Long-Term Care Outlook 2026: Steve Nee, CEO, Diversicare
In this episode of the “Achieving Health” podcast, host Chad Mulvany is joined by Andy Page, partner and national healthcare reimbursement leader at Forvis Mazars, and special guest Steve Nee, CEO of Diversicare. Andy and Steve discuss the outlook for long-term care providers in 2026. Tune in for Steve’s insights on leadership, staffing, technology, and other major forces shaping the industry.
Transcript
CHAD MULVANY
On today's episode of “Achieving Health,” I'll be joined by my colleague, Andy Page, and special guest Steve Nee, CEO of Diversicare, for a conversation about the outlook for long-term care providers in 2026. Stay tuned.
ANNOUNCER
This is “Achieving Health,” a podcast from Forvis Mazars, where we delve into the topics that matter most to healthcare organizations across the continuum of care. Our goal is to help you navigate the dynamic healthcare landscape and achieve health at your organization. Here's your host, Chad Mulvany.
CHAD MULVANY
Welcome to “Achieving Health.” I'm Chad Mulvany, director in the Healthcare Practice at Forvis Mazars. Thank you for joining me.
In case you missed it, on our last episode of “Washington Watch,” my colleagues Faraaz and Darshana joined to discuss the current state of Rural Health Transformation Program funding. I also covered updates on Congress' appropriations bill and other key policy updates.
Remember to follow “Achieving Health” wherever you listen to podcasts to keep up with each new episode. We have “Washington Watch” episodes every other Wednesday, with the next one on February 18th.
For today's episode, I'd like to welcome my colleague, Andy Page, partner and national Healthcare reimbursement leader at Forvis Mazars. I'd also like to welcome our special guest, Steve Nee, CEO of Diversicare, a long-term care provider serving communities across Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Kansas, and North Carolina.
They're here to talk about the challenges and opportunities for long-term care organizations in 2026. Andy, Steve, thank you both for joining. I'll turn it over to you for this important conversation.
ANDY PAGE
Chad, thanks so much for having us. And, Steve, thank you for being here. Steve, the space that Diversicare operates in is near and dear to me, so I'm excited to dive in and just talk about the state of the industry.
STEVE NEE
Yeah. Thank you for having me.
ANDY PAGE
So, first off, could you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and how you came to healthcare and anything else that you'd like our listeners to know about Diversicare?
STEVE NEE
Yeah, absolutely. I really appreciate the time today. And I'm Steve Nee. I am the CEO of Diversicare Healthcare Services. We are a long-term care company headquartered in Brentwood, Tennessee. I had the pleasure of joining this team right at three years ago, really at a very interesting time. The industry was really in the throes of COVID, and we were looking to go in a little bit different direction as an organization.
I came to the company with over 15 years of operational experience in the industry. I actually came up through the administrator ranks. I actually started in the business, believe it or not, in housekeeping. Right after graduating college, I took the first job that I could to get my foot in the door and was cleaning rooms all the way through grad school before getting accepted into an administrator-in-training program here in Middle Tennessee.
And then, I went on to get licensed as an administrator. And I had a reputation of being kind of a turnaround specialist in the area, before being given the opportunity to move into more of a regional capacity, which was absolutely tremendous. I was able to get some experience outside of the state of Tennessee servicing some centers in Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio before moving into a chief operating officer role as we grew that organization.
Then again, came here to Diversicare as CEO back in 2023 and have had some great successes As it sits today, we are more than just a SNF company. Historically, we have been. But, over the last couple of years, we've forayed into different arenas here. We have gotten into the CCRC space, and we've gotten into the behavioral health space, opening our first behavioral health hospital.
We've also ventured into the pharmacy space and started and developed our own in-house pharmacy. And in 2026, we'll be moving into the primary care space and looking at providing nurse practitioners to our centers and other skilled providers. So, I think if COVID taught us anything, it's the importance of diversification. And for us specifically, we are doubling down on broadening our service offerings here at Diversicare as we look forward to the future.
ANDY PAGE
Yeah. So, personally, you've had quite the journey and you've seen multiple areas of the industry operations all the way through to your position now, and there's never a shortage of things going on in our industry. But, I'm curious; from your perspective, what are the biggest forces, and this could be both positive and negative, that will impact long-term care providers like Diversicare over the next five years?
