OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE
‘This Environment Has Jumped
Us Five Years Into the Future’ By Ken McDonald
A
s the COVID-19 pandemic contin- ues, many are already seeing ways it may change the senior living
industry for a long time to come. John Means, PE, is a McKinsey & Com-
pany partner who serves on the company’s global real estate executive committee and leads development services in North Amer- ica. He has developed inpatient, outpatient, and senior housing portfolios as well as ma- jor city center redevelopments, multifamily, office, and resorts. Recently, he served as moderator for one
of Argentum’s member-only COVID-19 webinars, “Preparing for COVID-19’s Long- Term Business Impact.” Here, he shares insights into the ways COVID-19 is likely to change senior living, and how to prepare.
Impact of resurgence This is very much the crisis of our time, impacting all of our lives. McKinsey Global Institute has published “Safeguarding our lives and our livelihoods” which includes a regular survey of executives on their beliefs about the economic impact of COVID-19. It’s a study in how effective they believe economic policy response will be, and also how effective they think control of the virus spread will be. Particularly in the United States, we see examples of regional COVID-19 resurgence and only partially effective economic interventions so far. Without further investments and control, this could contribute to a much longer and more difficult recovery than any of us would hope, with some scenarios pointing to mid- 2023 before the U.S. economy recovers to pre-crisis levels. We're coming to the belief that in the
United States, in particular where we are ob- serving regional resurgence, we'll need to be
prepared for seeing the impact of that both economically and socially, across the country. What that means is it may be a longer and more fragmented economic recovery.
Increase in tech tools I'd say that in general, the experience of liv- ing in this environment has jumped us five years into the future. The rapid increase in telehealth visits and satisfaction in telehealth visits, including by seniors, has been signifi- cant and has caught the attention of many of our healthcare providers. Use of door-to-door delivery tools, col-
laboration or communication tools, have been dramatically accelerated for the senior community. That's partially demographic— more people that have more comfort with technology are getting older—but it’s also from the need to deliver services in a new way to a community that hasn't used these services as much before. I think there will be a shift across, call it the spectrums of senior housing: In-home, in senior apartments, in independent living, in assisted living, and all the way up through nursing care. These tools may enable people to stay
in lower levels of care, longer. These tools may make a lower level of care environment more appealing or perceived as safer. I think one big trend is that we may see these services starting to be dis-aggregated and deployed in a different model.
“Return and reimagination” I spent the bulk of the first part of this year working on standing up emergency hospitals across the country—and that wasn't only in health care settings. That reframed our thinking: How do we increase capacity of existing health care settings, such as hospitals
40 SENIOR LIVING EXECUTIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020
Change Agent Profile
John Means, PE Partner McKinsey & Company
and high-acuity settings? And how do you in- crease the capacity of lower-acuity settings? Now we're working on what we call
return and reimagination. We've had this enormous shock in our system. How do we make sure that all systems—whether hous- ing, infrastructure, the broader health care system—come back in a way that is stronger and able to deliver care in new and more effective ways? One piece of the humanitarian response
to COVID-19 is to try to reimagine the systems, so these can better deliver for communities.
Top priority: Workforce In all our conversations, the top concern is human resources: the people that are in the trenches and the stress and strains of going through this crisis. There were a few broad questions around making sure that people working have access to mental health, per- sonal support, and childcare resources, in particular. I think at the end of the day, we’re going
to see this as a pretty big speed bump that forced us to re-evaluate how we deliver care in a senior housing environment and as a cat- alyst for many of the changes and innovations that were needed to better serve residents.
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