From Generation to Generation: Jay Solomon’s Journey in Senior Living | Nursing Home Series | Senior Care

Anthony Codispoti: Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codispoti and today’s guest is Jay Solomon, President and CEO of Aviva Senior Life. They are Sarasota’s only single site, not-for-profit rental community offering a full continuum of care for older adults. The organization is committed to helping seniors live extraordinary lives by focusing on wellness, life-enriching activities, and strong social engagement, guided by Jewish values. With over 40 years of senior living experience, Jay has been with Aviva for eight years, guiding the organization with a steadfast commitment to enhancing the well-being of every resident. Under his leadership, Aviva has cultivated a vibrant culture and received recognition for its innovative care programs. Jay’s background in senior living management, along with his passion for active engagement and quality of life, has helped build a close-knit community dedicated to supporting seniors in mind, body, and spirit. I’m excited for you to hear his journey, the lessons he’s learned, and how he continues to adapt in a changing healthcare landscape. Now, before we get into the good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Add Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our innovative programs. Results vary for each company, and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefitsagency.com. All right, now back to our guest today. Jay Solomon, leader of Aviva Senior Life. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Jay Solomon: Thank you, Anthony. I really look forward to spending the time with you today.

Anthony Codispoti: All right, let’s just jump in. Jay, how did you get your start in this profession? What first drew you to this?

Jay Solomon: My story is a little bit different, because I started truly at the age of 10. My dad was the executive vice president of a not-for-profit senior living nursing home in Somerset, New Jersey. And when he got there in 1972, there was nothing more than a hole in the ground. And so there were many times on the weekend where I would actually go with him to the construction site to walk it, see what was going on, and to learn more and more about how this building was going to come about.

And from that point on, there was always dinner conversation. My sister, who’s five years older than me, also caught the bug, so to speak, and she became a speech therapist. So I guess you could say that my dad really taught us the value and the importance of caring for people. And so when I went into high school, I knew that I wanted to be in healthcare administration. But when I went on to college, healthcare administration was a foreign topic. Nobody even knew what healthcare administration was. And actually, when I went to college, my degree is actually in health education and public administration, because it was the only way to mix both the understanding of healthcare needs and governmental. And then when I went on to graduate school, it was the other way around. I got a degree in public administration specializing in healthcare.

Anthony Codispoti: And so that’s different today. Today, you can get a degree that’s more focused on this area.

Jay Solomon: 100 percent. There are numerous academic institutions that offer both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in healthcare administration from a master’s degree. There’s a master’s in healthcare administration. There’s a master’s in public health administration. So there is numerous ways now to actually get the formal degree in understanding all of the various aspects of healthcare, not just senior living, but hospitals in terms of acute care, understanding the ever-changing insurance world, which sounds like you’re an expert in that. We may have to talk about this point. Young people can truly enter into the world of healthcare administration.

Anthony Codispoti: Okay. So back in your day, when you were going to get your college education, you had to kind of cobble together the degrees to prep you for the field that you wanted to enter into. And then, as you’re graduating, as you’re getting your master’s degree, what did the job landscape look like? Where did you go first?

Jay Solomon: Again, a little bit different when I finished my undergraduate degree. I actually sat for my New Jersey nursing home administrator’s license. And so then when I went to graduate school, they actually waived the internship and the practicum because I had this license. But I felt very strongly at that point, and we’re talking about 1985, that it was the beginning of people talking about diversification of hospitals, diversification of healthcare. And so I decided that I wanted to learn more about hospitals and acute care. So I actually went and did what they call an administrative residency at a hospital in New Jersey. And it gave me the opportunity to learn the inside, outside of a major hospital.

And it gave me the opportunity to branch out from senior living to understanding at that point was relatively new. Outpatient services that were not on a campus of a hospital, for example, opening up a renal dialysis center. Or today, we have these medical arts buildings and I had the opportunity to design and implement a new medical arts building.

Or we were talking in that period of time about addiction recovery. And I was able to take a small pediatric unit, a piece of it, and create it into an eating disorders unit. So I got to really open up my experience beyond senior living and be able to then in my career, later on in my career, actually work for acute care, healthcare systems in their diversification of their business models.

Anthony Codispoti: And so diversification means being able to sort of tailor your care to some of these individual need groups, for example, like the eating disorder clinic that you were able to spearhead.

