U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Senior Living” ratings will debut May 10.
The new initiative, first announced last fall, will present the participating independent living, assisted living, memory care and continuing care retirement communities (the latter also known as life plan communities) that are determined to be the “best” based on the results of consumer satisfaction surveys of residents and their families. That’s a big difference from U.S. News’ “Best Nursing Homes” ratings, which incorporate data primarily derived from public sources such as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Care Compare program.
Activated Insights, on behalf of U.S. News, conducted the surveys and then provided the data to enable U.S. News to perform a statistical assessment and determine a score related to each community’s performance.
As of September, more than 2,500 senior living communities had signed up and agreed to pay a registration fee to Activated Insights to cover the cost of administering the survey and related administrative costs. “Participating in the survey will allow a community to be eligible to be evaluated, but it does not guarantee that a community will be recognized or identified as high-performing,” Chad Smolinski, chief product officer for U.S. News, previously told McKnight’s Senior Living.
C-suite executives from many senior living companies provided advice and input into the U.S. News program, as did Argentum President and CEO James Balda, National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care President and CEO Brian Jurutka and co-founder and Strategic Adviser Bob Kramer, and LeadingAge President and CEO Katie Smith Sloan, Activated Insights CEO Jacquelyn Kung, DrPH, MBA, told McKnight’s Senior Living at the time.
The U.S. News program is one of a growing number of recognition programs designed to help senior living communities stand out from their competition as consumers research their options. Fortune’s “Best Workplaces for Aging Services” lists and J.D. Power’s Senior Living Satisfaction Study both launched in 2018, for instance. NRC Health’s “Customer Approved” and “Employee Approved” awards began in 2019, and Caring.com’s “Caring Stars” program has been around since 2012.
Activated Insights also works with Fortune on its “Best Workplaces for Aging Services” lists, which rank entire senior living and skilled nursing companies based on the results of employee surveys. The U.S. News program, by contrast, will recognize individual senior living communities based on resident or family input and will not include ordinal rankings.
