-based care that often gets overlooked. Better health outcomes for seniors impact how those individual residents feel. That has a direct impact on how the family and the larger external ecosystem feel.

Then there’s a trickle-down effect. If the resident and the family are happy, then the staff is naturally going to be positively impacted by that, and they’re going to feel better about the job that they are doing. When seniors live longer and happier, the staff is engaged, and turnover drops. If the families are engaged, the occupancy stabilizes, demand rises, and the margins improve. It’s a symbiotic relationship where everyone thrives.

What role does technology play in empowering senior living providers to pursue a value-based care approach?

One of the keys to a successful value-based care approach is data. Collecting and sharing accurate information about the residents in a timely fashion empowers the staff and the care providers to make timely, informed decisions. In turn, it will minimize hospital readmissions and keep the residents in the communities longer. Having that actionable data at your fingertips is unbelievably important, and technology has enabled that.

Better data powers interventions that improve the outcomes. Additionally, sharing that information with the larger health care ecosystem creates a team dynamic that gets everyone engaged. Frankly, it provides better career outcomes for the staff because we’re giving them the information they need to be successful in their specific roles. Technology plays a fundamental role in value-based care.

How is Fynn’s operating platform unique in helping communities improve care efficiencies and outcomes?

Fynn takes a novel approach to create a deeper understanding of the residents. We’re combining information about their physical health with observed behavioral health data, and the marriage between those two is so impactful. We’re collecting behavioral information with every interaction we have with the resident. It doesn’t matter what your role in the community is or how you’re interacting with that resident.

Whether you deliver an ADL or you’re simply having a conversation with a resident in the hall, we’re recording how that resident appears to the staff. It creates this data diary, which allows us to trend what normal behavior for an individual looks like. Then once we’ve got that normalized trend, we start looking for deviations, whether they’re positive or negative. Obviously, the negative is what everybody gravitates to, but as soon as we see a negative deviation, we can start correlating those deviations to environmental factors that might have some influence, then intervene appropriately and proactively.

“Appropriately” is a key word at Fynn. Ensuring we’re collecting and acting on this information responsibly is of critical importance. We’ve partnered with a leading neuroethicist to help us navigate the ethical nuances of data collection to maximize helpful insights while respecting the dignity of the individual.

The bottom line is that we’re helping the care staff really focus on building relationships and gaining insight to understand what is driving resident behaviors. They can then use that information proactively to create more satisfied residents, and more satisfied families.

What indicators has Fynn identified to help operators make proactive changes to resident care and staffing, and how have they impacted net operating income (NOI)?

In Fynn’s early deployments of data, we saw a lot of actionable indicators that operators are still using today. For example, we’re able to pretty accurately pinpoint when sundowning starts presenting in various individual residents within communities — very specifically within the level of half an hour. This has allowed community teams to collaborate with other health providers to adjust things like medications. It also allows the staff to inform the rest of the team as to what to expect on a particular shift.

These factors have empowered staff to have conversations with families earlier to adjust people’s mindsets, and there is data to support it. We’ve identified a number of instances in communities where there is interpersonal friction between the staff and specific residents.

For whatever reason, you never know what someone’s personal history is, or why they might have an issue with an individual, but we can see it because we can slice and dice our behavioral data in lots of different ways. One of those ways is by the individual care staff. This has enabled individual communities to strategically reassign staff members or provide opportunities for training.

Regarding NOI, it gets slightly more complicated. We’re fairly early, and there are a lot of factors that impact NOI. What I can tell you is that the operators we’ve been working with have seen it help close the back door of the community. It helps improve the retention, satisfaction, and length of stay of the residents, which are all contributors to higher NOI.

Why should operators invest in technology to address staffing challenges?

Technology allows for the human side of care to flourish. Without technology, it’s a daunting task. Frankly, we’re all understaffed, we know that. Technology takes the guesswork out of the job. It empowers the employees to focus on their true intention, which is building those trusted relationships with the residents and other care staff.

Caregivers are hired to do a particular job. They’re not hired as administrators or data analysts. They’re there to help people. Technology empowers them to do that, and it also gives them a voice. When it’s done right, tech lets staff members be heard and valued. The best care staff have been around, and they intuitively know things about the residents that most others wouldn’t pick up on. If we give our care staff the technology to take what’s in their brains and put it into a system easily and efficiently, everybody benefits.

Finish this sentence: “In the senior living industry, 2023 will be the year of…”

…embracing technology to better understand and proactively care for seniors.

Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Fynn’s comprehensive solution is designed specifically for successful senior living. Our technology is user-informed, built, and tested to meet the unique needs of senior living stakeholders. For more on leveraging technology to improve care quality, efficiencies, and outcomes, visit fynn.io or contact sales@fynn.io.

The Voices Series is a sponsored content program featuring leading executives discussing trends, topics and more shaping their industry in a question-and-answer format. For more information on Voices, please contact sales@agingmedia.com.

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