This article is part of your SHN+ subscription
The senior living industry is finally finding real uses for AI, and value-based care is continuing to gain steam as operators ink new partnerships.
My colleague Austin Montgomery recently illustrated how senior living marketing and sales teams are using artificial intelligence in 2025, from roleplaying without human agents to writing more personal emails and follow-up. That was also what many operators told me during my visit to the Argentum conference in Florida about a month ago.
“Although the frontier is massive in terms of AI potential, we’re making really good strides,” Isaac Scott, CEO of Anthem Memory Care, told me.
During the conference, multiple operators also shared with me plans to grow their value-based care services. Data collection – along with AI – are often cornerstones of those efforts.
To me, it only makes sense that value-based care and AI are on the rise at the same time, given that they often are linked. And I think that as long as value-based care adoption continues to rise, senior living operators will continue to use AI and other new tech to help drive those plans.
In this week’s members-only SHN+ Update, I analyze the how the senior living industry is pushing to innovate in the following ways:
- How AI is moving from concept to implementation
- Senior living operator strategies for deploying and new tools
- Why AI and value-based care go hand-in-hand and feed into one another
Operators take AI into its next chapter
In the last couple of years, coinciding with the rise of platforms like ChatGPT, senior living operators have invested in AI and integrated it into operations. For instance, nonprofit operators are dedicating an average of 9.78% of their capital budgets to technology in 2025, up from 8.8% from a year ago.
Investors outside senior living have also put sizable amounts of dollars toward companies growing AI-powered services. For example, AI-powered emergency call system company Inspiren in March secured $35 million in Series A financing. Two other companies, Nobi and SafelyYou, also raised millions of dollars earlier this year to grow their respective AI-powered lighting and fall detection systems.
Those efforts have resulted in a new chapter for senior living operators using AI. As SHN reported this week, AI tools have shifted from novelty to necessity, at least when it comes to sales and marketing. In 2025, senior living operators are using AI agents to train salespeople how to close a sale when a prospect has questions or concerns. They also are using it to transcribe notes and give frontline employees more time with residents – among other things.
Indeed, senior living leaders are embracing the tech in a way they didn’t just a year or two ago.
For instance, AI has become an “integral part of how we operate,” Phoenix Senior Living Vice President of Sales and Marketing Justin Harden recently told SHN.
According to Scott, AI has shifted from a conceptual phase to one where operators are actually bringing it to bear on the ground.
“You’re hearing from different operators how they are implementing AI to achieve better results, how they’re using AI workflows to make the resident experience better … they’re now taking a proactive action on it,” Scott said.
The technology is still promising a lot, but operators are taking a more methodical approach to adopting the technology. Argentum hosted multiple panels on a variety of AI topics this year, including advice on using AI programming for future-proofing operations, such as through a human resources avatar that can address staff questions; strengthening sales and marketing teams through roleplay and follow up resources; and using an AI council to evaluate and roll out new technology systems more efficiently.
Operators have meanwhile stressed supporting rather than replacing staffers with AI. Aspenwood is for example deploying tools including Inspiren for fall mitigation and emergency call functions, Amba Health and Care for resident monitoring and is evaluating Meela from Meela Inc. for socialization efforts to allow staff to work smarter, not harder.
Senior living operator Merrill Gardens is piloting several AI solutions that include tools to record conversations with residents to build out profiles staff can use to plan activities and group people with similar interests.
AI is not without its limitations, though. Merrill Gardens COO Jason Childers told me that while AI is bringing a great amount of change – most of it good – it is also hard to keep up with at times.
“What we learned early on is that before we can really get too deep into it, we need to make sure all of our information and our organization is stored and organized really well,” he said.
As I ponder AI, I think about how it could serve as the backbone of a more tech-enabled industry, where staffers get both the support and information they need to do more with less. And I think that will be doubly important given the industry’s current “realignment” of workforce trends as hope fades for U.S. immigration reform.
But as it has been in the past, I think the danger with AI is that senior living operators rush headlong into new pilots and programs without having a clear use case and training. The senior living industry is littered with examples of products that companies tried to implement but abandoned after a short trial.
Value-based care rises along with new tech
As senior living operators gain more visibility over management services via AI and other tech, I think that will only accelerate their plans to grow more operationally complex, including through value-based care.
Value-based care is a somewhat nebulous term that incentivizes senior living operators to deliver better care outcomes, not just a higher volume of care. Senior living operators have joined with partners such as Curana to build plans, including with Medicare Advantage, through which residents can pay for certain services, like care coordination and preventative care.
Some operators, such Frontier Senior Living, are already seeing the benefits of pushing this kind of innovation within their business model. Recently, Frontier partnered with Curana to provide value-based services including nurse practitioners, podiatrists, nutritionists and pharmacists.The provider is already seeing an increased length of stay and fewer hospital trips for residents, resulting in an increase in revenue and positive margin growth, according to CEO Greg Roderick.
The call for further value-based care services was made abundantly clear with three presentations over two days, one of which was the keynote address. One that particularly stood out to me was about the “true impact” of value based care, which highlighted the effects of offering these services through the lens of a recent Bickford Senior Living resident. Through receiving care, she was able to live a longer, more meaningful remainder of her life despite having multiple known health needs when she moved into the community.
According to Scott, where the industry has embraced technology and is coming up to speed with AI, it still has a long way to go in regards to embracing the concept of value-based care, particularly for those who haven’t yet embraced the practice.
“I think for a lot of us, we just shrugged our shoulders and said [we] can’t figure it out, is there really a need, etc.,” Scott said. “I think that we’re at that point now where it’s like … you need to have a value based care plan. You need to be on the path towards value based care initiatives.”
I think the acceleration of AI in the industry will only accelerate the adoption of value-based care services. Operators such as Aspenwood are already beginning to utilize technology that allows residents to be remotely monitored by their own physicians, allowing them easier access to care that is deemed to have minimal costs. Fall mitigation and emergency response systems are reportedly already making an impact on response times, allowing staff to be more efficient and lower the cost of care and length of hospital stays for residents.
I can also see how this evolving technology will allow operators to be more proactive in their resident care, particularly through pattern-recognition software that can identify potential health issues earlier.
But as excited as they are to test new tech to power these operations, I think senior living operators are right to take it slow and methodical, as Aspenwood is currently doing with its AI adoption. As with anything to do with operations, the real test will lie not in what a tech partner or product can do, but how effectively staff can wield it in their day-to-day jobs.
