​The state surveyors just exited your building, and you can hear the collective sigh of relief from your team. Post-survey can be a stressful time when your teams are prioritizing corrections and regaining compliance. Don't miss the opportunity to improve long term business performance and quality improvement with key insights from the data collected during the survey.

In today’s competitive and ever-increasingly data-driven marketplace, understanding how to use survey data to your advantage is key for successful outcomes. Beyond just creating and executing a plan of correction for survey deficiencies to get back in compliance, key insights can be gained from survey data on an ongoing basis for many different stakeholders to use in improving both quality of care and business performance. 

The frequency of surveys and prevalence of deficiencies have increased since the COVID-19 pandemic in many states. The silver lining is that there is also an increase in data that your corporate leaders can use to identify operational issues and regulatory trends across your organization. By utilizing survey data effectively, operators can develop better audit tools and process improvements. However, accomplishing this is easier said than done. 

Using Data to Your Advantage

Here are three ways in which you can use data to your advantage.
1.    Scale improvement efforts.
If the data shows that there are repeat deficiencies in one region or across the organization, you have an opportunity to use the data to create systemic change. Quantifying repeat deficiencies at the regional or organizational level informs the improvement and modification of policies, procedures, onboarding, and training. You don’t know the greater problem exists without analyzing the data first.

2.    Incentivize leaders.
Comparing survey performance against company and market peers can be used to incentivize leaders and drive competitive performance improvement. When hiring new executive directors and resident care directors, using a tool that aggregates national seniors housing survey outcomes, providers can vet and explore leaders’ prior survey outcomes at facilities based on dates of employment to drive interview questions and performance validation. For existing community leaders, operators can use survey data to help evaluate performance over time and identify opportunities for improvement.

3.    Mitigate risk exposure.
Identification of adverse survey performance can drive special conditions on loans and develop key metrics for use in loan covenants. To mitigate risk exposure, financial stakeholders should be aware of historical and current survey activity including adverse outcomes, severe citations, high volume of citations, fines, ban on admissions, stacked surveys, open survey timelines, conditional licenses, and failed revisits. Continued adverse survey performance and a lack of ability to achieve and sustain substantial compliance can have a negative impact on financial performance, community reputation, census, and staff retention, and may ultimately warrant considering a change in operator. 

Analysis of survey data along with other available data, such as staffing and quality measures, can be a valuable tool in underwriting general liability and professional liability insurance coverage. Reviewing these key areas during the underwriting process identifies if the facility has received citations that resulted in actual harm or immediate jeopardy to resident’s health or safety.  Citations at these levels have a higher potential for leading to legal action against a facility, but when there is the ability to further assess staffing levels and quality outcomes it provides context as to the overall risk exposure and potential defensibility of a facility when setting premiums and policy limits.

Technology Makes Data Analysis Easier

The stakes are high for lenders, investors, and insurers to ensure protection of facility licenses from risk exposure related to adverse survey outcomes that can lead to enforcement actions. Finding the right tool to analyze survey data is important.  Not all technology is the same. Here’s what to look for in your analysis tools.

Does it analyze the entire portfolio? Tools that enable a complete assessment of survey performance across an entire portfolio are key. Look for tools that allow you to create groups to view data quickly and easily across your organization and conduct comparative reporting for a collection of facilities at both a high-level and detailed perspective.

Does it allow for benchmarking? Tools that offer peer and market performance benchmark measures are important. Look for tools that benchmark historical survey, citation, and penalty details. 

Does it allow you to slice and dice data? Data isn’t helpful if you can’t apply it to your specific needs. Make sure you can export data, use it in comparisons, and dynamically fold it in to other analysis tools. 

Does it allow for reporting? If the data is useful and helpful to your community, share it! Flexible technology allows you to report data to referral sources and prospective residents, strengthening those relationships with proof of your positive outcomes.

Does it analyze state-level survey data? Tools that aggregate and analyze the state survey data of senior housing communities are critical to your success. This is especially important if you operate communities in multiple states because each state’s approach to the licensing and regulation of communities varies. Finding tools to make this data collection and analysis easier is imperative for directly comparing communities across state lines.

While most leaders and stakeholders are not thrilled when a survey team walks into their building to conduct routine or complaint inspections, top-performing operators are using the outcomes of survey activities to drive understanding and improve performance for their residents, staff, and business. Don’t let the data overwhelm you. Instead, find tools to make data analysis faster and easier to meet your regulatory and operational goals.

Melissa Fedun, RN, BSN, is managing partner and co-owner of Formation Healthcare Group. She is a recognized industry expert providing clinical advisory services to identify risk exposure in investment management focused on seniors housing, post-acute, and healthcare real estate.

Kyle Gardner is the chief operating officer of NIC MAP Vision, a source for senior housing supply, demand, and operational data.