Lifespark seeks to create a comprehensive healthcare system for seniors that takes wellness into account.
By Jeff Shaw
The executives at Lifespark want to make something extremely clear: It is not a seniors housing company. Seniors housing is simply one element in its larger plans to revolutionize healthcare for seniors.
Based in the Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park, Lifespark has over 3,000 employees and serves over 30,000 seniors throughout Minnesota and Wisconsin. But that 30,000 number comes despite having only 3,256 seniors housing units.
The rest are served through the company’s many business lines, including primary care, home care, home health, hospice and transportation services. On top of those services, Lifespark utilizes its vast wealth of data to help improve outcomes and simplify healthcare for its clients.
“What we wanted to do was get paid for keeping people healthy — not sickness and transactions and tests and procedures,” says Joel Theisen, Lifespark’s founder and CEO.
Theisen was a nurse by training, entering home healthcare in the early 1990s. He didn’t like the way care felt like a business transaction, and didn’t lead to long-term solutions. He founded San Jose, California-based AdvoLife in 1996 using $8.5 million in venture capital, building up the seniors housing company to five locations in six years.
“But I wasn’t happy with where they wanted to take the company, which was more of the same. I wanted to evolve. I saw a lot of the detriment seniors were going through across the whole continuum.”
Theisen moved with his family back to Minnesota in 2004 and launched Lifespark with $500,000 in personal and family money. “We wanted to do something important.”
Growing the scope
Lifespark’s early days involved standard private-pay assisted living and memory care. The company also offered some home health services within and outside of the communities. In 2019, the company took what Theisen calls a “hard pivot” and began expanding its technology and data platforms. That’s when the company also hired its own physician group for its medical practice.
In 2021, Lifespark acquired Tealwood Senior Living, growing its portfolio by 35 properties overnight. It also hired internationally renowned geriatrician Dr. Bill Thomas to help establish its new model. Bob Kramer, former CEO of the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care, also serves as a member of Lifespark’s advisory group
“When we acquired Tealwood, we did it not only because we wanted to serve more seniors, but we also wanted to integrate this new model into senior living,” says Theisen
Since the Tealwood acquisition, Lifespark is outperforming the market on occupancy between 300 and 700 basis points, adds Theisen, and that’s showing up in the net operating income (NOI) for ownership partners. Stabilized occupancy at most properties is above 95 percent. (Private-pay seniors housing occupancy averaged 85.9 percent as of the second quarter of 2024, according to NIC MAP Vision data.)
“We have private-pay home care, over 1,000 people a day in Medicare Home Health, hospice, and a medical practice in homes and in senior living communities,” adds Matt Kinne, Lifespark’s chief operating officer. “Where we’ve got a great advantage is we have the two largest nonprofit payors in Minnesota — Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota and UCare — that are both contracting partners and investors in the company.”
The concept behind this structure is that it “decomplicates the fragmentation in healthcare,” according to Kinne, by making Lifespark the single point of contact for its clients.
“We’ve integrated all those services around the senior and the staff in the building and made a much more seamless experience for the resident and their family,” says Kinne. “It all comes back to creating a different experience for the senior.”
Lifespark even offers its own mobile response system named Urgent Response. “We have our own paramedics, physicians and medical practitioners,” says Theisen. “When somebody has an acute event, we’re the first call. They don’t call 911, they call Lifespark.”
“Regardless of the medical or psychosocial issue, we’re the single point of contact,” continues Theisen. “We’re not trying to assess people — we discover what’s important to them. We ask them the right questions. What’s your passion? What gets you up in the morning? What keeps you up at night? The deliverable is a life plan. It’s a negotiated, single point of contact, trusted relationship with the family and client.”
Most recently, Lifespark launched a pharmacy in partnership with Consonus Pharmacy, which boasts “the largest contingent of geriatric clinical pharmacists in the country,” according to Kinne. This also allows residents returning from a hospital stay to have professionals review their medications as they recover, sometimes even deprescribing meds.
