The Springs Living, Scan Partner To Boost Medicare Advantage Access For Residents

Senior living provider The Springs Living is partnering with SCAN Health Plan to create a more connected healthcare experience for older adults living in Oregon.

SCAN oversees one of the largest nonprofit Medicare Advantage plans through its Institutional Special Needs Plan (I-SNP), and the partnership will result in co-branded healthcare offerings for older adults that advance value-based care efforts for the Beaverton, Oregon-based senior living provider. The two companies are collaborating on a health plan that is initially slated to serve older adults living in more than 1,500 The Springs Living residences in the Portland, Oregon area.

The partnership aims to connect older adults with more supportive healthcare services in The Springs Living’s assisted living and memory care settings for those in need of institutional healthcare services.

The Springs Living CEO Fee Stubblefield said the value-based care partnership comes at a time when the industry is facing the biggest opportunities but also the most challenges since the industry’s inception in the 1980s. While operators have focused on providing quality communities with an emphasis on lifestyle and hospitality, Stubblefield said recent occupancy gains could “hide some damaging things” due to the inevitable need for high-acuity assisted living and memory care as older adults age.

With the new partnership, Stubblefield said The Springs Living and SCAN are “changing the recipe, and we’re allocating resources differently.”

“The goal here for us is to improve the quality, the healthspan and lifespan of older adults today,” Stubblefield told Senior Housing News. “This is not a real estate business going down the road hiding under the veil of senior housing operations; this is truly a healthcare service, and that’s what we’re doing.”

The Springs Living has tested previous value-based care arrangements through Medicare Advantage plans and concierge clinicians that helped shape the company’s experience managing value-based care efforts alongside traditional senior living operations, with successes and failures that paved the way for the recent partnership with SCAN.

“We’re trying to do something that is different and something that is repeatable,” Stubblefield added.

With the company’s experience in high-acuity assisted living and memory care services, Stubblefield views the partnership with SCAN as the culmination of a quest the company has been pursuing since the mid-2000s to integrate healthcare into senior living, pairing SCAN’s clinical and technical expertise with The Springs Living’s strong senior living operating platform.

This co-branded, value-based care model will be essential for improving resident health outcomes and preventing unnecessary emergency room visits, while also providing better support to frontline caregivers facing daunting responsibilities in handling care coordination and healthcare arrangements for older adults living in assisted living and memory care.

To that end, Stubblefield views this alignment between healthcare and senior living as a turning point for the sector, noting that the “road has turned” and warning that operators who continue to treat senior living as real estate and hospitality risk running “off the cliff.”

SCAN Group and SCAN Health Plan CEO Dr. Sachin Jain said the partnership represents bringing together two “highly aligned” organizations focused on housing and healthcare that can “transform the experience of older adults.”

“We’ve always been looking for an organization that really gets it, that’s thinking long-term through the lens of a highly integrated approach,” Jain told Senior Housing News. “The Springs Living is, in many ways, unlike any other operator we’ve met in the space because they are truly committed to transforming the healthcare experience of people who elect to live in their communities.”

Details regarding the type of healthcare services and health insurance arrangements that will make the partnership possible could not be disclosed on Wednesday due to ongoing regulatory approvals as outlined by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) guidelines. The co-branded products will be available January 1, 2027.

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