Spotlight On: Ty Morgan, Executive Director, Cypress Village Retirement Community

Spotlight On: Ty Morgan, Executive Director, Cypress Village Retirement Community

2 min read January 2023 Ty Morgan is the executive director of the Cypress Village Continuing Care Community. In an interview with Invest:, he discussed the challenges the senior living sector has been facing and how his team is addressing them, as well as what retirement living and care will look like going forward.

What were some highlights for Cypress Village in the past year?

First and foremost, we were fortunate to have weathered the COVID-19 pandemic and kept our residents safe and healthy. We were progressive in our attempts to contain and minimize the transmission of the virus through the implementation of infection control procedures such as UV light disinfection as well as being among the first locations to receive and administer COVID-19 vaccines.

We exited the pandemic as a stronger team, better equipped to handle difficult circumstances, and we have seen overall growth in occupancy levels – we are at the highest we’ve ever been in our community’s history. Most of the services we offer exhibited strong demand and solid results which exceeded our financial targets. We have focused on the infrastructure of the organization and having a tenured core leadership team committed to compassionate service and quality care. We are fortunate to have resources provided through our management company, Life Care Services and the senior living advocacy organization, LeadingAge Florida. Life Care Services views us as more than one of the thirteen communities within our portfolio. They have given us the resources and the autonomy to make decisions that best suit our individual community’s needs. Additionally, Life Care Services assisted with sourcing PPE supplies, COVID-19 tests and provided human capital as and if needed. LeadingAge Florida was pivotal regarding overall communication and guidance as we navigated the pandemic.

How have you addressed labor challenges?

We believe a resident’s primary experience is attributed to the services our associates provide, with brick and mortar often being secondary. Pre-pandemic, we created a robust recruiting platform that attracted employees from different providers and businesses. This was in place pre-pandemic and was a great tool throughout. Retention was a challenge because of hyper-inflation and wage pressures. 

How are you setting the precedent for retirement living and care?

It’s through finding the right people and keeping them, as well as continuity in healthcare services, dining services, concierge and other touch points in our support areas. All aspects are critical to maintaining satisfaction. You have to be appealing and attractive to the current marketplace, which can be difficult because our customer could be aged anywhere from mid-60s to mid-80s. You have to appeal to the value proposition of all segments. You need relevant amenities and need to be able to pivot quickly to accommodate new interests and latest trends. We are in the process of expanding what we have and are heavily investing in enhancing our amenities. When it comes to technological implementation, these are important aspects to the resident and family experience. We built a community app five years ago which grants residents and families access to menus, shuttle requests, telehealth, feedback surveys and much more. We have seen over 2,000 downloads since its launch. We have two factions of residents: those more resistant to learning new technology and those who embrace it. However, during the pandemic we noticed many resistant residents were willing to learn for the sake of connecting to their loved ones. During this time we created a YouTube channel to reach residents and their families via video messages. Our YouTube channel has hundreds of subscribers with over 47,000 views. It ended up being so popular that we have continued to create and publish content regularly. 

Specific to healthcare technology, we are in the process of working with the University of North Florida on pilot programs for remote health monitoring. Additionally, we are implementing fall detection software, communication enhancements in care centers and our nursing home and interfacing medical records with outside providers. Overall, we are open to advancements in technology and have adopted many new ways of doing business to provide the best service and care possible, especially when it comes to the way we communicate. 

How is your sector rising to meet the needs of elderly Florida residents as the region grows?

I believe we will see consolidation in the Jacksonville market as well as on a national level. We were struggling with a lack of healthcare providers and specialists pre-pandemic, and the pandemic put a tremendous strain on this issue alongside hyperinflation of wages. Nurses fled the senior living marketplace and were being recruited to handle COVID units across the country, with many being enticed financially. Doing so put providers like us in a tough spot. Thankfully, we had prepared a sustainable culture and operating model. We were strategic with how we managed recruiting and began stabilizing our workforce. Almost all healthcare facilities had to resort to contracted labor and staffing agencies which caused extreme inflation on wages. In our experience, we have found that agency staff often have less investment in their current post because there is less of a connection, which can have a negative impact on quality of services. Though we are still in the process of eliminating agency usage, we have made great strides reducing contracted labor. We have a strong recruiting pipeline, efficient onboarding process and effective plan to retain and grow our associates. We’ve seen improvement in our retention that we believe is attributed to developing our leaders through quarterly leadership trainings, enhanced recognition efforts, employee feedback surveys and a robust Culture Committee with departmental representatives from across the campus.

The pandemic afforded us a unique opportunity to see individuals rise to the various challenges it presented. This allowed us to promote many roles from within. Those who held their teams together, taking initiative to fill in the gaps, were rewarded with leadership roles and our teams are now benefiting from their effective leadership.

There will have to be more partnerships among the local network of healthcare providers to support the rising needs of elderly Florida residents. At the height of the pandemic, if we needed general contractors to prepare spaces for new residents, it was beneficial to have a solid partnership already established with our vendors. We were fortunate to have those business relationships in place prior to the pandemic so that our residents’ needs were met and prioritized. We have seen great growth in supply in the Jacksonville market over the past five years in assisted living and memory care facilities and we anticipate that this will put a strain on the availability of contractors in the future.The new facilities may be faced with challenges as they work to build a solid foundation.

What are your priorities looking ahead?

In the future we will continue to expand our existing partnerships with local hospitals, home health companies, universities such as UNF and political agencies such as LeadingAge Florida and local elected officials. We are working through various political avenues to improve the abilities for operators in senior living. Together, we will be stronger and that means better outcomes for the populations we serve. We have the demand, but we need to continue to provide the high standard of services our residents expect and deserve by onboarding, training and retaining a dedicated and compassionate workforce. We plan to be part of and contribute to a strong network of healthcare partners and providers in Jacksonville and beyond. Our philosophy is that strong collaboration in this industry will yield success and sustainability. Accordingly, we are working to break down any barriers to effective communication with all partnerships whether they are hospitals or lawmakers.

For more information, visit: 

https://cypressvillageretirement.com/

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