80. August Health & Koelsch Communities- Culture & Innovation at Work

In this episode of Raising Tech, Matt Reiners chats with Benjamin Surmi from Koelsch Communities and Erez Cohen, Co-Founder of August Health, about shaking up senior living with innovative tech and a people-first culture.

What You’ll Learn:

• How Koelsch blends tradition with cutting-edge tech to improve care.
• Why August Health’s easy-to-use tools are a game-changer for caregivers.
• The importance of culture in adopting new technology.
• Practical tips for providers hesitant to go digital.
• What’s next for senior care tech, including smarter tools and better data.

Join us for a fun, inspiring conversation on creating better care through tech and teamwork!

Find more about August Health on their website. 

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Transcript

Matt Reiners: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of raising tech. I am so excited to be joined here by two industry friends. first and foremost Benjamin  the director of education and culture for Koelsch communities.  and then my other guest here no offense Erez but uh Benjamin is like one of my favorite people in the industry.

but the next person is Erez Cohen the co founder of August Health.  and we're gonna be doing a deep dive today and a little bit of of everything and anything but uh  gentlemen thank you for joining me today. Awesome. So first question let's start with you Benjamin if you could just introduce yourself and share a little bit more about your role at Koelsch communities.

Benjamin Surmi: Sure. Yeah. And basically I try to find areas where our team members could have a better experience in their work life. Or where we can provide better quality care or where family members might have a better experience. And so I [00:01:00] work on initiatives to constantly be improving the experience of those three groups of people.

Matt Reiners: I love that. And then Erez you want to introduce yourself and just share a little bit more about your role at August Health. 

Erez Cohen: Yeah sure.  yeah my name is Erez Cohen. I'm one of the founders at August Health.  you know my career in senior living has been basically since the time of August Health which is about five years.

Before that I started a  Company in a totally different space. It was a mapping technology company that was acquired by Apple.  and then I spent about four years leading a product and engineering group at Apple  kind of learning and really cutting my teeth on how to build good product. when I left Apple I was really kind of in this mode where I didn't know what I wanted to do next.

 and was fortunate kind of in this mode. I was actually at the playground with my young son  pushing him on the swing set.  and there was another another guy standing next to me pushing his kid on the swing set. And so it started having conversation with him. [00:02:00] It turns out he was a physician who spent his career caring for older adults and really introduced me to the industry that is senior living  that you know that random dad in the playground is now my co founder at August health.

And so we started going on a roadshow of  you know what is senior living and how can we build solutions for it?  and that has since turned into August health.  and we're happy to be here today with  You know with with Benjamin as one of our early customers at Koelsch  but with many other communities on the platform as well.

Matt Reiners: Well I won't ask who was pushing their kid higher on the swing. But that's so cool. It's such an awesome founding story the power of playgrounds right? Just bring it to the very San 

Erez Cohen: Francisco like  you know founder story like you know that you just the first of all like kids made it happen.

And that was just at the. 

Matt Reiners: That's awesome. I love that.  and so Benjamin question for you cause I know you you know your oversee education and culture at Koelsch which is just so important. I think at communities today and you had mentioned kind of your role of just making that experience better. And I'm [00:03:00] wondering like what makes your culture unique to like really want to go out and find these things to improve not only residents but your staff's quality of work.

Well Aaron Koelsch.

Benjamin Surmi: And Judy Koelsch they are the driving force behind our company and our company culture and they are the second generation that is doing this work  within the Koelsch family. And so I think that family  first culture  that culture of that that we're not a big corporation but we we all know the CEO knows us that that kind of culture is really important.

And he's he's a big. Big proponent of we treat all all people dignity and respect. And so when you've got this kind of foundation  it opens the door for wanting to really not because we're 65 year old company. We're very slow to adopt technology because [00:04:00] we have seen over 65 years. There's a lots of trendy things that come and go.

And you can waste a ton of time with your staff on adopting things that only last two or three years. And so because we have six decades almost seven under our belt and we've seen things come and things go we tend to be a little bit more focused on what's actually going to make a difference. Which of course August Health is one of those things.

Matt Reiners: Yeah. And I imagine you feel very empowered in your role there Benjamin because I remember in my startup days you're one of like the first people to reach out to us exploring like new initiatives and stuff. So  kudos to you on on that. And  I know there is with with August health right? Like I continue to hear about you guys.

