The case for AI in senior housing comes from the squeeze. Residents arrive sicker and frailer with less money to pay, regulation gets stricter while reimbursement falls, and there aren’t enough caregivers. Jenna Kilawee, an assisted living director at Episcopal Homes in Minnesota, says the organizations that learn to thrive inside that squeeze are the ones still standing.

Her pitch to leadership for an AI fall-prevention pilot had two parts, and neither was a vision statement. First, an analogy: 20 years ago the electronic health record was resisted as untrustworthy, and now it’s unremarkable. Then the numbers: what the organization spends every time a resident falls, is injured, goes to the hospital and doesn’t come back.

Ishanya Anthapur: Did you know that where and how we age will completely shape our health, our independence, and even our sense of dignity? As the population gets older, we’re facing a massive question. How do we create living environments that don’t just care for people, but actually empower them to thrive? That’s what today’s conversation is all about.

Welcome to AI-Powered Caregiving, where we’re exploring how technology, innovation and human-centered design are transforming the way our society cares for older adults. Today’s guest is a licensed assisted living director for Episcopal Homes in Minnesota, as well as a PhD candidate — so she’s both an operator and a scholar. She’s had a wonderful career in elder care since she was sixteen, so she’s grown with the industry and seen it through many transitions. Her work is a powerful reminder that caregiving isn’t just about what happens in a hospital or through technology. It’s also about the environments we design and the communities we lead and build. Please welcome Jenna Kilawee to the show.

Jenna Kilawee: Thanks so much, Ishanya. Great to be here.

Ishanya Anthapur: I’m really excited. We’re going to talk about approaching innovation and leadership challenges from your perspective as an assisted living director for Episcopal Homes. But first I’m curious about your career and your pathway. What drew you to this industry, to being in elder care since your teenage years? And could you speak a little about the educational steps you’ve taken to support that? I think it’s an important pathway for people to know exists.

Jenna Kilawee: Sure. I started out as a dietary aide for a hospital in Minnesota. My aha moment — and I’m really lucky to have known what I wanted to do from a young age — was an elder gentleman. I was bringing him his tray and he asked me to put on his shoe, and I just loved it. I loved helping him, and I realized I wanted to work with elders. My path was kind of set from there.

I became a certified nursing assistant, and that’s how I worked through college. I went to the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse for therapeutic recreation, and that’s where my career started. I was at the Veterans Home in Minneapolis for quite a while, and realized there was a bigger picture I wanted to tackle. I saw a lot of issues I knew I could do better, make better. So I wanted to go into management, and I pursued my master’s of science in gerontology from Kansas State. I was a housing director for a while, an adult day director.

And it changed — from caring about my elders individually to really caring for my staff who are caring for the elders. Because I know that if I can take care of them, they’re going to give the best care to my elders. So it’s a bigger picture. And now I’m focusing on a bigger picture yet, getting my PhD from Nova Southeastern University, looking to use what I’m learning about science and its methods to develop and test wider-scale interventions — to bring more efficient and better care to my entire organization, and eventually to elder care as a whole.

Ishanya Anthapur: I love your journey, because it’s mirrored both with a lot of on-the-ground operator work and the higher-level academic exploration. You see that in people who are executives in the industry, but not always, and it’s good to know there’s a pathway. I read on your profile that while doing the master’s you were working full time and you also had children. Do you have any advice on doing that — being a parent, managing school, managing work?

Jenna Kilawee: My only piece of advice really is just don’t quit. Don’t ever quit. Every single day is going to give you a reason to quit school. Stick with it. If you have to go down to part time, if you have to take a semester off, don’t quit. It’s worth it to finish, and it’ll catapult you if you finish.

Ishanya Anthapur: That’s really good advice. Your educational background allowed you to transition into management and leadership positions. What does good leadership mean to you, especially in senior living and elder care? Are there differences between leadership in this industry and others?

Jenna Kilawee: I’ve seen a huge difference in the leadership at Episcopal Homes versus the other places I’ve been — and I’ve been at a lot of elder care and long-term care facilities. Episcopal Homes is different because they really match my theory that if you take care of your staff, your residents will be very well taken care of. We have some of the lowest turnover rates with our direct care staff in the state. We’ve got some really happy people, because the executive team leadership knows these are the people fulfilling our mission. Not us. It’s our direct care staff. It’s all about them.