STEVE NEE
Yeah, that's a great question. And I think if we were to boil it down to the major forces that we're going to be looking at facing really, not only as an organization but as an industry, I would say workforce, reimbursement, regulatory environment, and then probably technology and innovation. And I'll speak a little bit to each of those.
So, on the staffing and workforce side, it's no secret really, our industry was pummeled during COVID. There is a lot of regulatory oversight on how we can staff buildings and the type of PPE that our teams need to use. And, it was a very, very stressful time in our industry. And we saw a lot of turnover and actually a lot of caregivers and direct care staff leaving the industry.
And I think at the height of the pandemic, there was more than a quarter million individuals that had left the industry and had left us with a severe shortage. And also, when we're looking at demographics moving forward, too, there's far more people that are demanding of our services than our workforce is able to accommodate.
So, we're dealing with this deficit that's a remnant of COVID as we're looking down the barrel of a demographic need for our services. So, I think for us, our number one opportunity and challenge is going to be how do we meet the demand of this demographic that we know is here and continues to grow. But there have been some positives on the workforce front.
We are starting to see that delta close in numbers. I think AHCA has actually recently shared that, you know, we're only about 26,000 workers short from where we were pre-pandemic, so that 250,000 number has shrunk considerably over the last couple of years. And it looks like maybe in ‘26 or ‘27 we’ll at least be back to baseline and pre-pandemic numbers for where the workforce is for the industry.
But we've also had some big wins in the industry that, you know, we were looking at a staffing mandate that we were going to have to overcome as an industry, which quite frankly, there was no additional funding outlined for that. But also, you know, where do you find the people to meet that staffing mandate?
So, we've had some wins as recently as December. We've been able to effectively repeal that staffing mandate, although there are some whispers that some people are trying to rekindle that, particularly for for-profit operations. But at least for now, and that's not going to be a requirement for us, at least for the next 10 years. But it’s not going to deter us as an industry from finding ways to continue to build that workforce. But also, it really challenges us as an industry and as a company to get creative with the tools and technology that are available to us, things like AI that we're able to use to augment the staff that we do have to ensure proper care delivery.
So again, workforce is probably the first thing on that list. Secondly, and I would speak to reimbursement specifically, which is clearly your wheelhouse, Andy. But, you know, for us, it's very, very important that reimbursement from payers keep up with the cost of care. And for many payers in the market, it's simply not keeping up.
And whether that's going to be your Medicares, your Medicare replacements, or the state Medicaid program, we as providers need to continue to speak up and be very forthright and transparent that oftentimes our reimbursement for skilled nursing providers is not keeping up with the demands. And again, we're seeing a lot of inflated expenses for things like workforce and medical supplies and just, really, the cost of doing business has increased dramatically.
And oftentimes that reimbursement is not keeping up. But we are seeing some wins, and we're very thankful for the partnerships that we have with the states that we are operating in on the Medicaid side. Our legislators, they fully understand, you know, where we're coming from and the need for aligning reimbursement with the expenses that we're facing.
But also we're seeing things like these annual Medicare market basket increases that are incredibly helpful. But those just need to continue. We need to continue to advocate for those in the go-forward. But also, there's some creative opportunities on the reimbursement front, too, as providers like ourselves are aligning ourselves with value-based care networks and doing things like ACO memberships and involvement with I-SNPs, where it allows these kind of risk-sharing agreements where we're able to potentially increase our reimbursement based on our outcomes, which is incredibly great, particularly for those that have good outcomes, because there are clearly ways to be a winner in those scenarios and those agreements.
So, again, on the reimbursement front, there's a lot of good things going on as well. But just want to underscore the need for continued advocacy and involvement on that front. I think third on the list was regulatory environment. Look, as we're looking to the future, in our industry, we have a lot to overcome on the regulatory side.
So, for one, the reality of today's current survey environment, as an example, most survey agencies are woefully behind in the timing of those surveys. And that is very detrimental to providers like ourselves because if they're behind on surveys, that means that there's a lag in, you know, updating of your five-star status. And that could negatively impact your ability to get contracts and really kind of snowballs and gets out of control over time.
But, we are hopeful that we can get back on schedule with some of those surveys. But also there's things like the reformatting of the way that five-star calculations are handled and really increasing flexibility for the survey agencies and CMS to impose CMPs on providers like ourselves is a constant uphill battle in those regards.