I feel like all over the place only good things too.  so kudos on that.  but I'm wondering you know you guys are being are known for being an innovative health care company. And I'm wondering if you could just explain a little bit about August Health's mission and how it serves the senior care industry today.

Erez Cohen: Sure. Yeah. And [00:05:00] before I do that I just will a comment that you know while Benjamin says Koelsch is is slow to adopt new technologies Benjamin also reached out to me to find out more about August Health which is pretty unique in the industry that they're kind of coming to a vendor.  and then also I believe Koelsch I'll need to like check this with my implementation team still holds the record at August health for the fastest implementation for the number of buildings.

And so I think when Koelsch does make a decision they go all in and it was very clear that you know we deployed basically in a matter of you know a building every other day with Koelsch and we couldn't have done it without Benjamin. So you know slow but then makes a big decision and goes all in.  love to hear it.

So yeah August health. I mean we are we are  we call ourselves a mission driven company. Every new employee that we hire we really we go over the mission. We just did a company off site. And the big kind of  presentation is what do we do this year that serve the mission?  our mission [00:06:00] is to empower  the essential work of caring for our elders.

 really we know that we're not caregivers ourselves. We're not there physically caring for residents.  but what we've seen so many times is that the tools that the caregivers are forced to use are often antiquated hard to use legacy tools that actually just get in the way of caring for residents.

And so our mission is can we how can we provide the tools to empower the caregivers to do a better job of caring for the residents and that that you know that mission takes many different forms in the products that we have and that we've released. Some of them are in saving time for the caregivers so that they can just they literally have more minutes in the day to focus.

On a resident. Some of them are identifying a resident that might need extra care. So can we maybe there's a resident who's slipping through the cracks who that there's during a shift change something missed. Can our program identify those residents? So there's lots of different avenues by which we do  improve the the the [00:07:00] kind of the tooling experience for the staff.

 our products. Range kind of the operations in a building  where we have a kind of a moving platform but then we are full HR and care platform. We are kind of the system of record for care. That's happening in a community.  and we've recently added  kind of products or modules for medications which is a really big and important part of .

Care at a community  for. some family engagement for billing and some other assets of the community. 

Matt Reiners: I love that. And you know I know we've kind of talked about  how that partnership foreigner I've even thinking back to my own story of when I learned about Aka's health. And I think Hey Benjamin you were the first person to tell me about them too of like doing really cool stuff.

So  you keep your ear to the ground my friends.  and I'm wondering like You know of course you reached out to August health. You're looking for things to make work easier but like what were some of those main goals when you first reached out to August health and started working with them? [00:08:00] 

Benjamin Surmi: It's something for our team that did not require any training to use.

That's my first goal as director of training is how can we create something where they don't need to be trained because it's so easy to use. So to this day we still do not have any required training for new nurses and department heads when they come to  use when they when they're hired and they need to use August health.

There's other training of course but as far as August health goes there's no required training. Now there's things I think we could. You know benefit with efficiencies and people using tools they don't know are there et cetera. But as far as being able to do your job anyone can just get in and start using it.

And that's huge in our industry. The last solution we had like you would have to take webinars to learn how to use it right? You couldn't. You can just show up and know how to use it. Even me you know I'm a pretty techie person. Like I could not figure out how to use that thing without going through webinars to learn how to use it.

So that was number one for me was such a great user [00:09:00] experience that the team doesn't even need to learn you know take a training. Like with iPhone right? You you could take a class on the iPhone. You probably would use it better but most humans can pick up an iPhone and immediately use it. That's that's what August health is like.

I love 

Erez Cohen: those children can use it. My kids can use the iPad and there's no they haven't gone for any web right? That's right. 

Matt Reiners: I love that. Yeah. And I've seen some of these systems from afar.  and it's. It's you know and I like to consider myself right like this tech guy that knows his way around these things.

And like even I'm like wouldn't even know where to begin with some of this stuff.  and you know I'm wondering you know from your point of view Benjamin like how is working with August health really just improve the care delivery you've been able to give at your communities? 

Benjamin Surmi: Well well number 1 it is making our nurses have a simpler experience of charting doing [00:10:00] alert charting where they have to you know some falls and they need to be charting on them every so often being able to make sure that they're giving people the right medications all those things.

