Mastering Effective Assisted Living Operations | A Comprehensive Guide
Nov 11, 2024
Running an assisted living facility is like juggling many balls at once. You need to take care of residents, manage staff, and follow all the rules. It can be tough, but it's also very rewarding. In this guide, we'll share some key tips to help you become a great assisted living operator.
Check out the video, too:
Stay Involved in Your Facility
As an assisted living operator, you can't just sit back and watch. Even if you plan to run things from afar someday, you need to be hands-on at first. By being there every day, you can:
- Spot and fix problems quickly
- Make sure everything runs smoothly
- Build a strong foundation for your business
The more you're there at the start, the easier it will be to manage things later on.
Talk, Talk, Talk!
Good communication is super important. You need to talk clearly with everyone involved in your facility. This includes:
- Your facility manager
- Your staff
- Insurance companies
- Attorneys
- State officials
When everyone knows what's going on, things run more smoothly. Be open about your challenges and what you expect from others. This builds trust and helps avoid misunderstandings.
Set Clear Goals
When you first take over a facility, make sure everyone knows what you expect. This could include:
- How often to attend meetings
- How quickly to answer emails
- How many residents you need to make money
When people know what you want, they can work better towards those goals.
How to Get Residents in Assisted Living
Getting new residents is a key part of running a successful facility. Here are some tips:
- Make your facility welcoming and clean
- Offer great care and activities for residents
- Build good relationships with local hospitals, rehab facilities, and case workers
- Use social media and your website to show what life is like in your facility
- Host open houses or tours for potential residents and their families
How to Hire the Right Staff in Assisted Living
Your staff is the heart of your facility. Here's how to find great people:
- Look for people who are caring and patient
- Check their qualifications and experience
- Do background checks
- Ask about their goals in caregiving
- Provide good training and opportunities to grow
Overcoming Challenges
One big challenge is finding the right balance between being hands-on and stepping back as your business grows. You need to:
- Stay involved without micromanaging
- Delegate tasks but be there when needed
- Keep talking with your manager and key staff
Wrapping Up
To be a great assisted living operator, you need to:
- Be actively involved in your facility
- Communicate clearly with everyone
- Set clear expectations
- Focus on getting and keeping residents
- Hire and train great staff
By doing these things, you can build a strong and successful assisted living business.
If you need help writing a solid business plan to help you buy an assisted living facility, download our free Business Plan Checklist.
Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
Show full transcript 👇
Transcript
00:00:00
hi everybody i'm brandon gustafson i own and operate two assisted living facilities and i created this channel to help people like you learn the ins and outs of investing in assisted living welcome to assisted living investing [Music] in my last video i talked about how how much does an assisted living operator make what's that process like how much can you expect to make so go ahead and watch that video to get some information on that today we're going to be talking about how to be an effective assisted
00:00:42
living operator i've talked about that in a previous video how i operate a facility remotely so go ahead and watch that video it's going to give you a little bit of information but one thing i want you to kind of be aware of is being an operator of a of a facility is not necessarily a passive thing now over time it can become more and more passive but it's still going to require you to be involved in the business and be aware of everything that is going on you still need to be involved in the business if
00:01:09
you get in there and you step away thinking that things are just going to run themselves or you get in and with the expectation that you're not going to have to do anything you're going to be mistaken things are going to fall through the cracks and and those cracks over time are just going to come a little bit bigger and bigger and bigger to the point that you're going to have to spend a lot of time and a lot of money a lot of resources to get things fixed and taken care of so the more that
00:01:31
you're engaged in your business the easier it's going to become and the more quickly that you can address some of those issues that could end up being huge gaps in in your business so just stay engaged stay working on those things um and you know everything's going to work out the more active you are especially in the beginning and the more consistent you are over time it's just going to be easier to maintain operations at your facility you know and i've also as i mentioned i
00:01:59
have a video on how to operate your facility remotely how i do that i'll put that in the card and also on my template down below for running meetings with your facility administrator how i do that the types of things that i talk about i talked about that in that video that i just referenced you can find that as a resource as well on assistedlivinginvesting.net so visit me over there on the website we'd love to see you over there and you can get some of those free resources on the website
00:02:28
next big key thing that you need to do as an assisted living operator on you know the next big thing you got to do is to communicate i talk about this all the time you're probably getting sick of me talking about it but you have to communicate it's such a key aspect of being an effective operator of a facility of being a business owner being a successful employee of everything you know being a good communicator is going to be key so you need to practice that you need to be good at you need to continue working on
00:02:58
it you need to communicate things to you know your expectations to your administrator and to the staff you need to communicate to the rest of the ownership group you need to have conversations you also need to communicate and coordinate with other groups of people some of those other groups of people that you need to be aware of that you're going to be having to have conversations with are you know insurance attorneys representatives from the state representatives from medicaid payroll vendors
00:03:23
cpas other professionals just all of those types of people that you just don't think about as you're getting started you're going to have to continue having conversations with them they don't take a lot of time you know we're working through some insurance stuff right now with one of our facilities you know renewing things and things like that and so it's having email conversations just being responsive and making sure i get the information to them as quickly as i can so we don't
00:03:47
miss any steps and there aren't delays and we don't get any penalties and things like that and so it's just having constant communication and making sure that you're talking with people they really don't take a lot of time if you're just consistent with it once you get things set up it does become more passive it takes a lot of time up in the beginning and then as long as you are just kind of consistently talking and not letting things fall through the cracks you're going to be fine
00:04:15
and it goes through and transparency and everything is just going to be key with everything you do in being an effective communicator your conversations with your administrator with all those different professionals i just listed the other people in your ownership group you want to make sure you're transparent over communicating things it's key it's going to help you be successful the next big thing would be setting expectations you know it's extremely important for you to set expectations especially in
00:04:44
the beginning when you're taking over operations communicate your expectations specifically around the things like meeting attendance emails and how quickly people are responding to emails phone call and text message responsiveness and how quick people are getting back to you their facility occupancy goals for example you want to make sure you have an outline you know we're profitable only if our breakeven point is x amount of residents we need to keep this amount of residents in our facility
00:05:15
make sure you're communicating that don't just assume that your administrator knows that information have conversations and make sure that it's clear with them setting your expectations from the beginning and then communicating those things to your facility administrator will help things just run so much more smoothly over time so just make sure you're doing that set those expectations actually in the next video we're going to get into how i set expectations for my assisted living facility
00:05:40
administrator the process that i go through and give you some suggestions on what you might consider doing as you are getting into that process you know trying to set expectations for your own facility administrator so make sure you go and watch that video uh just a reminder to learn more about investing in assisted living make sure you visit me on assistedlivinginvesting.net would love to see you over there on the website i've got content uh the ability to kind of set up some consulting calls
00:06:07
with me so we can get into your specific situation how i can help you through that process and then follow me on my other social media platforms we'd love to see you there and then just another reminder uh it doesn't take a lot just a little bit keep making progress step by step by step you're gonna be able to do it just keep making progress you'll be successful thanks for watching [Music] you
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