Commonwealth Senior Living Readies New Staffing, Wellness Efforts After ‘year Of Change’ 

Commonwealth Senior Living is moving forward with efforts to improve staffing and grow wellness after a busy year of change in 2024, according to COO Michelle Hamilton.

In 2024, Invesque (TSX: IVQ.U and IVQ) announced plans to sell its interest in Commonwealth and offloaded  eight communities formerly managed by the Charlottesville, Virginia-based provider. But, as of Thursday, Invesque has not finalized the sale of its interest in the company, according to Commonwealth CEO Earl Parker.

Today, Commonwealth’s senior living portfolio consists of 33 communities across four states, 27 of which are in Virginia. 

“Last year was a year of change, and the Invesque sale was pretty difficult to lose to those communities,” Hamilton told Senior Housing News. “But at the same time, we were acquiring new properties.”

Commonwealth bounced back from losing eight communities and acquired two others last year with plans for future growth ahead. That included a community in Wyoming, Michigan, in which Commonwealth upgraded its memory care area and added an outside patio. The company also took over management of a community in Hampton, Virginia, which is currently under renovation.

After so much change last year, Hamliton added that she feels 2025 will be a “stabilizing year” for Commonwealth. The company has initiatives underway meant to improve various aspects of staffing and expand a new wellness model for Commonwealth residents.

“The future is to continue to look for those communities that are underperforming assets in good markets where we can put together a strategy, the vision and take our model and place that into the community and improve it,” Hamilton said.

The company’s relationship with its largest investor, Municipal Capital Appreciation Partners (MCAP), remains strong and will continue into the future, Hamilton noted the two companies would be “very strategic” in future growth.

Commonwealth also in 2025 is launching a new wellness program, it calls “Journeys.” The program was piloted in eight communities in 2024 for residents and associates to build customized lifestyle and care based on interests.

“That encompasses all aspects of resident care, dining, programming and coordination of outside services,” CEO Earl Parker told SHN last year.

The company also has partnered with Servium Care Network and Curana Health’s Value Based Care Alliance of Virginia to offer residents “a holistic way” to improve health outcomes through preventative wellness programming, Hamilton said. The programs allow access to Medicare Advantage plan options for assisted living and memory care residents through the Senior Care Institutional-Equivalent Special Needs Plan (IE-SNP). The program focuses on preventive care, disease management, and care coordination.

“There’s no magic bullet on wellness because it’s individualized but it’s having the entire management team focused on this and making the residents’ life experiences the best they can possibly be,” Hamilton said.

Commonwealth is this year focusing on shoring up staffing, attempting to understand its employee turnover and improve retention, something Hamilton believes is linked to rising acuity seen within assisted living and memory care communities. Senior living operators are grappling with higher acuity operations in assisted living and memory care as acuity needs rise, and operations become more complex.

“If we don’t move staffing as acuity changes, there’s going to be burnout and churn,” Hamilton said. “We realized we weren’t staffing to [acuity] and so we made some important changes.”

The company hired an independent consultant to conduct a real-time work study observing Commonwealth staff within communities to better assess how employees are spending their time in care delivery.

Commonwealth also created an algorithm the company can use to monitor where care needs are highest and shift staff and resources accordingly based on each community’s need, Hamilton said.

“There was a prime component of the resident acuity that was affecting pressuring operations and pressuring the staff that recently joined us,” Hamilton said.

For example, from the independent, third-party consultant report, Commonwealth realized a correlation between an increase in resident acuity in memory care that resulted in an increase in turnover.

“You could literally see it in the increase in acuity and turnover,” Hamilton said. “That was mind-blowing and that indicates we have to think differently about workload.”

Improving retention of staff also directly connects with improving resident satisfaction, Hamilton noted, with the company setting its sights on its “highest priority” of improving customer service and staffing.

“The real challenge is going to be how do we have these people who really need care that could have been in a nursing home, but also provide them with the social engagement and continued living and meeting them where they are,” Hamilton said.

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