As U.S. News & World Report expands its presence in long-term care with the Monday launch of a new program, “Best Senior Living,” for independent living, assisted living, memory care and continuing care retirement/life plan communities, are home care listings in the future?
It’s not out of the realm of possibility, Chad Smolinski, chief product officer for U.S. News, tells McKnight’s.
U.S. News has partnered with Activated Insights to conduct the surveys of residents and families that will be the basis of the new senior living offering. Activated Insights already conducts surveys of home care agencies for Fortune’s annual Best Workplaces in Aging Services rankings, launched in 2018. That includes private duty agencies, Medicare-certified home health agencies, therapy programs, adult day centers, and Program for All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) centers.
“What attracted us to what Activated Insights is doing is that the goal on the benchmark is greater than 50% participation of residents and family members. From our experience, when you start getting the percentage of a population surveyed up into those numbers, you start to get a much more accurate picture of consumer sentiment,” Smolinksi said. “We think that that just makes it a much more robust product. If we can achieve something like that in other categories, whether it’s in a nursing home or home care or other areas where people are looking for guidance, then that can be very valuable.”
Activated Insights CEO Jacquelyn Kung, DrPH, MBA, told McKnight’s that “over time, we may collaborate on [skilled nursing] and other segments, too,” but that the company is focusing its U.S. News-related work on the senior living initiative for now.
This article originally appeared on McKnight's Senior Living