But, I would also say that in some of the reporting requirements, like things like PBJ and the quality reporting systems, and then some of these CMS off-cycle validations that have been in the news in recent months to just continue to push down on operators and keep our focus on things like that instead of providing exceptional care.
So, it's a constant battle. But we're also seeing on the regulatory side, this really increasing frequency of things like immediate jeopardy citations and frequency and scope and severity of citations across the board, with associated escalating penalties. So, there's just any number of things on the regulatory side. It's always a balance.
But it seems like the pressures on that side only continue to escalate as time progresses. And I think, lastly, on the technology front, Andy, I think that as we're facing forward as an industry, just continuing to support and advocate for innovative solutions to care delivery, I think is really going to be a big part of the equation.
And I know the big buzzword today is AI this and AI that, but I think we're finally starting to see some case studies in how we can practically apply those types of solutions to have an ROI. I know that when I first hit the scene, there were a lot of big dreams, but some of that stuff is a little bit pie in the sky.
But I think for us specifically, we're seeing some providers and some solutions that have really been beneficial to our processes. And we'll talk a little bit more about that later. But I think that, as an industry, when we're forward-facing, really the implementation and the adoption of technologies like AI and others is going to be absolutely paramount and will dictate success and what operators are going to win in the new environment.
ANDY PAGE
Yeah. So, all of that very much overlaps what I would say, too. So, a lot of common ground between you and me. And clearly, you're right; I am a reimbursement guy. So, leaning in on reimbursement keeping pace with the overall cost of doing business and one of, like from my perspective over the last couple of years, if the world is operating at an inflationary percentage that our third-party payers are not keeping up with, that puts pressure on us from a from a finance perspective.
So, we do need some advocacy around that to right-size reimbursement moving into the future. And in all honesty, the government payers are catching up from a pandemic era where 3% used to be the norm and we're not sure if that's the right number anymore. So, moving forward there from a reimbursement perspective is critical, I would think, for providers like Diversicare.
As you talk to your peers, I know it's a relatively small space in long-term care, what advice are you giving other executives on navigating these same challenges? Because I'm sure everyone's dealing with the same things that you're talking about.
STEVE NEE
Yeah, you're exactly right. And, you know, speaking with my colleagues throughout the industry, really the ongoing theme is that we really need to view these challenges very much as opportunities. And one thing that I can say about our industry specifically is we have the most creative and scrappy group of individuals in our space that I could ever imagine and we always find a way to make it work.
And we work collaboratively, not only with our local decision makers and lawmakers, but, you know, with others within the space to be able to find solutions that allow us to deliver exceptional care to those that we serve. So, again, I think the biggest advice is just we continue to look at these challenges as opportunities and not to be bogged down by what appears to be a lot of, you know, negative news and or an uphill battle that we're constantly facing. That just is the nature of long-term care. But also to a more pragmatic approach, really just continue to invest in your people and empower them to get creative in trying to find these kinds of solutions to these complex problems.
And I think, too, what we're starting to see as an industry is really this decentralization effort within organizations where, you know, key leaders are pushing decision making down to the local level. It's not a secret that healthcare is local, and it only makes sense that those are the individuals that are making the decisions about their operations at the local level.
But how can we, let's say, at the support center level or at the home office level, how can we continue to empower those leaders to make good decisions and give them the tools and resources necessary to be successful? So, we're seeing a lot of that in the space, too, just investment in leadership development and the tools needed to be successful, etc.
But I think, too, the last piece of advice that, you know, I would give to fellow executives in the space is just continue to get involved beyond the four walls of your organization. And whether that be being involved in your state or national associations, you know, any sort of local government, make sure that you're involved with your local representatives and Congress folks, all those relationships are vitally important, and we need to make sure that our voices, as an industry, are heard.
And I think that, you know, the sum of the parts is greater than the individual, and very much so on the government relations piece, too. If we're consistent as an industry with our messaging, if we're meeting with those key decision makers, it's gonna be very, very beneficial. But it can't be one of these one-and-done kind of answers.
It is a constant, perpetual thing and is very relational. So, make sure that you're having those relationships in place and you're staying in touch with those folks. But if you're not able to contribute other resources, you know, to things like PACs and so forth, you can absolutely contribute something that's even far more valuable.
And that's going to be your time and sharing your experience and why it's so important that we're fighting for things like equitable reimbursement and fair regulation and regulatory oversight, those types of things. So, just continue to be involved in the dialog and have a seat at the table. I don't think that the importance of that can be underscored enough.