Jay Solomon: Absolutely. When you talk about diversification in today’s day and age, you talk about healthcare systems that employ physicians or healthcare that have freestanding dialysis centers, freestanding outpatient rehab centers. You name it in today’s day and age, if you look at most hospitals, they are part of a larger organization, whether it’s through a loose affiliation or now a straightforward ownership. And even in 1990, something, I had in my portfolio of administration, one of the first urgent care centers, which in those days we called them dock in the boxes. And the one that I was lucky enough to work with was literally right next door to a McDonald’s. So it was truly a dock in the box.

Anthony Codispoti: That’s funny. Okay, before we get further along with sort of your career trajectory and healthcare management, I want to actually hit the rewind button because I understand that there was something pretty formative that happened when you were just eight years old. What was that, Jay?

Jay Solomon: Anthony, thanks for bringing it up. At eight years old, I was diagnosed with a disease called retinitis pigmentosa, which is still considered a orphan disease throughout the United States and the world. And there’s no cure for the disease. And the disease unfortunately causes the retinas in your eyes to literally dissipate, where normally a cell dies and another cell replaces it.

In RP, that doesn’t happen. So at eight years old, how do you explain to a child what this is all about? And my parents decided that they were going to treat me just like anybody else. But I think that over the years of having the disease in various aspects of education, I would look to do research papers on the disease and I’d go and interview doctors at NYU, at Johns Hopkins to learn more. And there was a big question always. Was that considered a handicap because of my eyesight and knowing that at some point my eyesight would truly dissipate? I never looked at it that way. I looked at it as handicapable. That you know what, yeah, I have this disease, it’s difficult, but it gave me insight into people.

And I like to always say to my staff, I may not see things, but I hear them and I feel them. And I think that diagnosis really changed me even further in wanting to be in a profession of caring, to be there for others, no matter what they were suffering from, but that I could provide the care for them through professional leadership.

Anthony Codispoti: So I want to understand this a little bit more because you’re eight years old when you get diagnosed with this. And I mean, that’s a lot to take in to understand. That disease is probably hard for an eight-year-old to even pronounce, let alone fully wrap their head around what’s happening.

I happen to have two boys, one’s eight and one’s 10. And God breaks my heart to think about one of them getting diagnosed with this and what that would be like going through their heads. And it seems to me that sort of the natural human reaction would be self-pity. Why me? Mad at the world, mad at God, mad at, like how did this happen to me? Were there some elements of that going on in the early days?

Jay Solomon: 100%. You know, I thought I was weird. I thought I was strange. I was different. I would trip a lot because I didn’t have the sightings. I’d be clutzy, so to speak. And then when my parents sent me off to sleepaway camp, when I was 11 and 12 years old, they outfitted me with three different sized slash lights, small, medium, and large, because the first symptom of the disease is night blindness. And then so the other kids would look at me and like, what is your problem?

Why do you have three different kind of flashlights? You’re weird. Or if we were going on a hike or something like that, a snipe hunt, and I would have problems.

I’d be tripping. There were too many times I’d say, excuse me, to a chair, to a table, to a tree. But what I found, and I still find this, now it’s 63, that when I’m honest and open with people, and I explain that I don’t have the sight, and can you help me, they’re wonderful. There are wonderful people out there that, you know, you shouldn’t be embarrassed. You should be able to tell it like it is.

And I think when you do that, people respect you because you’re being honest, and you’re sharing true emotions. I mean, you know, as you said, you have an eight-year-old and a 10-year-old. Imagine when that 10-year-old is heading towards one of the most important days of any teenager’s life, getting their driver’s license, and being told by your parents, we’re going to let you get your driver’s license.

We’re going to experiment with this. But if you play around and you drive at night, that’s getting yanked. Now try to teach a 17-year-old boy, well, how do I ask a girl out for a date? Oh, I got to ask her to drive.

Or let’s do a double date so my friend can drive. So these are things that you don’t think about until you live in them. But again, I found being honest and sharing my emotions. Yeah, there were people that were not so nice. Later on in my life, as my sight got worse, I am sure that there were employers that decided that they didn’t want to hire me because they were afraid of what my sight could or could not do in a leadership position.

Anthony Codispoti: When do you think, if you can remember back, when did you feel like you finally got comfortable with this new reality?

Jay Solomon: Wow, that’s a really tough question because there are days still that I question the reality because I’d love to be independent and be able to drive myself to work, drive myself to outside meetings. But I think the true sense of it was in college. The Wrenites Pigmentosa Foundation started a program called YAP, the Young Adult Program. And I was lucky enough to be selected to be one of those ambassadors.

