As Tutera Senior Living marks a period of multi-year growth, acquiring or being signed on as the management company of choice at 45 new senior living properties since 2023, it’s planning to build out its operating model to scale more efficiently.
In 2025, Tutera is focused on bringing on corporate support, new operations and frontline leaders, according to Tutera COO Randy Bloom. For the remainder of the year and beyond, Tutera will look to grow its management portfolio of senior living communities, he said.
“We do well when we have larger groups of communities that are in the same state and we can centralize our resources in those areas,” Bloom said during the most recent episode of the Senior Housing News Transform podcast. “Our focus in 2025 and beyond is to create those systems and processes for us so that we can be scalable and put ourselves in situations where we can be successful.”
To further scale operations, the company is taking steps to improve employee retention and reduce staff turnover, focusing on the first 90 days of a new employee’s tenure to ensure they remain on staff. In operations, Tutera is making adjustments to its dining and life enrichment programs, tailoring them to meet a changing consumer profile in today’s senior living community.
“One thing that never gets old or goes out of style is that customers want to be asked, and they want to have the opportunity to have choice in what they receive,” Bloom added.
The Kansas City, Missouri-based senior living provider operates 86 communities in 10 states, with the company’s highest concentration of communities located in the Midwest. Approximately 50% of the communities are owned and 50% managed by Tutera.
Listen to the latest episode of Transform here.
Editor’s note: This transcript has been edited for length and clarity
On Tutera celebrating 40 years of serving older adults:
I think we are in a very good spot with respect to knowing who we are as an organization, knowing what we value and what we believe to be successful operations. We have spent years in a variety of different third-party management situations where we understand what to do and what not to do as it relates to senior living operations.
We are a value-based company and we hold very closely to those values.
On Tutera’s “Younite” philosophy:
Younite was born out of the belief that there is no one size that fits all as it relates to culture and the way organizations operate. Every building in each part of the country that we may operate in has a unique personality and forces that drive it. It’s become this framework that we would use to set the tone and really provide a lot of independence and autonomy on each [community] to act within the context of that framework.
The basic premise of Younite is that we can’t possibly know what are the most valuable components of care provided in each individual facility, in each part of the country where we operate. And so, we’ve identified five areas that we focus on in relation to the resident experience. The most important area of that is where we really identify choice and how residents decide what care that is provided to them; the home-like environment; community involvement outside of the facility itself; the dining experience and team member appreciation.
Through these five areas, we identify what are the needs of that community by specifically asking the community members, the family members, the team members, the residents, what are the things that are important to them? And then Younite allows each community, individually, to set those parameters going forward, and then create that environment that is unique specifically to that community.
On Tutera’s recent growth:
We own approximately 50% of the communities we’re involved in and we manage the other 50%. We believe as a manager, we’re in a unique position based on our many experiences in most of the states, at one point or another, where we can bring value as a manager to those situations.
So not all of these acquisitions are actually communities that were purchased by Tutera but many of them have been management contracts. Our management philosophy, as you might imagine, is based on our “Younite” philosophy, which is to identify the specific nature of each community that we enter and to to really create a plan that is specific and unique to those communities. We’ve been managing skilled nursing and independent living and senior living communities for the balance of the 40 years and those those areas where we really feel like we can bring value is coming in and creating that culture, solidifying the staffing, identifying good leadership and giving them the tools to complete their job and providing excellent data for them to make decisions.
Each of these communities in each of these situations are all unique in their own way, and one of the things that’s very important for us is to identify who the client is and then be very clear about the expectations of those clients. There are some that want a long-term management contract to essentially be managed indefinitely. There are others that are looking for a quick turnaround, and so it’s extremely important for us to identify what the goal of the project might be and then act accordingly. We have the luxury of being able to choose very specifically what projects we want to be involved in – that is a unique position and it’s what has always worked for us.
