About Donna Hurley of Fresno

Donna Hurley of Fresno is a senior living professional with over two decades of experience within the industry. Donna found her passion for healthcare while assisting her father who was diagnosed with vascular dementia. She quickly learned the many moving parts associated with long term care through her caretaking experience and, in the time since, has worked to improve care solutions and refine comprehensive processes for senior living organizations in an effort to uphold wholistic health.

Donna Hurley has built a reputation in the senior living space on her profound interest in investing into training, refined operating policies, and census to improve senior living best practices. Donna is well known as a professional who cares deeply about empowering seniors to live healthy, rich lives by ensuring that senior living organizations have the tools necessary to support their diverse needs. Ms. Hurley leverages her extensive knowledge of a variety of pockets within the senior living space to help lead organizations towards positive changes to innovate infrastructure, facilitate healthy company cultures, and uphold high standards for care of their residents.

Improving Resident Satisfaction at Your Senior Living Facility Can Be Simple

As a senior living professional with a track record for improving average daily census at the organizations she has served, Donna Hurley of Fresno, California speaks to how resident satisfaction plays a key role in keeping facilities full. After all, with many different options to choose from, organizations that cannot properly show their commitment to the resident experience will quickly lose business to those that are more adept at keeping their senior populations happy.

Donna notes that there are many ways to improve resident satisfaction and, below, are a few insights that facilities can draw from to maximize their efforts.

Measure Satisfaction

If you want to truly make positive changes that benefit your facility and improve resident satisfaction, it can help to have channels where you can measure satisfaction internally. Being able to monitor satisfaction can provide your facility with great feedback and a more high-level look into how residents feel about the facility, its community, and offerings.

When looking to measure satisfaction, there are several ways to go about doing so. Donna finds that surveys are increasingly common and can lend insights into feedback trends. There is also online reviews and written and verbal feedback, which can be extremely helpful for enhancing specific residents’ experiences over time. It is important to remember that, as your organization continues to refine its processes and make changes, satisfaction and feedback may fluctuate over time. This points to the importance of consistent monitoring and evaluation.

Support Facility Staff

While it may sound strange to some to address resident satisfaction through the staff, it is important to remember that the people who seniors interact with day by day play an extremely vital role in how residents feel about a facility. Residents look to staff for a number of their needs, and high turnover rates or other staff issues can negatively impact the environment as well as how residents feel about a location.

For this reason, Donna Hurley of Fresno maintains that supporting facility staff is crucial for improving resident satisfaction. This means helping staff feel valued and supported for their work while ensuring that they have the tools and resources necessary to succeed in their job duties. Facilities should also be sure to encourage active communication and engagement among staff, invite staff to participate in community events, provide recognition when they go above and beyond in their roles, and invest in their success through trainings, mentorship, and additional learning opportunities when possible.

Consider Your Amenities

As with nearly any living experience, amenities in senior living facilities can go a long way towards helping seniors feel more satisfied in their environment. Seniors consider amenities one of the top factors for choosing a facility, as they are naturally interested in having a wide range of activities to choose from to diversify their day to day. Donna Hurley mentions that it is always a good idea to consider how your facility stacks up in terms of both indoor and outdoor recreational and leisure activities. Locations that feature fitness centers, pools, a garden, courtyard, game room, etc. will appeal to more seniors and increase resident satisfaction several fold. It is also wise to think about additional services such as housekeeping, transportation, and meals (as well as their quality) to make life easier, more convenient, and overall supportive for senior residents.

Create Community

Even with a host of amenities and services, it is possible for residents to feel secluded in their environment within a senior living facility. Seclusion can have a negative impact on health outcomes, increasing symptoms of depression and anxiety and even shortening life expectancy. Helping your organization create a strong community culture can, therefore, be beneficial for improving resident satisfaction. One way that facilities can work towards creating a strong sense of community is by encouraging social interaction with a variety of events such as clubs, movie nights, and birthday celebrations. Facilities can also build a sense of community by supporting transitional needs of residents. Extra assistance with medication reminders, transportation needs, laundry, etc. can really help residents feel more comfortable, safe, and supported in their living communities.

Form an Action Plan

With a clear idea of the pathways to improve resident satisfaction, administrators and teams can begin working on an action plan to make the right changes. Action plans are great because they shed light on what teams need to do to actively work towards completing all tasks necessary for their goal. For the best results, a facility’s action plan should be sure to state where the company stands at the time of the report as well as the change that action will bring. The step by step process will vary depending on what exactly a facility believes is hindering their resident retention and census, with many taking hints from their surveys, online reviews, and written/ verbal feedback from residents and their families.

Interested in More from Donna Hurley of Fresno?

If you are interested in learning more about senior living and associated topics from the perspective of a professional with decades of experience, you have come to the right place!

This website will feature high-level information based on Donna Hurley of Fresno’s insights, geared towards helping readers make more informed decisions regarding their and their loved ones needs within the space, keep individuals knowledgeable on recent developments, and more.

Tune in to the blog for insights on the following:

• Senior Living
• Challenges and Considerations Impacting Senior Communities
• Leadership
• Professional Development
• Senior Living Industry News and Trends