Senior Living Operators Seek Data Unity In Search Of ‘fewer Blind Spots’

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Data is a cornerstone of quality senior living operations in 2025. But that doesn’t mean data is a panacea for operators, either.

Within a senior living community, there are numerous data points that operators can pin to a dashboard, from occupancy and net move-ins to expenses per resident day and margins. Senior living REITs like Ventas and operators like Distinctive Living and Trustwell Living alike have leaned on data to help them inform decisions and benchmark progress against peers. Caregivers also now have much more data on resident preferences and expectations, gleaned from the sales process and automatically uploaded into a digital electronic record.

However, these kinds of insights are only useful when comparing apples to apples, especially within wider data sets that contain multiple different markets.

Stakeholders across the industry have different thoughts regarding data and how to share it and collect it. Based on recent conversations I’ve had with operators, it’s clear to me that their efforts have shifted from simple data collection to comparing themselves with other similar companies in their markets. But to do that, they need to draw insights from more unified data pools, something the senior living industry has lacked until very recently.

I would be remiss not to mention that there are already various efforts underway to boost data sharing and collection across the senior living industry. NIC MAP is expanding the number of markets in which it tracks resident rates and occupancy, from 140 today to 210 markets by the first half of next year, representing locales containing 85% of the U.S. population. The organization’s goal is to up that number to 300 markets in the future.

All of this underscores the need for senior living operators to find a unified data source to help inform their next chapters. Simply put, I think the most successful operators in the years to come will be the ones that can learn from their mistakes and nimbly plan for the future, two efforts I believe can stem from good data collection.

In this members-only SHN+ Update, I analyze comments from NIC and multiple discussions to offer the following takeaways:

• Recent efforts to unify data collection and reporting
• Why senior living operators must go even deeper with current data sources

In search of ‘fewer blind spots’

NIC’s effort to add more markets to its operator-reported resident rate and occupancy database is rooted in a belief that the senior living industry needs “fewer blind spots,” as NIC MAP CEO Arick Morton said recently at the NIC Fall Conference in Austin, Texas.

The to-be-added 70 additional metros, includes locales such as Green Bay, Wisconsin; Eugene, Oregon; Savannah, Georgia; and Fort Collins, Colorado. With its addition, NIC MAP’s data is set to cover markets housing 85% of the U.S. population.

“Clients have asked for this market expansion over the years, and it’s an important step in making sure NIC MAP reflects the full senior housing landscape, not just the largest markets,” Morton said.

For Trustwell, building out its own data platform has allowed the operator to track what it charges for resident care with “surgical accuracy,” along with tracking data points such as staffing, response times, food costs and utilities to maintain quality in the community while balancing cost efficiency and overall results.

Ventas offers its senior housing operating partners access to its “operating insights” platform in order to see where they compare with each other, which tracks performance benchmarks, digital marketing and pricing. It also allows them to see where they stand in relation to the other operating partners, albeit on an anonymous basis, which encourages them to increase performance such as occupancy.

Other operators, such as LCS, Priority Life Care and Distinctive Living are similarly upping their game with regard to data-collection and analysis. All the while, they are assembling teams of data scientists and other experts to keep their eye on financial and operational results.

I think these improvements will prove invaluable due to increasing the level of transparency and identifying pain points that can be improved upon, particularly at a regional level. Not only will it be a boon to residents for better care, but operators will be able to operate more efficiently with greater margins.

I also think that, after years of bolstering their in-house data collection platforms, operators are hungry for new kinds of data or data told in a new way. Take the example of Washington, D.C.-based Ingleside. According to Ingleside Chief Information Officer Dusanka Delovska-Trajkova, the senior living operator has collected tons of information it did not only a few years ago, including lengthy resident profiles.

But that data is only as useful as the organization’s ability to use it, she said during a panel at RETHINK, a conference from SHN sister publication Skilled Nursing News. Now, the organization has turned from simply trying to collect data to accurately parsing it with AI and other automated tech for better decision-making.

“It’s difficult to decipher what is really important about that resident, so what we have been looking and working on is to define some kind of visuals for our staff,” Delovska-Trajkova said during the panel.

To Bloom Senior Living Principal Brad Dubin, data is paramount to success. But he wishes the senior living industry had a large national database to pull from like what commercial real estate data firm CoStar assembles for multifamily operators, including information on specific competitors occupancy and detailed monthly and quarterly revenue per available room (RevPAR).

Even within the same markets, operators can vary in services. Operators also measure occupancy in different ways, with some counting a room occupied if a resident currently lives there, and others measuring occupancy by whether a resident has paid for their unit. Those discrepancies can lead to vastly different operational outcomes at a time when investors from outside the industry are looking to deploy more dollars as the sector matures, Dubin said.

“People in the industry should all be sharing data so that it’s more transparent,” he told me. “It’s one example of us trying to mature like other industries have in the past.”

To that end, there are efforts underway to build more multifamily-esque data collection platforms. Welltower COO John Burkart said a few years ago that he thought the senior living industry was like the multifamily industry in the 1970s with regard to marketing and asset management. In the years that followed, Burkart and Welltower built a data analysis platform that is still driving the business and its operating partners forward today.

I don’t think that other companies need to build something as sophisticated as Welltower’s data platform to succeed, but my point is that they should look to the company and its lessons learned as they move forward with their own similar efforts.

More complexity underscores need for data unity

As the baby boomers age into senior living, they are bringing with them a complex slate of physical needs and expectations. Not only do residents of tomorrow desire engagement and purpose, they also want to live with an operator that will take care of their health and wellness needs.

As Dr. Joe Coughlin put it, the arrival of the boomers represents the senior living industry’s big “moment” – but only if it can “harness and understand the underlying numbers and … anticipate what they may want to excite and delight them with something they never really needed or wanted.”

To me, this is where more unified data can play a useful role. If senior living operators can accurately judge where they lie in their market by comparing with their peers, I believe that will help them meet the needs of the boomers in the future. And as senior living operators are keen to say, a rising tide lifts all boats.

In my view, getting there will take a level of collaboration that the industry hasn’t really seen thus far. Operators that have held data close to their vest must be willing to work with their peers to iron out common data sources that all can measure against.

This is not a new discussion, either. In 2023, Belmont Village President Mercedes Kerr said he believes “the industry will have to come to terms with some level of standardization, whether it’s quality of care, whether it’s reporting or financial metrics.”

“It’s going to be a very heavy lift, but one that I think everybody is going to somehow eventually come into,” she said at the 2023 Argentum conference in New Orleans.

At the time, Kerr said she was more optimistic than ever before with regard to standardizing data points in senior living. From my view, this is all still a work in progress, but with NIC’s latest market tracking expansion and data efforts from operators, the industry is moving ever-closer to that outcome. The big question left in my mind is whether the industry can do all of this as it simultaneously grapples with the biggest demographic opportunity it has ever seen.

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