How Ocean Healthcare Has Taken the Fast Track Toward Skilled Nursing Census Growth

Persistent skilled nursing headwinds – namely the ongoing labor crisis – have largely marred occupancy gains for the industry since census first took a dive at the start of the pandemic.

Additionally, high levels of turnover among skilled nursing positions across the board is resulting in the need for increased wages and bonuses, among other things, to attract and retain staff.

But for New Jersey-based Ocean Healthcare Network, the needle is seemingly moving in the right direction.

Skilled nursing occupancy entering 2022 currently hovers around 77.1% on average, according to a recent report from commercial real estate brokerage and research firm Marcus & Millichap.

Ocean Healthcare’s census has returned to between 84% to 85%, according to Chief Strategy Officer Joseph Kiernan. That’s between five and seven percentage points away from where occupancy was for the operator pre-pandemic.

Kiernan attributes at least some of that recovery to the post-acute care provider’s relationships with its acute care partners – something he looks to build on as COVID-19 cases continue to wane.

“The level of engagement that we had was really sitting down and having almost granular conversations specific to let’s go through bundle by bundle by bundle … What are some of the ways we can partner together,” Kiernan told Skilled Nursing News during a conversation at the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care spring conference in Dallas.

Kiernan was one of three speakers on a panel held Wednesday at the NIC conference about senior care occupancy recovery.

In addition to its 12 skilled nursing facilities, Ocean Healthcare provides a full continuum of services from home health to hospice to adult day support.

Kiernan also pointed to the company’s decision to start its own in-house staffing agency back in 2020 as one way to stabilize its workforce to continue to grow occupancy – a move that’s been followed by a few of his skilled nursing colleagues in recent months.

“That expense was going to be spent regardless, even though we moved from one pocket to another pocket in the same pair of pants, that would have been an expense that went out the door,” Kiernan said during the panel.

“It enabled us to stabilize where our staffing is so that we can continue to grow,” he added.

Nursing homes have lost nearly 238,000 nursing home employees – amounting to 15 percent of its total workforce – since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

“I feel that on the post-acute side there’s a real robust opportunity to have those occupancies grow back,” Kiernan said during the panel.

In-house staffing agency stabilizes the workforce, kickstarts growth

When Ocean Healthcare acquired its private duty home health company, it came with a staffing license. Company leaders had never planned to get into that line of business but decided to renew the license each year anyway, according to Kiernan.

It wasn’t until early 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic began to pick up steam that the license that had long sat unused in a drawer became invaluable to Ocean Healthcare.

Ocean Healthcare essentially turned the home health company into a staffing agency, and began posting ads for RNs, LPNs, and CNAs. Kiernan also utilized the staff’s business development and marketing teams, as the facilities were not accepting new admissions, to recruit additional staff.

The company saw 2,700 applications come in online from nurses both in and out of state.

“So we really were self-sustaining during this process, and it stopped a lot of our buildings from having to be shut down or evacuated during the height of the crisis by being able to have as many of those buildings have the staff that they needed in order to care for the patients,” Kiernan said.

Agency RNs were making anywhere from $70 to $100 an hour during the throes of the pandemic, he added.

Ocean Healthcare still uses the staffing agency today, and it has adjusted pay rates to reflect the market and Covid’s declining impact. Kiernan sees it not only as a staffing agency but as a recruitment tool, as there is no penalty or fee associated with hiring full-time staff from their own agency.

“So we said, ‘if you’d like that nurse and she likes working in the building, offer her a job, and it’s not going to cost you a dime to do that,’” Kiernan said.