For many of those processes we were on paper before  and so after 65 years this is brand new for our team to be able to do this with a keyboard and not have to handwrite everything in and pull out binders from you know from the wall put all these binders off the shelf and you know you stack up 16 binders and you open each binder and you'd go and you'd handwrite the charting for the night or charting for the day.

Right. Or if you're passing medications you're you know marking off each  each medication with your initial. We've had people walk out after you know come to work with us and they walk out because they're like no way. I'm not doing that anymore. Right? So for nurses bring it bring it to the 20th century right?

Bring it to the 20th century  for  leadership you know we're we're able to finally after 65 years of being in business We [00:11:00] can see every resident in a moment's notice right? We can see every resident. We can see what's going on with them quickly now for some other people who've already had an HR system.

That may not sound as exciting right? Because they've already they've already done that for us. It's a really big deal. I think if. If I had already had an HR what my answer would be more like  a wow the team is actually able to use it. The team is it's really fast right? It doesn't our previous system would constantly be saving constantly be  you know trying to update this is so fast.

You can just get in and move from screen to screen to screen. And it's. It keeps you going. It keeps you working right.  also the way the information is presented is very thoughtfully done. And so even if we had been using a different system which which some of our buildings were a lot of times the service plans and the way instructions are designed or put forward to the staff are not very clear.

Whereas the August help team has really thought [00:12:00] through what does a resident assistant. Actually need out of all this information can we put that on 1 or 2 pages right? That they could have an easily see what's going on or what are the nurses actually need to see? And they're really doing a good job of surfacing information for us that we might not go and look for.

 so those are a few of the things  certainly the. They've been really working hard on their dashboards to develop dashboards that are extremely timely and give us relevant information. So 1 of the things I love is their watch list where they will pull with algorithms the 10 residents 5 residents 3 residents in a specific building.

You really need to pay extra attention to. They have fallen many times. They don't have an assessment done. They lost weight. You know it's pulling all these different factors and saying these people. So They really need your attention. So anyway I could go on and on but lots of great things that help our team.

Matt Reiners: I love that. And  you know as next question is to you like you know one of the [00:13:00] things I've noticed with senior living communities like Koelsch right? Like they have very specific needs and I'm wondering like how you and August health you Go about it to ensure your solutions are tailored to to meet these these needs and requirements of communities like Koelsch.

Erez Cohen: Totally.  yes that is something that I also coming into the industry notice very quickly that if you have 10 different senior living companies there's there's 15 different ways they want to do things.  You know it really that that that kind of a realization that configuration and customization was going to be important really something we noticed from day one.

 one of the things that  I like to tell also to tell new employees is  we started before we even incorporated August health Justin and I were visiting communities and shadowing staff to figure out like how do they do this process? So. If we're doing kind of we're talking about our move in product we would go and shadow a sales director at four different [00:14:00] communities to see how the move in process happened.

And by the way for that exact example for moving there's actually. You know 20 different ways it could happen at one building depending on the dynamics with the family you know is the resident moving themselves in? Is the resident moving a spouse in? Is a child moving their  their parent in? Is a child in in the same state or in another state?

And so even for that one little example of like moving a resident in There's 30 different permutations of how the movement happens. And then even that it's like what order do the documents get filled out for the movement? You know do they come with the pulse or do we have to go get the pulse sign?  and so when we saw that type of workflow  kind of we we started engineering a solution that had kind of the the ability to like go down the different  routes or different permutations from the very beginning.

And so.  kind of by its core design our system handles lots of those different permutations.  and then we've also [00:15:00] realized and grown into multiple states.  and so one of the things we also realized is assisted living is regulated at the state level. And so that means every different state even for one company like couch Which is in multiple states has to deal with the regulations in many different states which is a whole you know burden on the operator.

 and so for state level regulations we've also built in configuration and talk itself. We can  we can encode rules at the state level at the company level to apply to those different criteria depending on what the operator wants to do. Those rules happen at the company level. So Koelsch can say here's how we want to do things at our entire.

Here's how we want to do things at Koelsch Buildings in Arizona. And then even here's how we want to do things at Koelsch Buildings in this specific building for memory care residents. And we can encode those rules into our platform. And so that was something we you know we realized we're fortunate. I think we were lucky to realize on day one that okay this industry doesn't have kind of one happy path.