On the company’s typical acquisition type:
There are some mid-40, 50-unit acquisitions while others are closer to over 10 [units]. Generally speaking, 65 to 85 units is absolutely preferable for us but we also manage units or communities in excess of 200 units so each presents their own sort of challenges. But, I can say that those communities less than 50 are uniquely more challenging.
On 2025 growth opportunities:
We are looking at growth of our management company division. We do well when we have larger groups of communities that are in the same state, and we can centralize our resources in those areas. It’s not to say that we won’t go to states that we aren’t currently in, but we do need to have critical mass for us to be effective as a manager. But our growth is primarily in the Midwest.
We will keep trying to focus on quality, resident outcomes and lifestyle. We do have the luxury of being able to identify whether or not that’s a particular area of growth we wanted to get involved in. From a strategy standpoint, I wouldn’t say we have a very specific strategy, because, quite frankly, we don’t have to. Our strategy is to evaluate the deal on a deal-by-deal basis, and get involved in things that we know we can be successful in.
On operations in 2025:
We’re having good success with our case mix index and looking at Medicaid opportunities. We’re also seeing good revenue growth in our premium mix – having a lot of luck in our census coming back. Our biggest challenge is to eliminate [agency staffing]. We won’t compromise resident care in the process. [Tutera] is bolstering up our recruitment division, and really focusing on what the first 90 days of employment looks like in our communities and hoping we can reduce turnover as well.
One of the other areas we’re focusing on is life enrichment and beefing up that programming within our communities. We’ve hired a very competent and experienced life enrichment coordinator who is going to be leading those initiatives.
On staffing in 2025:
Staffing is a huge challenge but I think it’s a little better. But what we looked at is what we call the accountability continuum. What I mean by that is that on one side of the continuum we have the community solely responsible for identifying potential candidates, taking them through the process, hiring them and onboarding them etc. On the other side it’s more of a centralized home office based solution. We’ve sort of gone up and down this accountability continuum as it relates to staffing, and we’re now moving more towards the centralized home office function.
We have found that if we have individuals who take a potential candidate or hire from the beginning of the process all the way through to the end, that has a greater chance of success than having the community do part of that process and the home office do another part. It’s not as efficient that way. So we are really moving the accountability for hiring and onboarding to a more centralized home office and we’ve had success doing that. We’re looking to expand that model into the majority or all of our communities.
On goal of meeting changing consumer expectations in 2025:
One thing that never gets old or goes out of style is that customers want to be asked, and they want to have the opportunity to have choice in what they receive. That is the basis for the Younite philosophy.
We’re using technology as a way to help us identify residents that need additional assistance and we partner with a couple of organizations to help us in this. Not one provider can provide all the things that the customer is going to want. We’re partnering with a medical director group out of Michigan that’s helping us identify residents.
Consistency in dining is a focus of ours. We have a wide variety of dining and we are very focused on ensuring that we’re providing a dining experience that is consistent with the needs of a particular community. So we don’t have a one-size-fits-all dining program but we also need to have consistency with respect to day in and day out production of meals that are loved by our residents.
On senior living outlook:
We brought on a number of communities in the last year and as part of that, we’ve had to understand how our processes and systems are scalable. I really think for organizations with any desire to grow, we have to redefine our systems and processes to ensure that they are scalable.
So we’re in that process and we’re continuing to go through that because I do see there’s a tremendous amount of opportunity for those providers that are capable of reacting quickly and are flexible, who can get involved in certain situations and cause change to happen, who know what the drivers of change are – I believe that to be us.
Our focus in 2025 and beyond is to create those systems and processes for us so that we can be scalable and put ourselves in situations where we can be successful. The demographics are in our favor and there will be a lot of people who will look at that and think it’s easy.. But they haven’t been around for 40 years to make decisions based on trial and error, or be involved in a lot of management opportunities where wrong decisions were made, and [to] learn from those lessons. There absolutely is an art to this. It requires a good feel for the needs of seniors and to be able to provide that lifestyle for them in a way that they choose.
