The 10 largest nonprofit, multi-site senior living organizations were operating nearly 2,000 fewer nursing care beds at the end of 2021, compared with the end of 2020.
That’s according to the 2022 LeadingAge Ziegler 200 report. The report lists the largest not-for-profit systems providing aging services through senior living in the United States, in order of total owned market-rate units, as of December 31, 2021.
“In the last 10 years, the average annual growth rate in total units is 2.7%, with independent living and assisted living growth each year, but decline in the number of nursing care beds,” the report states. “Memory care units are becoming an increasingly important component of the annual unit counts, with 64% of the LZ 200 offering specialized memory care units.”
The top 10 non-profit senior living operators in the latest report, ranked by nursing care beds, are:
- The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society – 8,452 nursing beds
- Ascension Living – 3,689 nursing beds
- The Carmelite System, Inc. – 2,349 nursing beds
- Benedictine – 2,128 nursing beds
- Trinity Health Senior Communities – 2,029 nursing beds
- ArchCare – 1,723 nursing beds
- Presbyterian Homes and Services – 1,572 nursing beds
- Acts Retirement Services, Inc. – 1,526 nursing beds
- Christian Horizons – 1,486 nursing beds
- Cassia – 1,380 nursing beds
The total number of nursing beds among these providers was 26,424. This compares to 28,418 beds among the providers on the 2021 version of these rankings.
More recent declines in nursing beds may be linked to staffing shortages, as 18.6% of nursing homes are reporting a shortage of nurses and 19.6% are reporting a shortage of aides, according to a FitchRatings report on life plan communities released earlier this week.
“LPCs [life plan communities] may use various longer-term strategies to respond to labor challenges,” Fitch stated in the report. “These include a rightsizing of skilled nursing beds to levels appropriate to the available staff and the needs of internal residents, an increased investment in IL and AL/memory care, which require less staffing, have a better payor mix (these service lines are largely private pay), and take advantage of national demographic shifts and senior consumer preference for aging in place.”
About 8% of all nursing facilities reported bed reductions as of Oct. 2, 2022 compared with May 24, 2020, according to Fitch’s analysis.
By total unit count, the largest nonprofit senior living and care provider on the LeadingAge/Ziegler list is National Senior Campuses, with 21,753 units. Of those, about 19,000 are independent living.