There are many many different [00:16:00] paths. So we have to kind of build a system from the foundation to handle the configuration that's going to be required. 

Matt Reiners: Yeah it makes sense. And I  you know the thought of all the different state regulations too right? It's  Benjamin I don't  I don't envy you at all for having to have to deal with all that sort of stuff.

 and Ariza this next question is for you and you've kind of Talked about it a little bit but I'll I'll ask it again but  well not again but just asking in a different way but like what would you say makes August health platform stand out from other senior care technology providers? And if you know you could share a feature tool that you think has been  in particularly impactful.

Erez Cohen: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I'll go back to what Benjamin was talking about with ease of use and kind of the idea that there's still no formal August health training for a new staff at kelp.  when we kind of surveyed the landscape five years ago  we saw lots of EHRs out there.  and we saw effectively that staff would use maybe 1 [00:17:00] portion of those but then kind of the rest of care will be delivered in a hodgepodge of different workflows.

Often a whiteboard was was a really important piece of kind of it was the operating system was on on whiteboard with different colored markers with a different. Workflows that you know a color for residents who had a fall a color for the memory care residents a color for new residents or we saw paperwork flows lots of different worksheets and forms that needed to get filled out for different scenarios.

And so we  we started visiting communities and basically seeing this like hey why aren't people using the EHRs that they've paid for? You know they're paying lots of good money for these expensive EHRs that. Tout all these features and it kept coming down to these systems aren't weren't you know often weren't built from the start for seen living are hard to use for the staff.

And so they require as Benjamin was saying webinars and trainings and retraining. And okay let me go back to that recording and find how to do this 1 feature. And so Okay. That was really the kind of [00:18:00] the ethos that we came in with is can we build something that doesn't require training where it's as easy to use as Instagram on your iPhone?

 and so doing that is much harder than it looks you know doing that for every single staff member at every different level and what their job is. Is a very very hard problem and often you know wheels you know we'll get into situations where communities will say Hey actually  we do it like this and sometimes we'll actually have to say well we actually we see how you're doing it but here's how  you know you could do here's how we can actually solve the problem you're trying to approach rather than filling out that form.

Here's kind of a digital workflow that might be better. And so it takes a lot of work and a lot of effort to design systems that just are easy to use.  but we you know sweating those details is worth it because then you can get  and work with a customer like us where it kind of things just flow.

 I think you know a specific exam a good example that I'll keep coming back to  is our move in product but a newer one that we're now just releasing is family payments [00:19:00] and invoicing.  so this is kind of a new product for us where  families will receive  you know their invoices via August.

Tell if it can pay digitally on the platform.  this is something that we saw was really hard actually for the family side. So we'd see communities try to  send invoices to families and then families needed to see understand those invoices and pay them.  and it was hard to hard to digitally pay you know so they wanted to pay via ACH or wanted to pay via a credit card.

And it was like okay go create an account in this other system go log in here  like figure out how to add your bank information.  we you know we're all kind of web 2. 0  savvy especially kind of the newer families moving in. And so  the payments experience for families is one that's as simple as like paying for your Netflix bill.

It's kind of on autopay. You don't need to think about it. You can review the invoice and improve it but otherwise. Payments just work for you. And so that's something I'm particularly proud of. That's a newer product where we've taken that same ethos and said well what can we remove from this to just make it just as easy as possible for families to pay their [00:20:00] invoice every month?

Obviously that's something that's really good for the communities too because you know they're going to get paid. 

Matt Reiners: Yeah. You yeah. You know  removing friction when people are paying bills  is always something as a business owner business. Yeah. It's something you're always trying to look to do.  and it's it's funny hearing this conversation because my next question for you Benjamin was to ask about staff training and how that changed.

But it sounds like with the platform now I mean that's kind of been removed. And I imagine on the onboarding process for new staff or staff that were on when you started implementing August health it's really just changed that. Can you speak I guess from your staff's perspective of like like what the feedback has been in using this platform?

Benjamin Surmi: Oh in general. I mean it's very positive right? Nurses will I am thinking of one of our longtime nurses who was very reticent. She worked with us 30 years and she saw this coming and she was like oh boy this is going to be tough right? She's not happy about it. But now you know it's changed her life right?

 it's [00:21:00] in your hand and you're using it every day you realize oh wow I can be so much more efficient and keep people safe. So generally that is the feedback we hear is. This is so much easier to use. It gives me freedom. I think of our head nurses where some of them can  you know if they're if they're at home it's the weekend emergency happens they can give so many instructions and deal with what's going on by just pulling up their iPhone or iPad and logging in seeing what's going on and then call a nurse and be like okay here's what I need you to do.