ANDY PAGE
And I'm not sure that answer has changed over the years. In my career it's always been a grassroots effort for your executives and your leaders and your organizations in total to really dig in and become part of your, you mentioned it, your state associations, your political landscape, in your environment. A lot of these issues that we're talking about are the same issues that they were 25 years ago when I started my career, which was staffing and reimbursement.
I think probably the technology piece, although it was prevalent in years past, has advanced. And as we kind of move on here, we mentioned it several times so far, technology and AI, and you see it in action all around you with telehealth technologies or EHR enhancements or any other number of tools. What's your overall opinion on how technology can improve operational things like patient outcomes and efficiency, which ultimately lead to just a successful organization? But, curious—your thoughts?
STEVE NEE
Yeah. So, without a doubt, technology is a tool that can be leveraged to improve both outcomes and efficiency if used appropriately. But also, the way we see it, I mean, we use it to make sure that we're able to augment or level up the staff that we do have. And, you know, as mentioned previously, we've seen a huge resurgence in the use of technology, particularly in our space with the advent of AI and some of the things that we've seen specifically are, as far as benefits, are more proactive care provision, faster clinical decision making, improved staffing, better documentation, better tracking of KPIs and so forth.
And, particularly on the proactive care provision, we are partnering with a group currently that offers remote patient monitoring. That is just an extra layer of oversight to help us catch change of conditions more quickly, which allows for more timely and better bedside interventions as an example. And as we start looking at this value-based care model and we're incentivized to provide that care in-house instead of sending that patient back to the hospital as an example.
This has been an absolute game changer for us if we're able to act more quickly and more effectively and have that extra layer of support. But also, on the documentation side, we constantly have this program running in the background that scrubs the documentation and is constantly reconciling and monitoring current status and condition. And we're able to, again, more quickly intervene based on the documentation and the training that it's recognizing the background there, too.
So, it's been excellent for us. And while we're talking about the timeliness of decision making as well, we're able to get to a yes more quickly on things like referrals coming to us and admitting patients to our centers. We're able to scrub through insurances and diagnoses and medications to say, hey, look, yes, we're able to meet the needs of this patient, which is better for the hospital because they're able to get those folks out to us more quickly, as an example.
But also on the decision making side, too, our integration with our nurse practitioners, attending physicians, our medical directors in making sure all that documentation is all in one place and we're kind of singing from the same page of the hymnal, if you will, really has been been great as well, to make sure that nothing is missed and to make sure that everybody again, is on the same page for the care plan, the care delivery for that specific patient or resident.
I'd mentioned improve staffing. And we also use scheduling software, which has really streamlined our ability to fill our open shifts at our centers. And this makes the scheduling process far easier for our team members. And it's not just the workforce manager or the scheduler that's putting together the schedule, but also for the team members that are on the schedule.
Because they're able to log in, they're able to pick up a shift, they're able to swap a shift, they're able to request off. Everything is all in one place and streamlined and built into this program, as are some automations and some templates. So, it shortens the amount of time it takes to put together a schedule and fill those shifts, which has been tremendous and quite frankly, has been pretty integral to us, in our ability to eliminate agency staffing in our buildings and has allowed for more consistent scheduling as we're able to put people on the same assignments and halls and with the same patients and so forth.
So, it really has been a synergistic effect and really has been a good thing. And one other comment on the technology piece, too. It's not just software; it's the hardware as well. We've been able to implement some technology that's made it easier for the direct caregiver to take things like vitals, as an example. And not only that, but it automatically picks up those vital signs by a patient and uploads them into our electronic medical records system.
So, the data transfers that would typically take, you know, a couple of hours to get all our patients’ and residents’ vitals only takes a matter of minutes now because it's all automated. It's all put into the system. And it's all uploaded to the specific patient's medical record. So, all of these things combined really have an incredible effect, not only on efficiency, but it's a very much a force multiplier. It frees up time for our direct care teams to be able to do what they do best and that's providing exceptional bedside care.
ANDY PAGE
Let's talk a little bit about market activity. And you mentioned it earlier with the revalidation exercise. And really, that was CMS starting to focus more on understanding the underlying ownership for providers in our space. I think with the amount of acquisition and consolidation activity that we see in the market, and I know you guys see it as well, how do you think the ownership structures will shape long-term care moving forward?
