An increasing number of senior care organizations are supercharging their operations with data-driven approaches. The benefits include improved resident experiences, better quality of care and increased staff efficiency, says Scott Code, vice president of the Center for Aging Services Technologies at industry association LeadingAge.
For years, many organizations focused on implementing key enterprise applications, such as electronic health records systems, financial and HR platforms, safety technology and resident engagement tools. With systems in place, senior living communities realized that they had vast amounts of data that they should use to guide their operations, Code says.
Some use analytics tools built into individual applications. Some are centralizing data into data lakes or warehouses so they can build department-level reports that their existing systems can’t provide. And some are integrating their data to get more comprehensive views of their residents and operations.
“Ten years ago, people would be like, ‘We’re finally getting an EHR,” Code says. “Now, they have to figure out, ‘How do I take all this data, bring it all together and start making smart decisions based on what’s happening in my organization?’”
In fact, “data analytics tools” ranks as the top technology investment priority today, surpassing information and communications technology infrastructure for the first time, a 2025 LeadingAge CAST survey found.
READ MORE: Improve the flow of data in senior care.
Frasier’s Focus on Building a Data Foundation
When Puckett joined Frasier, he inherited a barebones IT environment with one rack of servers running VMware and no standards for computers, printers, servers or mobile devices.
He got to work standardizing the organization on HP desktops and Microsoft Surface laptops, replaced a legacy phone system with Voice over IP, upgraded to Fortinet firewalls and built an eight-rack data center powered by HPE servers and storage. He replicated the on-premises environment to Microsoft Azure.
In 2024, Puckett and his team began modernizing enterprise applications with new cloud-based her, accounting and financial software. At the same time, they saw an opportunity to adopt data analytics by consolidating data from new and existing applications into an Azure data lake and deploying Power BI dashboards.
“We now have good information to drive business decisions,” Puckett says.
The IT team evaluated each application to determine how to transfer the data and how frequently it needed to be refreshed. Before building the actual dashboards, the IT team brainstormed with department leaders and designed prototypes.
“We looked at all of that very early in the process,” Puckett says. “What information do you need to see to help you make informed decisions about running your department as a good steward? Then, we mocked up the dashboards like cartoons.”