Right? I mean before that was impossible. You'd have to drive into the building or be on the phone and asking them to. Right. The you know give you information. So even making it possible just to have a little work life balance is also part of the power of this tool. 

Erez Cohen: Well I'll just interject with a quick anecdote here.

We had one of our very early customers. This was like I don't know probably three years ago. You know he was the owner of  I think a handful of communities two or three. So he was just kind of family run [00:22:00] business. He owned three buildings.  and you know we implemented with him and he was a big fan.

And  about six months later. He wrote the team a really really nice email and he basically said I'm going on vacation next week and I haven't taken a vacation in five years. Because I haven't been comfortable leaving my residence and now like I feel like I have everything at my fingertips.

And if something goes wrong I can still deal with it on vacation. So I'm going on vacation. I just wanted to let you know and like you know we sent it obviously to our whole team and we you know we're really proud of that moment. But that that kind of work life balance that Benjamin was talking about you know really just You know hit home for this guy.

Matt Reiners: Yeah and it's in an industry where work life balance is tough right? Especially on the operator side where I feel like you guys should almost change your tagline to like making vacations happen right? Almost. It's  and  

Erez Cohen: You know the Corona ads were like it's like the beach you know and just like the lapping of the water.

And we were we were like okay we'll just do that. And we'll write August health at the top. [00:23:00] 

Matt Reiners: That's so funny.  I love that.  and Benjamin my next question is for you.  you're you're modest  I would say in terms of saying how you guys are slow to embrace technology and really embrace that but it seems to be really Part of the ethos of your culture.

And I'm wondering like what you would say to other senior living providers that have been historically hesitant to adopt new technology. 

Benjamin Surmi: Oh first of all don't just pick the product you want need to pick the team you want to work with.  you know you can have the best product on the planet but if the team is hard to work with the team doesn't get back to you the team is slow to make changes or accept feedback it's not going to work.

And I think August Health is a stellar example of both a great product and a fantastic team that works hand in hand with you as basically extensions of your organization right? They are.  you know hand in hand with us as changes common policies [00:24:00] changes regulations change as needs change right? They are right.

They're developing and tweaking their product and working with us and helping our users out.  you know I I love their chat feature where our team can just chat with them any any time during the work day to be able to ask questions. Hey I don't know how to do this. Right? And it's huge just to have that immediate quick response for our teams.

 so number one I think is you have to find a great team to work with. If you don't it's so hard to roll out technology. I've tried technology implementations before that were great tools but the team just doesn't doesn't know how to implement doesn't know how to be a great support and it just never takes off.

It never takes off and end up wasting a ton of money.  and it crosses a lot of pain. So pick the right team to I think it's critical to have a  champion within the organization who knows all the players. And [00:25:00] you can assign the implementation project management to that person someone who is able to follow up with every different layer of team members and help them connect to the implementation team at the technology partner if the technology partner is just asked hey can you just go make this happen?

It's probably not going to work too well. You really need someone within the organization who knows the players politics and who can help guide that person through just how to get ahold of people. People won't read their emails. People won't respond. And so having that help is critical.  I think also you know look for don't be afraid to ask really hard questions.

When you're selecting your product you want to ask the questions  get all around the issue right? I'll give you an example right? As I survey fall prevention software right? I'm really hard on these poor guys right? They're trying so [00:26:00] hard to create these products that will solve everything for our industry but they don't work in our industry.

They don't know our industry. You know they've tried to learn it but they don't know it. And so I ask them all kinds of questions right? Like okay this is great. You've got a fall prevention software. Only for their rooms but 50 percent of my falls happen outside my rooms. What are you going to do for those?

Right?  go go deep into those questions. Go deep into those questions. Oh you mean families will have to pay this fee in this way. Let's think about how their experience will be right. Why can't they just pay that with a credit card or whatever? Like ask those hard questions when you're talking to.  someone who's developing a product because maybe this month is not the right month.

Maybe a year from now they'll have developed it sufficiently. So that's a great experience for your families and your residents and your team members.  finally I think  to me you know in my 1st part of my career everything was focused on the resident experience and resident quality care but I have come to realize.

