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Transforming Staffing in Senior Living

Sage, a pioneering provider of integrated care solutions for senior living and skilled nursing facilities, has taken a monumental step towards alleviating staffing challenges faced by these establishments. With the launch of its new platform, Labor, Sage aims to address the significant issues stemming from increased resident acuity and the resulting burnout among caregivers.

The senior living sector is currently grappling with a critical staffing crisis. As the needs of residents become more demanding, the burden on frontline caregivers intensifies. Many facilities find themselves caught in a never-ending cycle of recalibrating staffing levels to match fluctuating care requirements, often without real-time insights into how heavy their workloads are. This lack of visibility can hinder efforts to keep staff morale and retention high, ultimately affecting the quality of care residents receive.

The Birth of Labor

Labor was developed as a direct response to the challenges that senior living operators, like Sonida Senior Living, face when trying to balance labor budgets while still prioritizing high-quality care. By collaborating closely with Sonida's teams, Sage leveraged real-time care data from its existing platform to create a tailored model aimed at overcoming staffing barriers.

Tabitha Obenour, Chief Clinical Officer of Sonida Senior Living, noted the transformative impact of this partnership, stating, "Sage didn't just analyze our data; they engaged with our teams directly to understand our daily operations. Their deep dive into our processes enabled us to maintain our labor budget while cutting costs significantly, thereby improving support for our caregivers. This collaborative approach was crucial in achieving results that exceed our expectations."

Key Features of Labor

The Labor platform stands out by seamlessly integrating essential elements like resident care needs, staff schedules, and fiscal goals into a single interface. This provides senior living leaders with unparalleled clarity to enhance staffing decisions, thus improving resident care outcomes while remaining within budgetary constraints.

Some of the advantageous features of Labor include:

• - Acuity-Based Staffing: The platform continuously monitors resident care needs, instantly highlighting when they exceed current staffing levels. This proactive approach allows communities to adapt their staffing in real time to match evolving resident demands—something traditional staffing tools fail to do.

• - Data-Driven Budget Management: Through customized recommendations tailored to each facility’s specific budget targets, Labor helps leaders view real-time data regarding labor hours, enabling preemptive adjustments to prevent budget overruns.

• - Performance Insights to Mitigate Turnover: Labor assesses caregivers’ shifts in total context, providing leaders with an overview of workload distribution throughout each shift. Such insights allow for real-time rebalancing, ultimately reducing caregiver fatigue and turnover.

Ellen Johnston, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Sage, emphasized the importance of Labor in resolving staffing issues, stating, "To solve the staffing crisis, we need to align the workforce with the actual acuity of residents. Labor gives leaders the insights necessary to match the right resources with the right residents precisely when they are needed. This visibility can help caregivers be allocated where their expertise is most effective, significantly aiding in burnout prevention."

Conclusion

The unveiling of Labor coincides with a period of growth for Sage, which also recently launched Tasking—a tool that unifies planned and unplanned care workflows. Having secured over $100 million in funding in 2026, including significant investments from Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Sage is on a mission to innovate senior care through AI-powered solutions that focus on prevention rather than mere response.

As the demand for better-managed senior living facilities continues to rise, solutions like Labor are set to not only improve operational efficiency but also enhance the quality of life for residents and support for caregivers alike. For more details on the Labor platform, visit Sage’s official website.