Spending increased for monitoring technologies, user-activated emergency response systems, physical exercise and rehabilitation technologies, and technical support for residents.
Specialty investment bank Ziegler released the results of its December 2022 CFO Hotline Survey. The study, conducted with input from LeadingAge CAST, gathered feedback on technology spending among senior living organizations, including assisted living, independent living, memory care and skilled nursing.
Over 150 organizations participated in this year’s survey, with 58% of respondents single-site organizations and the remaining 42% multi-site organizations. Respondents were asked to identify which of the technologies they invested in over the past 12 months, as well as whether they planned to invest in them within the next 12 months.
The top five technology investments revolved around information and communication technology:
Infrastructure (high-speed internet connectivity, wired/wireless), 74%,
Electronic medical/health record systems, 54%,
Electronic point-of-care/point-of-service documentation systems, 51%
Workforce/staffing scheduling systems, 47%
Access control/wander management systems, 47%.
In 2020, the top five investments showed a clear connection to the pandemic, including video conferencing capabilities, ICT infrastructure, resident access to the internet and social networking sites, infection control systems and access control/wander management systems. Investments in 2022 are less COVID-driven. The table below shows the top five technology investments that senior living providers made in 2022 as compared to 2020.
Spending in the past year increased for monitoring technologies (18% in 2022 compared with 8% in 2020), user-activated emergency response systems (41% in 2022 versus 28% in 2020), physical exercise and rehabilitation technologies (23% in 2022 versus 18% in 2020), and technical support for residents also increased 11%, from 40% of survey participants compared to 29% in 2020.
Overall, respondents reported that they would devote 8.3% of their total capital budgets, on average, to technologies. This amount is up from 8% in 2020 but down from 12.2% in 2014.
Future Investments
The survey also asked about future spending. Specifically, the respondents were asked to specify whether they plan to invest in various technologies in the year ahead.
Investments in Technology in the Next 12 months
ICT infrastructure (high-speed internet), 37%
Data analytics tools (dashboards/decision support), 31%
Electronic medical/health records (EMR/EHR), 31%
Access control/wander management systems, 29%
Electronic point of care/point of service platforms, 29%
Physical robots, 26%
Technical support for residents, 26%
Resident/client access to internet social networking, 26%
Workforce/staffing scheduling systems, 24%
Automatic fall detectors, 21%
User-activated emergency response systems, 21%