 [00:27:00] Nothing happens unless your team is engaged your team likes what it's what's going on. Your team has a stickiness a gamification if you will where they need to be in there. They need to be using this tool. I've rolled out so many great tools that would change the lives of my residents but because there was no no gamification for the staff they didn't use it.

They didn't use it at all. And so  tools like August which creates it. Kind of incentives to use the platform  create a stickiness with the team and teams want to use it need to use it to do their job right? That's what's powerful. 

Matt Reiners: Yeah I think it's a great point Benjamin because I definitely have I think when I you've been in the industry a little bit longer than me but when I first joined it was all about the resident experience too.

But if we need to prioritize the staff experience because if we're having happy healthy feel good staff right? That that in turn will. Passed down to the residents right? And just provide better experiences there.  so it's just such an important call out there. And you [00:28:00] know the next question series of questions kind of want to look into the future and errors.

I know you had mentioned like the family payment. I'm wondering if there's any other  you know exciting developments or advances that we can expect from August health in the coming years.

Erez Cohen: The family invoicing and payments is kind of our newest product that we've announced publicly.

 we are working on something else that's also kind of verbatim testing in a bunch of communities today.  we'll probably announce that in the next couple of months  kind of a new feature really focused on How can we take what we've done a kind of for most of the staff and bring all the way to the caregiver wherever the caregiver is kind of on the body of the caregiver. And so that's something that. We'll be talking about shortly.  I would say for for 2025 a big focus of ours is is really just making sure that August health is interconnected with the rest of the tools that communities are using.  we have great partnerships with lots of other softwares out in there and senior living and we want to make sure [00:29:00] that those we continue to build those.

those integrations and interfaces to other systems. From upstream from us the CRMs are all partners of ours. A kind of data can flow from a CRM into August health that really saves time for the community and really for the resident and their family and filling out paperwork because we'll basically just take it whatever's in the CRM and map it to the moving paperwork.

So never even type that information even once.  and then downstream from us. As we get more into family billing and payments accounting integrations  are something that we are  kind of rapidly working on.  but there's also integrations with dining hall systems with X and get you know family engagement platforms.

 we have integrations with PI tools and other  analytics providers. And so that's something that we're really focusing on is how can we just make sure August health is a good partner to the other vendors. That and that really is for again you know if you think about our mission that empowers the the staff because now there's just one less tool to log into.

[00:30:00] Data is flowing. That's less typing that's saving time for the community. That's making sure there's consistent data.  and it's really empowering the you know the entire community.  another area that you know we've already spent a lot of time on  kind of our reporting BI analytics  that's an area that.

We are doubling down on in 2025.  Benjamin mentioned our watch list.  that's something we're really proud of that feature. It really does take kind of from a multitude of different factors and try to find residents who might be slipping through the cracks  either at a community level but also kind of the leadership can also that data flows up to the leadership so they can go.

Call a community and say Hey what's going on with this resident? It looks like I'm seeing all these things. You know can you can you send me an update on the resident?  I would say we are just scratching the surface of the data set that we are starting to accumulate.  one of the things I'm most proud of at August health and I almost say we've earned the right to have all this data and we've earned the right with hard work of making good design.

And as [00:31:00] Benjamin called it gamification to incentivize people to use August health. And that is incredibly hard. But because we've done that we have all the data.  and you know you know they have the data. It's you know just quick caveat you know we don't share the data. The data is owned by the customer.

It's Benjamin you know Benjamin's data. We have open APIs. A lot of our customers are accessing kind of algorithmically their data whenever they want. And so what we've we've compiled now we've digitized the data set that used to be on the whiteboard or in the filing cabinet. And so the watch list was our first foray into.

So what can we do with this data set? But I believe that we're just scratching the surface. And so we've actually recently ramped up our data science team with some really strong data science hires and that's going to be a big  kind of Area of focus for us in 2025 you know we've now seen tens of thousands of move ins to communities and also a move outs from communities.

 we have a data set to say Hey what is this resident based on all these demographics going to be a [00:32:00] good move in for this community. Also we have all the move out so we can say Hey based on all the criteria and the incidents and the medications and the notes that we're seeing What is the probability that this resident might move out in the next month and can we build models for these things?