STEVE NEE
Yeah, so we're definitely seeing a lot of buying and selling activity across our markets right now and for the last few years. And capital has been pretty expensive, right? If operators could even get it at all. So, that's starting to loosen, as rates have come down over the past year. And looking ahead, the forward curve suggests that we could see even a few more cuts this year, or maybe at least a period where rates stay put. And that should help bring some activity and deal flow back to the table.
But a lot of what we're seeing on the transaction side has been either private equity or investor-backed, but we have seen some institutional dollars starting to reenter the space, which is good. But, all at the same time, we're also seeing that the smaller mom-and-pop type operators are continuing to exit and kind of maybe move down the path of extinction. And in lot of markets, it's just getting more and more difficult to make it work as a true standalone operator. So, you're seeing these kind of one- and two-stop shops being absorbed by larger groups, and/or new private equity-backed operators entering the space. So, the dynamic in the landscape is absolutely changing.
What we're also seeing, for the most part, is a shift away from these really large national platforms in favor of kind of smaller, more regional operators. Especially after some of the bigger players have exited in recent years. And again, that's not to say that a larger, more national model can't work. It certainly can with the right operating model. I mean, we see companies like Ensign and PACS that are doing it very successfully, but the regional model does seem to hit a sweet spot.
It's big enough to get scale and to build the support infrastructure that you need to succeed in an increasingly complex operating environment. But it's not so big that you lose operational control. So, for us, this is kind of where we're at today at Diversicare. We have 46 locations spanning five states, most of which are adjacent and in the southeast.
And that's really worked well for us. But we are definitely seeing a shift in the overall ownership structure and footprint of operators in the industry. And it's continued to move in the direction of being more consolidated and local from what we're seeing.
ANDY PAGE
And you, as CEO, I can imagine that you're constantly challenged to balance these issues that I'm talking about. So, the tyranny of the now, with the need to balance your long-term strategic planning and positioning. So, with so much going on, tell us how you handle that.
STEVE NEE
This is a tough one. And I think it's something that all leaders tussle with, right? It's very easy to let the day-to-day whirlwind dictate your schedule. But really, you have to find time and set aside space to think high-level. So, a question I pose to my team often is: how much time are you spending in your business versus on your business?
And, you know, answers often vary, but what I've noticed is most successful leaders I've spent time with really set aside no less than about 20% of their time to work on their business. And to me, what that means is taking a step back, getting out of the day-to-day, and setting aside space to kind of look at the whole big picture and work on processes, system strategies, people, and make your tweaks from an outside looking in, on how you can improve your business.
ANDY PAGE
The pandemic era in our industry is one for the books. So, as we transition out of the pandemic, here we are six years later still talking about it, and we still compare the current world to the pre-pandemic world. But one of the things that we saw just as an industry was this massive influx of having to use agency staffing during those COVID years and even in some of the years as COVID wound down, and it seemed like no one was immune to using agency. Diversicare, has essentially eliminated agency across the portfolio over the past few years. Tell us how you've accomplished this and what lessons other providers can learn from that achievement.
STEVE NEE
Yeah, so you're exactly right. So, we were not immune to agency utilization at all. And quite frankly, I think we were maybe disproportionately affected by the pandemic and our need to use agency labor for a period of time, just because the way that our organization is set up, we have a lot of centers that are very, very rural and those that don't have access to labor markets that maybe others have.
So, it kind of forced our hand to seek some assistance to get our buildings staffed, through these agency companies. So, I think the first thing that we learned about this is one, most importantly, it's possible if you want it bad enough, right? You can absolutely eliminate agency, and we've been able to prove that. Again, we had some very high utilization in the throes of COVID.
As a result, there's some incredibly high costs and invoices affiliated with that. There's typically about a 50% markup on the labor versus if you had those people on your payroll. But also too, you had a different team member coming from the agency to come fill your shift every day, it seemed. So, really lacked consistent staffing.
They were never really in the building long enough to get to know our patients or processes, and they were just there to fill a shift, and it'd be, effectively, a warm body, which we did not like. So, what we did is we made a concerted effort. We drew a line in the sand, and our team just said, look, enough's enough.
We are going to put together a plan. We’re going to be very aggressive on getting this agency staffing out of our buildings. And we're going to stay committed to the plan. So, I think first and foremost, being committed to, and believing in, that you can eliminate this agency labor probably the step one. Step two is putting together a strategic plan that is reasonable.
