December 11, 2024

Brookdale HealthPlus® Communities Deliver Value, Opportunity for Patients and HCPs

About Kim Elliott

Chief Nursing Officer

When it comes to leading clinical programs, Kim is our go-to authority on resident care, while maintaining the highest standards for quality and compliance. As Chief Nursing Officer, her care philosophy is based on the importance of individualized care, personal choice and resident independence. Kim is dedicated to finding more options to help our residents live and age well. That’s why she has taken a population health approach to surrounding our residents with the healthcare services they need to help manage their chronic conditions. Kim’s passion for senior healthcare developed in nursing school during a routine rotation. When she saw a shortage of quality nurses working in senior living, Kim knew she had found her calling and a place where she could make a difference. Kim joined Brookdale in 2014. She serves on the Argentum Clinical Quality Executive Roundtable, is on the Dean’s Advisory Board for the Central Florida University School of Nursing and is a member of the Nightingale Society. She was recently inducted into McKnight’s Women of Distinction Hall of Fame. Kim has a master’s degree in Nursing, with a specialty of executive leadership from Chamberlain College of Nursing.

Brookdale professional speaking with resident

As recently as 2019, Brookdale HealthPlus was an idea, a concept for improving the quality of life of residents in senior living communities through careful collaboration with their families and healthcare providers. The following year, Brookdale Senior Living launched our value-based care program in 15 Ohio Brookdale communities.

In 2023, the program expanded to 49 communities, and in 2024, it expanded again. Brookdale HealthPlus is now available in 129 communities in six states: Ohio, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Arizona and Colorado. These communities are demonstrating the value of our approach, which helps prevent avoidable emergency room visits and hospitalizations. Healthcare professionals, residents and families are increasingly recognizing this value.

Some would call 2024 a banner year, but we see it as just the beginning. The existing 129 Brookdale HealthPlus communities represent just 20% of our 640-plus communities. So, there’s plenty of room for growth, but we want to ensure it is smart growth. While these are challenging times for healthcare, they are also exciting times filled with opportunities for all of us.

Intentional Disruption

The Brookdale HealthPlus model is built on providing preventive services and proactive care, personalized to each individual’s unique needs and wants, to help better manage chronic conditions and close gaps in care. The goal is to improve residents’ quality of life by coordinating care and preventing avoidable emergency room visits and hospitalizations. Brookdale HealthPlus communities have a dedicated RN Care Manager who proactively helps residents manage their day-to-day health, working together with residents’ primary care physicians, provider groups and specialists to coordinate care and help deliver better outcomes — like an 80% reduction in ER and urgent care visits and a 66% reduction in hospitalizations.*

You’ve undoubtedly heard the expression “If it were easy, everyone would do it.” Moving senior living from its traditional hospitality model, typically with minimal levels of support for care needs, to a value-based care model is difficult. It entails the intentional disruption of a community. It takes change management and cultural transformation. Without all the right pieces in place, it simply will not work. Over the past five years, we have learned much about the necessary internal cultural and operational alignment that leads us to success.

Everybody involved must do their part. Brookdale HealthPlus communities are thriving because their leaders across functional areas have wholeheartedly bought into the idea. They are willing and able to expand their focus beyond the scope of a traditional senior living community, collaborating closely with our clinical leaders and provider groups that are also fully committed to a value-based model of care.

When all the pieces come together, the benefits are enormous. For example, by focusing on preventive care, we’re identifying changes in condition earlier. We’re following the evidence-based protocols and pathways embedded in our electronic health record (EHR). And we’re reducing the need for sick care and expensive care.

As we know, ER care is expensive on multiple levels. The doctors are under extreme pressure, they don’t know the patient, and the surroundings are chaotic. The entire experience can be traumatic and time-consuming, particularly for seniors who are taken out of a familiar environment and then have to sit in the ER for possibly eight hours or more. This has a ripple effect on everyone involved, including family caregivers.

By comparison, providing preventive care on-site in senior living communities removes many access barriers, making it convenient, consistent and far more effective. In addition, it creates an opportunity for senior living operators to partner with provider groups to help deliver better outcomes and increase their efficiency and profitability.