And I got to be with other people of my age that had the same disease, all of us having different variations of the disease. But I found that, you know what? Yeah, we all have it.

But we’re all still striving to succeed and to make our way in society. And we had a retreat one time at the University of Maryland and it was cool. It was great. And I think from that point on, I got even stronger in my zest to be able to explain to people what is Wrenites Pigmentosa, to be able to educate people on what it is and hoping that more and more people that got educated, the better it would be for others.

Anthony Codispoti: Are there any treatments available for it now, if people catch it early enough?

Jay Solomon: No, unfortunately, there are no treatments for the disease. There’s been a lot of experimental treatments that I’ve actually been the guinea pig about 20 years ago, 15 to 20 years ago. I actually got a computer chip implanted in my right retina. And it was under the theory that if you could provide some electrical stimulation, the cells would grow or the cells would not die. And so I was one of 19 people in the world to have this experimental treatment.

And so throughout my life, I’ve always been willing to be that said guinea pig and I’ve worked with various academic institutions throughout the country on trying to find a cure for this disease. If you think about, everybody talks about macular degeneration. RP is the opposite. Macular starts from the center out of the retina. And in RP, it starts from the outside in. So there’s been a lot of thought that with macular degeneration and the treatments for that, could there be something that could relate to RP as well?

Anthony Codispoti: But not currently. So I want to explore your preferred term of handy capable a bit, Jay. You know, I think about a really good friend of mine who is dyslexic and undiagnosed, you know, when he was a kid, didn’t didn’t have any idea until he got much older. And so struggled in school, you know, teachers thought he wasn’t very bright. But as he looks back now, it turns out to be one of the greatest gifts for him because it forced him to develop his brain in a different way. So it was hard for him to read large blocks of text. So he got a lot better at people relations interacting with humans and being able to retain information in his head to the point where I gave him credit because he kind of sees a chess board of life a little bit differently than most people and kind of understands how pieces connect together. And I think in part because he had to kind of flex his brain in different ways and connect neurons that, you know, most people wouldn’t get a chance to. As you hear me talk about, you know, my friend that has dyslexia, can you relate to that? Are there certain things in your brain that you feel like not having the power of sight forced you to sort of develop your own super abilities in different ways?

Jay Solomon: Well, in the pre-interview, I didn’t bring up. I’m dyslexic. So I understand your friend’s life and my friends, my family, my co-workers will tell you and that can recite things back to people. And, you know, as an executive, I do a lot of public speaking with no notes.

No notes whatsoever. It’s always what I put together in my head, like your friend you discussed. And the second is my hearing. And my hearing spooks the heck out of people because they can be significantly away from me and I can tell them what they just said.

So I think that the way you described it was accurate that when you have these disabilities, the best way to deal with them is to turn them on their head and come up with other ways that you can participate in all that you want to participate in and be able to be successful. And, you know, you said about your friend looking at a chess board, you know, there’s not a day that goes by that somebody will say, oh, you know, he’s got such a memory. And, you know, you talked about your friend in school. I had tutors my whole life from math, but somewhere somehow my brain now has adjusted that my finance department will look at me if we’re in a meeting before they start using their phone to calculate it and say, okay, Jay, what’s the number? And as a kid, I stunk at math. It was an embarrassment about math, but somewhere along the line, my brain did that training that you talked about. And now I can do numbers in my head faster than they can type them in.

Anthony Codispoti: So how did you find your way to Aviva, Jay?

Jay Solomon: I had been working for a midsize hospital, a community hospital healthcare system. And at that point, I was a senior vice president. And I had as my responsibility, all of their senior related businesses from a continuing care retirement community to an assisted living to a skilled nursing and rehab program and other things. And like I talked earlier about the diversity and what’s happened in healthcare, I knew that that healthcare system I was working for was the guppy.

And the sharks were circling about, you know, gobbling up another one. I’d also decided that I wanted to break away from bureaucracy. And I wanted the opportunity to come to a not-for-profit if it was all possible, a Jewish based organization, because Judaism has been such a big part of my life.

And sure enough, there was an ad for Aviva. And I got the opportunity to, you know, first go through the recruiter. And then I had the onsite interviews with the board and with other staff members.

