As Distinctive Living expands, the company’s leaders view memory care as an important component of growth, both for new development and acquisitions.
Memory care demand is consistent, driving occupancy growth and improving margins, according to Distinctive Living CEO Joe Jedlowski. But while memory care offers many tantalizing opportunities for growth, operators must grapple with hiring challenges and more complex clinical operations than other parts of the senior living care continuum.
With the projection of dementia rates doubling by 2060 in the U.S., Distinctive continues to seek out communities to add more memory care to its management slate.
Distinctive has more than 1,200 memory care units across its 49 communities. As it has grown that part of its business, it has in tandem expanded its memory support program, “Moments Matter,” alongside it. The memory support program combines nutrition support, clinical expertise and lifestyle programming for people living with cognitive changes.
Since 2022, Distinctive Living has grown via acquisitions of new communities alongside a development pipeline spanning active adult to memory care. The company also in 2024 acquired Validus Senior Living in a merger that brought Validus communities and operations under the Distinctive banner.
“We see memory support as a huge strategic component of being able to improve our fundamentals and satisfaction in resident care,” Jedlowski told Memory Care Business (MCB) in a recent interview. “We’ve looked at future demand, it’s off the charts in a lot of these high barrier to entry markets and we’ve made memory support a requirement for us.”
Changing programming, engagement to meet demand
After the Validus transaction, Distinctive leaders evaluated the competition and identified common buying trends in memory support and made changes to its engagement model to improve resident and family satisfaction.
The “Moments Matter” memory support program is built around five tenets: caregivers help residents learn, connect, be active, give and be spiritual.
Within the company’s future development projects, Jedlowski envisions amenities that attract families, like arcades and playgrounds, in or on community grounds. Included in that philosophy for memory support residents are chances to give back to charitable causes, such as knitting blankets for children or people experiencing homelessness.
“We’ve taken the perspective of monitoring what’s happening in assisted living and how we should modify that so it can be happening in memory support,” Jedlowski noted. “You can feel the difference and families say so.”
Understanding today’s memory care buyer, blending clinical and lifestyle
An important element for senior living providers capitalizing on current demand lies in sales and marketing and in interacting with families of prospects in a more involved way aside from a single tour to move in.
Finding the right target audience for sales and marketing efforts is vital to fill a memory care neighborhood or standalone community, Jedlowski said.
Getting care delivery and care coordination correct must be table stakes for operators who have large high-acuity segments of assisted living and memory care in their portfolios, Jedlowski said. If not, operators risk overpromising their programming and clinical acumen, leading to a resident having a challenging move-in process.
“We really have to have that buttoned down from an acuity standpoint to be able to care for these residents throughout the rest of their life,” Jedlowski said.
To meld clinical and lifestyle programming, Distinctive Living has paired staff from both health and wellness departments to provide insights into resident changes in condition, potential acuity changes or day-to-day changes in a resident’s overall condition and disposition.
This pairs with the company’s approach to integrate new technology into its memory care communities. Distinctive attaches a monitoring system in every memory care unit that identifies toilet contents. That data goes directly to a lab and the program can alert staff to any changes in resident wellbeing. For example, the system has helped identify reactions to medications if a memory care resident does not communicate changes in condition to care staff, Jedlowski said.
“We’re trying not only to think about the future demographic, but we’re trying to think about how we can integrate technology into memory care that creates sophistication while maintaining dignity and privacy,” Jedlowski said.
Distinctive employs certified dementia practitioners in managerial roles within memory care communities, who can lend their expertise to operations and help families navigate an emotionally difficult transition as a loved one’s condition changes over time.
“We have two directors essentially working in tandem together in memory support which heightens the awareness of what’s going on and elevates the level of expertise and a hands-on model,” Jedlowski added.
Registered nurses and qualified sales directors are the “two hardest positions to recruit today,” he said. That is only exacerbated by the shortage of licensed care staff and the stiff competition for sales staff with prior senior living experience.
To solve other staffing challenges, Distinctive modified the job roles of nurses and medication technicians to hire for certified dementia practitioners, with a “two director model” with a memory support director working in tandem with the community’s wellness director. Some success in hiring has also come through adapting job role descriptions to be specific to memory care, and finding candidates that want to help residents in high acuity settings.
Memory care will ‘continue to gain strength’
In the months and years ahead, Jedlowski believes the memory care sector will “continue to gain strength” and become a “strong product within our asset class” given the favorable, aging demographics and demand for dementia-related health care services.
But the barrier to entry of providing quality care and operations in memory care will remain, forcing operators to be “sophisticated enough” to understand changing needs in high acuity.
In 2023, former NFL star quarterback Brett Favre announced he has Parkinson’s disease. Jedlowski believes that tomorrow’s residents will resemble him in terms of having lived an active and fulfilling lifestyle prior to learning of a neurodegenerative disease later in life. That’s why the company is preparing to support a range of neurodegenerative conditions in the years to come.
“If we can’t get it together to take care of that specific type of resident, we’re not going to be sustainable,” Jedlowski said.