Ishanya Anthapur: Do you feel like your own experience in direct care led to that insight?

Jenna Kilawee: I think so. Working as a CNA in a couple of different places, sometimes I felt like just another body. Like a cog, just there to do your job for the least amount of pay possible, clock in and clock out. And I knew I didn’t want my staff to feel like that. Burnout’s real. It’s hard enough to get caregivers, and good caregivers — not just a caregiver, but really good people. So once you get those people, your entire reason is to keep them.

Ishanya Anthapur: That makes a lot of sense. If you’re good at managing teams, if you care about your staff and help them get their jobs done, the organization thrives from the ground up. We see a lot of leaders who know they need to change what they’re doing, specifically in elder care. There’s going to be a lot of transformation coming. Organizations know it’s on the horizon, but change is hard. It requires planning, long-term planning, and then you also have to face resistance to that pivot. How has Episcopal Homes approached this challenge? What does it look like to truly commit to change and innovation, especially when it comes to improving care through technology?

Jenna Kilawee: We see the challenges first in our industry. We see our elders coming to us sicker and more frail and with less money to pay for their board and care. We’re constantly given new regulations and stricter rules by our government, and then we’re also given way less funding and reimbursement to fulfill those requirements and still provide excellent care. And then add in the fact that we just don’t have enough caregivers anymore.

Episcopal Homes realized a long time ago that the organizations that can figure this out — not only stay in business but thrive — those are going to be the best of the best. Those are going to stick around. So innovation is really what’s necessary to figure out how to thrive with that squeeze we’re experiencing. That’s become a main focus of our strategy.

Ishanya Anthapur: What are some of the ways you’re committing to innovation?

Jenna Kilawee: As one example, we’re partnering with the University of St. Thomas on a publishable-quality research study. It’s a pilot, and we’re investigating the effects of Zemplee — the AI passive monitoring system — on reducing falls and fall-related injuries on a memory care unit.

What this has the potential to show us, we’re not sure. We don’t have the data, we haven’t really started yet. But potentially it can give us the ability to learn our residents’ behaviors when they’re not in sight, and to intervene before catastrophe happens, like a fall or an injury. That’s going to give us much more efficiency, more time. We spend a ton of time on documentation, follow-up and reporting for every single fall. It’s a ton of extra time my staff has to devote to this. So if we can take all that back — imagine the quality of care we can give our residents instead of working on paperwork. We can be holding hands and enjoying the beautiful day. That’s what we’re hoping to see. And it takes a lot of courage, I have to say.

Ishanya Anthapur: So if I could rephrase you — with implementing new technology, including AI and newer tech, you’re hoping this will reduce some of the labor of your staff, especially documentation. What we’d call rote or, quote unquote, boring work. But very necessary work, obviously. You want to comply and document everything about every fall, which contributes to liability but also to the growing knowledge base about that person and what’s going on in their health. How do you think that will help your staff with having a little extra time, or a little less burnout?

Jenna Kilawee: It’s that efficiency factor. Not having to do all that documentation gives them a bit more time to really enjoy their jobs, to remember why they’re doing it — it’s for the person, for the elder, not the paperwork. But I think it also shows that we’re willing to invest in efforts to make their jobs better and easier. So I hope that adds to the positive culture we’re building at Episcopal Homes.

Ishanya Anthapur: In this day and age you don’t always hear about leaders caring about the lives and the efforts of the people they’re managing. I really hope people listening hear this and take it away, because it is possible, and it creates lower turnover rates in an industry where turnover is so high. What would you say to operators who come to you and say they have resistance to this idea — they’re afraid of change, afraid of the effort? What has enabled Episcopal Homes to move past resistance and commit?

Jenna Kilawee: There are two things, really, because I had to pitch this to our leaders to get approval. So if you think about technology advancements — twenty years ago we were using paper charts. The electronic health record didn’t exist. We were writing things on paper and hoping people read it, and hoping we could read our handwriting. Now we’re using electronic health records, which give us instant access and give patients instant access to their own records. And it’s the norm. But twenty years ago, I’m sure the first electronic health record was resisted. It was seen as dangerous, untrustworthy. And now look where we are. So this is just a regular part of change, of advancement. There is going to be some pushback. But if it works, if there are results, that’s the important part of accepting it.