And this is something I'm really really bullish on because of the data set we've compiled and I'll just maybe I'll I'll end this this question with this. It's only because of the ease of use and the fact that there is no training and all these things that we're able to now do these kind of more advanced exciting modeling things which really are my passion.

I really come from you know as a math major and a math PhD and so on. And so. That's what I want to do but it took us five years to get here. It took us five years of building good UI of shadowing med techs. Now we have the data set. And so we can do these really really impactful things and really improve the quality of life for the staff and for the resident because now we have this.

And so that's an area we can see here in the passion of voice that I'm very very excited about. And I believe [00:33:00] there's a lot of impact going to happen in the coming years. 

Matt Reiners: I'm ready to like get August health and I don't even could use it yet.  but no I could like ready to run through a wall after that.

That was great.  and. You know I think to your point about the integrations right? I think what I see the one of the biggest issues in our industry is just that right? Like people think they've got the greatest solution might not want to play nice. I remember I was speaking to a provider group and someone raised their hand and said they had 13 different apps on their phone and nothing talked to each other  in order to do their job.

And I like almost cried with them and the way that you're taking it able to get that data set and like I'm you know I definitely was not a math PhD. I think anybody that knows that knows me but I I would love to see like what that entails and like kind of what the observations and conclusion you come out of that cause you can tell so much  especially with the way the world's going now.

 and then my last question  and I'll say. I'll ask it to both of you but I'll start with you as to give Benjamin the final the final answer here so [00:34:00] we can mic drop it for us.  but if there's one thing you want our listeners to take away from the importance of culture and technology and senior care what would it be?

Erez Cohen: You know I think I we just one of the things that we want to do at August health is make sure we're we're hitting our mission. You know we started this by referencing the mission which is how do we empower the essential work of caring for our elders? And so  again and  you know throughout this this hour we focus on the staff and how can we make the staff experience better?

Because kind of we believe that the resident experience we better if the staff experience is better. And so I'll actually just leave you. With one stat. So to make sure that we're hitting our mission we do a lot of surveys of our customers and of our users and say Hey you know how do you like I was helpful?

Could we improve on and so on? And in a survey we just did actually in December  kind of of all kind of new communities that got on August health. One of the questions I think was really telling which was Actually not do you like August [00:35:00] Health or does August Health help you it's do you have higher job satisfaction because of August Health?

Like do you as a Koelsch caregiver feel like they have higher job satisfaction at Koelsch because they have August Health as a tool they get to use? And the people who said it was eight out of ten caregivers have higher job satisfaction because of our product. And that's something I am incredibly proud of and I think is pretty impactful to the industry where turnover is such a big issue for residents and turnover so costly for for the resident when when the faces that they experience with change.

And so That's that's a stat that I think encapsulates a lot of our work is staff are actually happier in their jobs. So job satisfaction is going up. 

Matt Reiners: Which is so important. Cause you know you think about staff retention right? And like you see every article I feel like every conference I go to there's at least a few sessions around that.

 and it's so powerful.  and then Mr. Surmi so same question to you. I'm going to dub you like. [00:36:00] The technology culture guru in senior living. I know you'll never accept that title.  but same question to you. Like if there's one thing you want listeners to take away about the importance of culture and technology and in our industry what would it be?

Benjamin Surmi: Technology choices. Are not just about technology. They're about providing the tools that team members need to do their job. Technology could be a hammer. It could be a syringe. Right. And. You need we always need to make sure our team members have the tools they need to do their job. So don't stop with a great EHR.

Also make sure they have enough toilet paper available to them at midnight. Make sure they have enough you know bed pads. They don't having to hide them in the ceiling right? Our industry is terrible at not giving people the tools to do their job. And so when you are looking at how to create a great [00:37:00] culture one of the number one things you need to do.

Is make sure your team members have all the tools they need to do their job that they're not hunting around pecking and fighting for tools to do their job that they have the tools they need at their fingertips. And so  you know designing those tools to be user friendly is really important but also just making sure that they have the tools they need to do their job is critical.

Matt Reiners: I love that. Well gentlemen thank you for joining me today to do this deep dive on innovation tech culture August health Koelsch communities.  you are definitely two pioneers that are helping to push the industry forward and  grateful to have you have  aligned your passions and your careers in this industry.

So thank you. so much. This was awesome. And thanks Benjamin.