Although Lifespark currently only serves Minnesota and Wisconsin, Theisen hopes this integrated health system for seniors can become the norm — either by other companies following Lifespark’s lead, or by Lifespark expanding.
“We anticipate adding probably 1,000 to 2,000 new units in the next 24 to 36 months,” adds Kinne. “We’re doing that in a very calculated way with closely aligned partners. We get calls from every Tom, Dick and Harry. Nine-and-a-half times out of 10 we say ‘no.’ We align with partners that have this vision. It’s not a short-term game.”
The company’s revenue has grown over 20 percent annually for the past five years, Theisen notes. However, now that the system is humming along, he expects that revenue growth to accelerate to 40 percent or 50 percent annually.
“We wanted to build out this thesis and build it right. Now that we’re in position, we will look at new markets. We could do that as early as next year. We’re not going to stay ‘Minnesota nice.’ Our appetite is to change the entire delivery system around these complex seniors. We have an appetite to be a serious player nationally.”
Tech greases the wheels
Lifespark’s data team is what makes the system work cohesively, according to Theisen and Kinne.
“Big data serves our members with clarity, confidence and consistency,” says Theisen. ”We aggregate a lot of data. To do any sort of AI or insights that lead to actions, you have to have the data. We make sure we acquire that and adjust that and frame it so it’s usable. It’s not sexy but it’s really important. We’ve got a whole team of professionals who have been working on this for the past six years to take big macro data and drive it into a data pool we can pull insights out of.”
By collecting and analyzing this wealth of data — aided by running its own medical practice and creating partnerships with the insurance payors — Lifespark can make “informed assumptions and predictions” about clients’ health. “Because of all of that, our ability to understand our people is unlike anybody else in the country,” says Theisen.
The data is also key to keeping the business above water. By providing direct healthcare, Lifespark is taking on “tens of millions of dollars of risk,” says Theisen. “If you don’t have insights, you’re in trouble.” The company even employs an economist.
While the data set isn’t fully built out, Kinne says that within the next two years the company will have “passive technology that is serving up insights to our team members in every apartment in every building, assuming that the resident consents. We’re not monitoring people that don’t consent. But the adoption rates we’ve seen early on have been awesome, and the outcomes have been even more awesome.”
The company also uses some third-party technology programs like SafelyYou fall prediction/prevention, as well as telehealth solutions, smart watches and more. “We really like the fact that, with these types of technologies, we can do more from the clinical standpoint and try to avoid hospitals altogether,” notes Theisen.
Teamwork makes the dream work
Of course, there’s another factor that comes with building out an entire health system: the people.
Lifespark puts a particular emphasis on employee retention, and that has paid dividends. Kinne emphasizes that culture is a key part of its strategy.
“Our culture is sacred. It’s super important. We won our 18th top workplace award in 20 years of existence. People want to be here. They’re elated to be here. Every company says that, but at Lifespark it’s not a moniker. It’s reality for us.” The awards come from a variety of sources, including the USA Today Top Workplaces list and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune list for best workplaces in the state.
Theisen says the success in employee retention is directly related to the positive health outcomes Lifespark’s business plan causes.
“When people feel like they’re in an environment where they’re not doing the least possible to get by and can really help others, and that they are lifting all boats, they stay,” says Theisen. “Our turnover rates, the quality of employees and the quality of their experience, the benefit of not turning them over, it all leads to amazing things. When you do the right thing, it not only helps on new referrals, new starts, new admissions and revenue, it also lowers the cost of employee acquisitions and leads to higher satisfaction and a lower turnover rate. Those go together.”
Part of this success comes from the clear vision for the future that Theisen passes on to the rest of the company.
“We’re marathoners not sprinters,” he says. “We are going to change the entire economics of senior health. We are committed and we will not stop in the journey, not to fill our pockets but to fill the hole in senior services. We want to put the humanity back in and put people first.”