And, you know, I wound up getting the position and taking the organization through a very, very tough period of time, even before COVID, the organization was struggling. Because at that point in time, we were carrying $37 million worth of outstanding debt in bonds, which related to $2.5 million a year, if you want to call it in a mortgage payment. And we had to figure out how we were going to write the ship financially in order to handle, continue to handle that debt, but also trying to continue to renovate and refurbish the organization. And when I say renovate and refurbish, I mean, from the facility to the infrastructure to the policies and procedures, because I told the board from what I was able to ascertain during the interview process, that they were a mom and a pop, and they needed to grow into becoming a professional healthcare organization.

Anthony Codispoti: But by the time you got there, you obviously developed a track record. But I’m curious, were there any conversations during the interview process where people openly expressed concern about, hey, Jay, we like you as a person, you communicate really well, you’ve got this track record coming in. But I don’t know, our president and CEO without the ability to see, how are you going to respond to emails? How are you going to write memos? Were there sort of those practical, like brass tacks kind of conversations?

Jay Solomon: We still quote one of the executive committee board members who plainly said, we didn’t hire Jay for his eyes, we hired Jay for his brain. And that was the truth, they did. And he’ll tell you that he feels that other organizations who were afraid of my site issues passed on me, and that they were lucky to get me because of my track record and my work experience. But a testament to this organization, and it still exists, is Jay, what do you need from us to help you do the job? I mean, as we’re talking today, I have a large screen monitor in front of me. I have voice activated ability to listen to emails, to dictate emails. Instead of getting a car or car allowance, the organization takes care of making sure that I have a driver taking me to and from work, or if I have offsite meetings, they do that as well. They understand that my wife is very involved because, you know, in this role, especially with a not-for-profit, you’re going to a lot of society events, a lot of social events.

And my wife is always at my side, and she’s awesome at understanding what I can see or what I can’t see, or more importantly, what voices do I recognize and be able to put a name with the voice. And this organization, you know, we have, you know, a new chair every two years, and their news chair took over in July, and he asked the question, Jay, is there anything that we have not done for you that you need us to do to continue to assist you in everyday activities so you can be the leader that you want to be?

Anthony Codispoti: So give us a little bit more of a peek into the brains that Aviva got, that they were so excited to hire you for. I mean, you talked about the difficult situation that you stepped into with the large debt and the need to, you know, these renovations to keep everything up to date. How did you, like, what were some of the practical steps that you took to kind of work the organization through all this?

Jay Solomon: The first thing we did is we brought in a third party just to study our expenses and our revenue. And this third party came in and produced a significant report, and what was great was it was after a year that I had been here thereabouts, and they didn’t find tremendous expense opportunities for us to cut, and they found a newer ways for us to increase revenue, but it definitely helped us as an organization make sure that each budget cycle, we have that report in our mind to know, you know what, this is where we should or should not be spending.

The second thing we did was we launched a strategic planning process, and this process was made up of board members and senior leadership, and we were lucky enough to find a retired individual in Sarasota that was willing to facilitate the process, and it was a six-month process, and, you know, in that plan, we talked about the future. We talked about, you know, government reimbursement getting smaller every day. We talked about staffing challenges. We talked about regulatory challenges.

We talked about that where we are in Sarasota, there is huge competition for senior living, and we completed that plan. We brought it to the full board. It was then adopted, and then on a quarterly basis, the updates were brought back to the board. the senior leadership team were assigned to initiatives and you know they had to report back to myself and ultimately to the planning committee and to the board of what we were accomplishing and in that plan you know we talked about revenue enhancement and when I first got here our skilled nursing unit which is 45 beds were only running two to three short-term subacute patients. Patients that were coming from the hospital that would need rehab care before they got home of you know let’s say 25 days and they were on Medicare Part A. Well in my prior lives two or three patients were not gonna was not gonna cut it and today that 45 bed unit is 50% long-term care and 50% short-term care because we were able to teach the staff of the the profit margin that existed on every day that we had a short-term patient in the building which then helped us pay for the Medicaid patients that we’re caring for in the building because unfortunately Medicaid does not meet our actual real cost to provide the service so we needed something that was going to help us obtain the the margins that were necessary to keep that unit staff properly and make sure that the unit looked proper as well and you know ultimately you know when I got here in 2017 that nursing home unit in 2016 went through a CMS Center for Medicare Medicaid survey and they got 14 deficiencies that’s horrific well within you know four years we went from a two-star to a five-star and that was all part of changing the image of this organization to the public and when I say the public the hospitals and the physicians as well.

