2life Communities Debuts Middle-market Senior Living ‘secret Sauce’ With Opus Opening

After years of preparation, 2Life Communities has now debuted its new middle-market senior living model to residents with the opening of a new community in the Boston area.

The organization earlier this month began welcoming residents into Opus, a 172-apartment continuing care retirement community (CCRC) in Newton, Massachusetts, with a unique model tailored to help older adults afford senior living in the years to come. By encouraging residents to volunteer for community tasks and giving them access to more affordable home care and other services, 2Life hopes to help some of the millions of older adults who will want and need senior living in the years to come but won’t be able to pay for it at today’s rates.

Helping to lead that charge is Denise McQuaide, who began a new role as 2Life’s chief of middle market innovation in August after years of aiding the organization as a strategic advisor. As chief middle-market innovator, she will guide 2Life’s middle-market mission, including the operations and growth plans for Opus. She came to the role with years of direct care experience, having worked at multiple leadership positions at hospitals, home care agencies and elsewhere in healthcare.

2Life built its Opus model to accommodate older adults on a limited fixed income. To McQuaide, Opus’ model is a “guide” helping residents navigate economic challenges, health care and socialization while living in senior housing.

“We are serving an underserved market,” McQuaide told Senior Housing News. “We know the secret sauce to make a vibrant community, and we know how to do it in a less expensive way.”

Inside the Opus model

Underpinning the Opus model are three main principles: giving residents access to nearby fitness, wellness, learning and cultural activities; asking residents to commit 10 hours per month toward making community life richer; and providing them access to affordable, quality care to help age in place. 

The community’s name, Opus, is meant to convey that its residents’ best years still lie ahead. And beyond that, it is meant to conjure an image of a community that helps every resident shine and flourish together, like a “musical masterpiece that draws on every instrument in the orchestra.”

2Life’s big goal was to help create a community with a vibrant social fabric that also kept costs as low as possible for its residents. The organization’s leaders worked to achieve that by reexamining everything in a typical CCRC and comparing it to what is typical in affordable senior housing.

“[We asked,] how do we merge those so that we get the right staffing and expenses, so that we keep our monthly fees low? And by using that entry-fee model and we pay down the construction debt, we have a very low overhead,” McQuaide said. “We built it economically with a little bit of minimization, and that is what people want. Not everyone wants to pre-pay for a nursing home that they may or may not ever use.”

In particular, the model aims to make health and wellness more affordable, as it is often a big contributor to older adults running out of money later in their lives. Opus residents can buy home care in more affordable 30-minute increments – a smaller time frame than is typical for those services – and see clinicians on site thanks to a partnership 2Life has with Kronos Health.

“We will make sure that care is affordable and brought to your apartment,” McQuaide said.

The volunteerism component is also especially important to the model. 2Life asks residents to pitch in every month in roles that are either staff-driven and volunteer-supported or volunteer-driven and staff-supported. To date, residents have volunteered for tasks from working at the front desk and giving tours to helping with hospice and activities.

Another aspect of the Opus model is care navigation. It’s not uncommon for older adults and their families to face obstacles navigating through a dizzying array of services and payment options. But overcoming those obstacles can imperil timely care, not to mention stress out older adults and their families.

2Life’s care navigators can help residents navigate “everything from, ‘Does my insurance cover that?’ to, ‘Where should I get my care?’” McQuaide said.

The organization is targeting monthly rates of between just under $2,000 to about $5,000, depending on the unit type.

Like other CCRCs, Opus has an entry fee upon move-in, which at the community ranges from about $400,000 to just under $1 million. McQuaide noted that the move-in fee is affordable for prospective residents given how home values in the area have risen in recent years. The organization also has a grant program and nine units set aside for residents who don’t have the home equity to afford the entry fee.

Residents get a $400 declining balance they can use on food each month. Although that’s not enough to eat dinner in the community’s dining venues every night of the week, Opus units are equipped with all that residents might need to cook their own dinner when they need to.

Although the organization and its leaders have their hands full for now with the first Opus, they are already thinking about expanding the model to other sites down the road.

“The future, I think, is really going to be looking at what is successful here and replicating it, and what we need to improve upon,” McQuaide said.

Looking ahead, the organization is exploring expanding its memory care services for the middle-market and lengthening its social day program from five to seven days a week. In the end, 2Life is interested in anything that will make the lives of middle-income older adults better.

“It’s our mission, and we’re going to put a stake in the ground to serve as many people as we can,” McQuaide said.

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