Imagine the top Los Angeles Dodgers players as SNF owner/operators. If you can, then you can start to understand the powerhouse lineup that took the stage at Tuesday’s NIC Spring Conference in Nashville to answer the question of whether it is possible to have strong clinical outcomes at the same time you hit home runs for your bottom line.

The answer from Barry Port, Barry Munk, Byron Sehlke, and Joe Walker is an unequivocal “Yes.”

The leaders of Ensign Services, Marquis Health Consulting Services, Touchstone Communities, and Larry H. Miller Senior Health (under the Advanced brand), respectively from the names above, offer a lead-by-example way of conducting business and great examples they are, with the range of Quality Measure scores for the quartet’s providers from 4.1 to 4.8, well above the national average of 3.6.

And that is just one measurement among many. Occupancy high, turnover below average, growth solid to scorching, and clinical outcomes and financial returns stellar. All meet these benchmarks.

So, how do they do it? That was the question session moderator and Park Place Live CEO Mark Parkinson asked.

The responses were not uniform but could be explained best in one word: ownership. For some of the foursome that means actual ownership for employees who make the grade, like for Ensign where Port says some 5,000 staff have equity of some amount.

For others, like Munk’s Marquis, it is about imparting to administrators and other top facility leaders that they are running a business, their own business, from nuts to bolts and are expected to flourish or falter on their ability to succeed clinically and financially.

Incentives, Goals Rule

To break down how they get great results, each of the leaders delved into their motivational tools, incentive plans, and company cultures that keep the entire organization on the same track. For instance, Munk said Marquis has pushed its team to focus on outcomes.

“Keep it narrow and focused,” he said, pointing to teams aligning their goals and work progress to one or two of the components of Five-Star at a time. “By distilling it, you can accomplish a lot more.”

Port said Ensign is about leadership tied to the ownership model where each administrator, or CEO in the company’s terms, are like-minded to the overall culture of the company. “These are very local businesses, and we want leaders incentivized and involved as in a local company, empowered to make decisions and react and adapt to local market conditions,” he said.

Ensign, Port added, spends an “inordinate” amount of time refining who they are looking for in the way of leaders. “They have to feel like they own the operation…we want an army of people who believe in the mission.” Legacy-minded is also front and center, with the company’s people asked to imagine what they want their facility to look like 30 years down the road.

“We’ve never sold a single skilled nursing operation…we tell the staff of a new acquisition that this will be the last time you [the facility] will be sold,” Port said.

Alignment Is Key

Miller said Advanced’s success is tied directly to alignment with the provider’s capital partner, and the shared vision to be different and offer a better experience, a “better way,” with private suites, better food, and top-notch therapy.

“When we were acquired by Larry H. Miller at the end of 2020, we were acquired by a capital partner where mission-driven flows through the entire organization,” he said. “We operate responsibly and do it in a way that is a better experience for patients. We also build systems and processes that we can do over and over.”

For Touchstone’s Sehlke, there are a number of ways to explain his group’s success, and one is that when you are a quality provider, there comes a “virtuous” cycle where patients and staff want to be in a facility, and that creates the financial success as well.

“If you can be great at one and two then you don’t need to think about number three,” he said, speaking of patients and staff equaling bottom-line growth.

Touchstone’s mantra or mission statement does not hurt either, Sehlke said, with the simple and effective Making Lives Better words a real foundational tool to build community support and staff buy-in.

Comments or questions? Contact Patrick Connole at pconnole@parkplacelive.com.