Brookdale HealthPlus communities were designed to deliver preventive care and care coordination specifically for our resident population, which has a high percentage of seniors living with chronic conditions. The Brookdale HealthPlus model helps enable clinicians to identify changes in condition sooner and respond appropriately before costlier interventions become necessary.

Data: Adding Value to Value-Based Care

Effective value-based care relies on data to help deliver positive outcomes. We have the clinical model to create value, and the more we grow, the more we learn. When we started with 15 communities, we had a limited data set. As we’ve grown to 49 communities and then to 129, our data set has grown proportionately.

Growth creates data, which in turn feeds growth. One key lesson we’ve learned is what doors this has opened for us. Value-based care organizations are impressed with the outcomes we’re getting as a result of our preventive, proactive care, which is creating more opportunities for collaboration and partnership.

While every resident of the Brookdale HealthPlus community receives the program's benefits regardless of their existing provider relationships and coverage in place, we want to partner with value-based care payor groups and provider organizations to establish aligned goals and deliver the best possible outcomes.

Personalized Care

At Brookdale, we make decisions based on what is best for our residents, and this foundational philosophy is what drove the design of our Brookdale HealthPlus program. What are their needs? How do we close or fill the gaps? How do we go above and beyond, in ways our industry has never done, to meet those needs and create a better experience for residents and their families?

In addition to focusing on preventive care and chronic conditions management, we are committed to providing truly personalized care. This includes developing advanced care plans with residents that help align their care with their healthcare wishes, such as whether or not to use aggressive treatments for their chronic conditions.

Increasing Opportunities in 2025 and Beyond

Provider groups are looking for opportunities to partner with senior living operators committed to delivering value-based care outcomes. Brookdale’s HealthPlus approach is continuing to gain recognition from outside provider groups, as it not only helps improve clinical outcomes for residents but also can create higher patient satisfaction and greater efficiency in practices, which is beneficial to their bottom line.

Interestingly, for many consumers with no prior senior living experience, the Brookdale HealthPlus model is often what is expected. Families previously unfamiliar with senior living often expect senior living communities to be proactive and in tune with their loved one’s conditions, communicating with physicians and providing preventive care. Most of them, unfortunately, discover that the Brookdale HealthPlus model is not the prevailing standard of care across the senior living industry. Instead, the default approach to care is often taking residents to the doctor or the emergency room or calling 911 if they get sick, as other providers typically don’t have the programming in place to provide proactive, preventive care, nor do they have the ability to better respond to care needs on-site.

The Brookdale HealthPlus program stands in stark contrast to the industry’s legacy approach and is thriving, as it was designed to better meet the needs of residents, their families and providers.

At Brookdale, we plan to keep leaning into healthcare. Every year, we ask more questions and have more conversations with residents, families and healthcare partners. Our delivery model continues to evolve, and our internal processes and culture continue to strengthen along with it. All of those factors promote improved health and a better quality of life for our residents.

Key Brookdale accomplishments in 2024:

Expansion to 129 Brookdale communities in six states (Ohio, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Arizona and Colorado)
Significant reductions in ER and urgent care visits and hospitalizations (see statistics*)
2024 Best of the Best Award from Argentum, the leading senior living association in the U.S., putting us in the top 1% of senior living operators
New contracts with accountable care organizations (ACOs), preferred provider organizations (PPOs) and Medicare provider groups

Compare the Numbers

Brookdale HealthPlus residents experience*:

80% reduction in ER and urgent care visits
66% reduction in hospitalizations

_{*Compared with like residents in their home or competitors’ settings.*}

In addition:

91% of seniors living in Brookdale HealthPlus communities complete annual wellness visits, vs. 35.3% of comparable seniors living at home and 17.9% of seniors living in competitors’ facilities.

_{Kim Elliott joined Brookdale in July 2014 and has served as our Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer since August 2021. Elliott has more than 27 years of experience in senior living and has developed a care philosophy based on the importance of individualized care, personal choice and resident independence. Elliott received a BSN in nursing from the University of Kentucky and a master’s degree in nursing with a nursing executive specialty from Chamberlain University.}

_{*Source: Internal Brookdale data; 2021 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS)}

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