The second part is that I had to show the numbers, the data. How much money do we spend extra every time a resident falls, and every time a resident is injured? Or let’s say a resident gets injured, goes to the hospital and doesn’t come back to my facility — that’s a ton of profit lost for our company. Giving them that data really solidified the idea and allowed them to give me permission to try this. And hopefully we’ll see some really great results with our study that’ll make it that much easier.

Ishanya Anthapur: Let me circle back to what you said — not only was there a story you told, but you had data to tell that story. That’s a beautiful part of what’s happening now with so many things being modernized: not only can you tell your story and be persuasive, you can let the numbers do the talking for you. I’m really excited for this collaboration. Would you mention again exactly what the research study is and who you’re working with?

Jenna Kilawee: We’re working with the University of St. Thomas, just down the road from us. They’re wonderful. We’ve done small projects with them in the past, but this is the first true scientific research study we’ve done — well, ever at Episcopal Homes, and in partnership with a university. We’re really lucky that they were excited about it and willing to jump into this with us, to put their names on it too. Really blessed with that partnership and the possibilities it’s going to bring. There are so many opportunities now to expand this study, do other studies. The sky’s the limit.

Ishanya Anthapur: Do you feel like partnering with research institutes will benefit your organization’s name and brand in the long run as well?

Jenna Kilawee: Absolutely. Here’s the thing. We know we do great things here. We know we do great work. Our residents and families know it. But outside of us, we’re not really getting our name out there very well, and we want to share what we’re doing — not only for our purposes, because marketing is always good, but because sharing our successes with other elder care providers and long-term care facilities is only going to improve care for every single elder who comes through anyone’s door. So we really want to tell our story and share what we’re doing with more than just our internal stakeholders. It’s really important to share that knowledge. That’s the number one rule with science. Share the knowledge, so people can stand on your shoulders and do more.

Ishanya Anthapur: And that’s why I called you both an operator and a scholar. It’s really clear from our talk today that not only are you a wonderful manager, you have a research-oriented mind. I have a few questions to wrap up. Because you are a scholar, I’m assuming you may have some books or articles about elder care, caregiving or AI and technology you could recommend to me and to the audience.

Jenna Kilawee: I could go on about journal articles to read, but those can get boring. Always the American Medical Association — read those articles. Please, people, stop taking articles off Facebook posts, off Google. Don’t take those as facts. Please read your actual journal articles. That’s the good stuff, that’s been peer reviewed.

But also, for folks who just want to understand more about caregiving or dementia, I always recommend The 36-Hour Day by Peter Rabins, and Still Alice by Lisa Genova. That was also a movie — read the book though. It really gives that personal insight into what it’s like. Understanding what caregivers are going through is one of the most important needs we have in this country right now.

Ishanya Anthapur: I completely agree. My generation, and one or two above and obviously below, it’s a big adjustment for us. A lot of us are already dealing with questions about caregiving, but it’s still not on the forefront of people’s minds. I actually did see that movie, but I haven’t read the book — good tip to read the book. What are you reading and watching now?

Jenna Kilawee: I read a lot of Stephen King. I like his earlier horror, it’s good, but his later stuff is a lot deeper. Bag of Bones is excellent. The Talisman — that’s actually my favorite book of all time. It’s a really good one. Highly recommend it. And I’m watching The Pitt, which is just fabulous. Very hard to watch sometimes, as all healthcare workers would understand, but I just love its honesty. It’s so refreshing.

Ishanya Anthapur: I will have to check The Pitt out. I’ve heard such good reviews. Is it less dramatic than Grey’s Anatomy?

Jenna Kilawee: It’s not a soap opera. It’s got drama, of course it would, but no, it’s not a soap opera. It’s really good.

Ishanya Anthapur: Good to know, and good to hear it from a licensed professional in the health and medical world. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here with us, for sharing your expertise, and for being a leader and a changemaker in this industry. We really appreciate it, and we’re so excited to partner with you.

Jenna Kilawee: Same. Thank you so much, Ishanya, for the time and the opportunity.

Ishanya Anthapur: Bye everyone.

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