Argentum CEO: Next 3 years will shape the next decade of seniors’ lives

While older operators still have many short-term challenges to overcome, what they do before 2026 could well set the stage for the industry in the next decade.

Argentum CEO James Balda believes the industry is at a tipping point between the Covid-19 pandemic and the looming opportunities of the near future.

On the one hand, he believes that operators still have a lot of work to do in terms of increasing costs and staffing. He also sees that this pressure will ease in the next one to two years and believes that the current period provides an excellent opportunity to plan for the future.

“This is an opportunity to think about where the industry will go in the next 10, 15, 20 years,” Balda told Senior Housing News. “You have to manage and work from day to day, but you also have to think about the long term.”

This opportunity is reflected in Argentum’s strategic plan, which the housing industry’s parent advocacy organization launched earlier this month.

The three-year plan focuses on four big goals: to bring an additional 250,000 workers into the industry; establishing quality measures for almost a third of the members of the organization; improving the perception of the industry by legislators; and expanding access to care for the elderly, for example through the middle market.

But Balda thinks even further than a few years, and what the industry does now may well determine its success or failure in the coming decade.

“It’s more than three years. This is a 10-year vision,” he said.

Vision of the future

When it comes to staffing, Balda sees no easy solutions. But he sees individual strategies that can help solve the industry’s overall problems.

He believes that over the next three years, operators will need to expand and advance career opportunities through apprenticeships or mentoring, and create additional support programs for workers. He also sees the need for legislation that will expand the population of older people, such as through immigration.

“It will be immigration reform, it will be mentoring decisions, it will be partnerships with four-year universities and two-year community colleges,” Balda said.

Another important goal for the future is to bring the value of the industry to the rest of the world. But operators will need to show that value, not just talk about it, which is why he also believes operators should “measure what matters.”

While the industry has done a good job of tracking business metrics like occupancy and profits, Balda believes operators should also track and demonstrate quality to potential customers and their families.

While one form of this is provided by third parties such as Great Place to Work, Fortune, or JD Power, Balda does not see it as the only tool operators can use. And he believes the industry should do more to select specific metrics to track.

“Now it’s better for us to come together as an industry to identify and prioritize these measures,” he added.

Another goal – and somewhat evergreen for Argentum – is to educate legislators about what older life is and who it is for. The Covid-19 pandemic has shed light on the industry, for better or worse, and it has helped lawmakers understand it better.

“But, generally speaking, there is still a lot of confusion between us and skilled nursing; or us and more… 55+, golf course communities,” said Balda.

For legislators to better understand the lives of older people, the older life industry needs to better understand legislators, namely why they feel what they do.

“We are going to continue to educate legislators, but first we need to … understand what legislators think of us, what policymakers think of us, and what ultimately affects their perception of us,” Balda said. “Based on that, we’ll have a baseline from which we can start improving the storytelling… and measure over time whether their perception of us is changing.”

As with staffing, Balda sees no single solution to the industry’s access to health care problem. But the opportunity is great, exemplified by the millions of Americans who would otherwise like to live as an older person but can’t afford it.

Therefore, he sees a real need to involve lawmakers in the hope of passing a law to improve access to health care.

“Anything we can do to create policy solutions that give operators a little more incentive to get into this space and a little more ability to operate within reasonable limits, I think that’s something we should seriously look at,” he said. Balda. .

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