Okay, you can draw a line in the sand all you want, but until you have those action steps to achieve, that is going to be pretty tough. So, we have been very blessed at Diversicare to have some really incredible leaders, particularly on the operations and clinical side, that not only took this challenge and ran with it, but they ran to the end zone and scored a huge touchdown.
And they really dug in. They completed a root cause analysis and said, hey, look, where are our lowest hanging fruit and our biggest areas for opportunity. And we found some pretty interesting things early on. So, as one example, we realize that the process of getting a shift filled really needed some revamping and putting some more checks and balances in place.
So, for example, let's say we had a CNA that called in and couldn't make a shift. That call would often go to the workforce manager or the scheduler, and it would be, kind of dropped on their desk to get the shift filled, right? Well, we asked that we run through our current list of team members first before reaching out to the agency staff.
But oftentimes that would result in, you know, five, 10, maybe 15 phone calls to get one shift filled versus our team members hitting the easy button, which is one phone call to the agency and it was then their problem to fill that shift, right? So, you know, we changed our processes and we made it mandatory. Hey, look, you're not calling this your agency contact until you've exhausted any and all efforts at the center level to get those things filled.
And by that one change alone, we were able to reduce utilization significantly, right? Just in one change in process. Additionally, you know, as we put together our plan, it really was digging into what can we do to attract the talent and keep them here at Diversicare versus having them work elsewhere, right? And we did some pretty creative stuff, too.
We started some CNA schools, we've done some CNA programing that helped us bring people that were not certified to get their CNA certifications. And then we hired them on internally, which was great. But I think that at the end of the day, what I'm most proud of us doing is that we were able to not only reduce and eliminate agency completely, but we were able to do that without sacrificing our staffing ratios, right?
Because it'd be one thing if we just said, hey, look get agency out. And then let's say you go from a 3.5 nursing hour per patient day number down to, you know, 2.8, something like that. We didn't do that. We were very intentional with how we reduced and removed and replaced those with our own people. And, by virtue of doing that and our plan and strategy, we've been agency-free for over two years now, and that's across all of our 45 locations in five states. So, something to be very, very proud of.
ANDY PAGE
One of the biggest future challenges all of us will face in this industry is sustaining that. So, getting rid of agency over the last couple of years and having that be a sustainable model going forward, and you started to talk about it just a minute ago. But, what strategies have proven most effective for Diversicare in stabilizing staffing and building pipelines for nurses and CNAs?
STEVE NEE
That's a great question. So, the way that we've kind of approached our strategy here is you can kind of boil down how you're able to attract and retain staff into kind of three buckets when you're taking a look at a limited workforce.
You have an option to poach, right? So, that's going to be getting team members from other potential competitors in the market. And they should work for, and with, you versus being on their team, which we tend not to do that. We want to be very respectful of the market, but we do want to make sure that we have value proposition that would attract those individuals organically, right? So, continue to be competitive and an attractive employer in the marketplace.
Option two is kind of growing your own. And we've talked a little bit about that. And that's going to be like growing your own CNAs, running CNA classes, training those individuals to get those certifications. A little bit harder to do on the licensure side, we don't have a nursing school per se, but some operators are actually venturing into that space, which is an interesting concept, but we can grow our own when it comes to CNA, med techs and some other positions, too.
Or you have option three, which is going to be to bring them in. And a couple of years ago we started conversations with outside placement agencies, as an example, to bring foreign trained nurses in from places like the Philippines and other countries. Now, I'll tell you that this strategy has changed a lot over the last couple of years with the new administration coming in and their stance on immigration reform and those type things, it's a bit more difficult to get talent from outside of the country. It's still possible, but may take a little bit longer. And the expense to do that may be a little bit higher.
But again, it's still an option to bring folks in. But what I'll say is that the most success that we have had is just reaffirming and reestablishing a culture of excellence at Diversicare and making things as easy as possible, and having as little friction as possible for our team members that are on our team, which organically attracts individuals that want to be a part of a team like that. We have an ethos of not only excellence, but a culture of winning and doing exceptional things. And I think that stuff is contagious and word gets out and people want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. So, we've had a lot of success on that front.
But pragmatically speaking, too, you know, we've been very intentional on things like partnerships with our local nursing schools and tech schools that are putting out CNAs and nurses, we're also very mindful of people's personal situations. And if there's any way that we're able to help out with tuition reimbursement or maybe covering the cost of tuition altogether, we have certainly done that. But also with those tech schools, we've allowed them and partnered with them, so that they're able to have their clinical rotations in our centers.
So, not only is that a benefit to the schools and to those students, but as graduation time rolls around, they're already familiar with Diversicare and our centers. And a lot of times we've been able to get those early graduates and provide them with their first, you know, clinical position in our centers, which has been a tremendous thing to see.
But also too, you know, it's not a matter of just getting them in the door. How do you keep them here? And our team is, is hyper-focused on investing and pouring into our team members and things like leadership development programs and career ladders and providing advancement opportunities for those individuals. We’re, I would say, a mid-sized company, but we have a tremendous amount of opportunities, particularly for those that are looking to grow and expand in the clinical field.
I can tell you story after story of individuals that maybe have gotten hired on with us, either in the housekeeping or dietary departments, or maybe as non-certified aides. And then they've gone through our classes to to get their certification. And then several of those individuals have gone on to pursue their nursing license and all the while have been on the Diversicare team.
So, being able to help them grow and get to where they want to be has been absolutely tremendous.
ANDY PAGE
As we wrap up today, and thank you again for being with us, Steve, one parting question: what's one piece of advice you'd give to someone moving into executive leadership for the first time this year?
STEVE NEE
Probably to build decision-making systems before you need them. So, most first-time executives, which, by the way, with my background coming into this role, I'd never been a CEO. I've always had the mentality, I've always had the responsibility, of being a CEO in whatever role that I was in. But this is my first role as CEO, and this has really been imperative to my success.
But I think most other first-time executives, they don't struggle because they lack information. They usually struggle because they're overwhelmed. The urgency, the data inflows, the competing priorities, especially in long-term care, they're not slowing down. And if anything, they're accelerating. But what I've learned is, you know, your job as a leader isn't really to have all the answers and to make all the decisions. It’s to design how decisions get made.
So, in practice, that means being very clear on a few things. So, to determine what decisions truly require you and what should be delegated. For example, so we're big fans of the Eisenhower matrix, here at Diversicare. And all of our senior team uses this to kind of determine which items you need to do now, what you need to schedule for later, what you should delegate to others, or really in some cases, not do anything at all, right? It's more kind of an FYI and you don't really need to take any action other folks are going to address that. But really, it’s a great visual and a great tool for decision making. So, if you're not heard of that, certainly look up the Eisenhower matrix. But, some other things that require clarity, having and establishing a short list of non-negotiables for your team.
So, for example, for our team here at Diversicare it's always very much a patient-first approach. How will this decision impact care delivery to those that we serve? Also, making sure that we're approaching these things through a lens of empathy. And there are tough decisions that have to be made, I mean, within any organization, but how is this going to impact our people? And are we doing it in the most courteous and empathetic way possible?
And in our space, we can't talk about decision making without underscoring the need for a compliance focus also. Are we doing things in a compliant, ethical manner with integrity and so forth? So, these kinds of non-negotiables are going to guide decision making even when the data may be imperfect or incomplete. As long as you have those guiding principles and those non-negotiables in place, it provides the framework for decision making within the organization.
I guess the key takeaway and bottom line here is, you know, don't aim to be the smartest person in the room. Aim to be the person who makes it easiest for the room to make good decisions.
ANDY PAGE
And that's all sound advice and somewhat agnostic to industry, right? We're just talking about best practices for being a leader in whatever capacity you're in. In fact, I'm sitting here taking some notes from you that I could probably implement in my own daily life. So, with that, Steve, thank you so much for taking the time with us today, and best of luck to you and the Diversicare family for the rest of 2026. We really appreciate it.
STEVE NEE
Andy, thanks for the invite. It's been my pleasure.
CHAD MULVANY
I'd like to thank Andy Page and Steve Nee again for joining today's episode. I also want to thank our listeners for tuning in and following “Achieving Health” wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to learn more about the topics we discuss, be sure to check out the show notes for related content and information about how to get in touch with me and the team at Forvis Mazars.
As I mentioned up top, I'll be back next Wednesday, February 18th, with the next round of “Washington Watch” updates. Until then, here's wishing good health for you and the communities you serve.
ANNOUNCER
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