Anthony Codispoti: So one of those specific examples that you mentioned there being able to go from you know only having two or three of those beds out of you know 45 or 50 occupied at a time to now 50% is short-term 50% is long-term it sounds like there was an education process that took place there with the staff where you’re sort of coaching them training them to think about them in terms of you know like I when I hear you tell that story like in terms of like hotel room nights it’s expiring inventory right like this room is available for tonight if we don’t rent it for something tonight it goes unused it goes burned it’s we throw it away kind of a thing and so you’re teaching your team things like this and then as you go through that that CMS that survey and you know you find all those deficiencies and you move from a two-star to a five-star I’d be curious to hear more maybe just like one specific lever that you pulled that had a pretty dramatic impact on improving your status from two to five stars

Jay Solomon: we created what we call the quality of patient care committee which is made up of board members and senior staff and that group now meets quarterly but originally it was meeting monthly and that group was really studying the quality measures that both the federal government were looking at the state government and our own key indicators and we were keeping everybody accountable and it meant no matter who worked on that skilled unit whether it be the RN the certified nursing assistant the dietary staff the housekeeping staff they were all brought along in the education process on the importance of little things that multiplying to gigantic things that affect the quality of care as well as the quality of the patient experience and this QPC you know we as I said we meet quarterly and the staff is presenting these matrixes to the committee members which happened to be made up purposely of health care people we have retired physicians we have active physicians we have a retired hospital administrator we have a psychiatrist on it so we purposely were bringing people that had the knowledge and the eye towards quality health care

Anthony Codispoti: why is working at a nonprofit so important to you Jay

Jay Solomon: the mission the mission is so so important to me it’s important to me that if we get an application for somebody to come into our skilled nursing home or assisted living that we yes we look at their financial status but we need to be able to look at their clinical needs and their families needs and be able to say yes we can take that person in maybe it’s not at the full rate but you know what you were saying a better hotel I once had a COO that I reported to that always used to like to say a half a loaf is better than no loaf and so I believe that as an organization we’re here to serve we’re here to give back and one of the programs that we have that was started way before I got here that is just so so important the founders 30 years ago called it keep the dream alive and what it really was all about was providing a benevolent fund that if a resident in independent living or assisted living outlived their resources that they would not be asked to leave the campus and that we go out to the community and we fundraise for that benevolent care program so that way when that resident comes to myself or our director of finance and says hey I see my resources are running down what can I do what are we going to do and we have not turned anybody away we have not asked anybody to leave because they could not afford at the same token I understand that we have to make a bottom line and that bottom line is made from operations revenue and it’s made from donor revenue and that money goes into reserves that money goes into salary increases it goes into just operating increases but nobody’s a stockholder nobody’s getting a dividend a dividend that my board gets is they have to pay to be on my board because they were asked to donate dollars and they’re asked to donate their time

Anthony Codispoti: wow so I’m trying to wrap my head around this model it would it be correct to assume that you’re able to provide maybe services above and beyond what other locations like for-profit locations would be or is it just that you’re able to serve folks that might normally not get served

Jay Solomon: it’s actually a little bit of both let’s go on to the professional side there have been studies done throughout the United States by various aging services groups one of the biggest ones was done by leading age which is the largest senior living professional group in the country and they compared surveys of for-profit nursing homes versus non-profit nursing homes and non-profit nursing homes always always scored better in such things as staffing ratios to your point what’s the difference staffing ratios we’re not staffing to the minimum standards we’re staffing above that because we believe by doing that that’s quality and you know over my experience you know I’ll always say quality cells a heck of a lot better than any promotional item that we can put forward because people are afraid of nursing homes they’re afraid of the horror stories and it’s our responsibility as leaders in the profession to try to squash those negative stories with the positive stories and you know we don’t have enough time of all the wonderful residents that I have cared for and loved in my 40 years of doing this and I think that you know looking towards the future we all need to look to the fact that we’re living longer life expectancy is is growing I mean I’ll tell you from February 1st right now through the end of July I have three residents turning 100 and another one that’s turning 101 and if I put them in front of you Anthony you would say to me no way but if somebody once said to me do we know what a hundred year old looks like and I’m really proud of the fact that we do have so many Centurions on this campus and a lot of people say well it’s awarded that they’re drinking well it’s the care that we provide and you know are we providing care to those that are less fortunate financially yes absolutely and all of our levels of care we are doing that

Anthony Codispoti: I want to shift gears for a moment Jay and I want to talk about your Jewish faith I know that it’s very important to you now and I want to talk more about sort of present day but I want to go back to when you were eight nine ten years old first with the diagnosis did you understand enough about your faith was it I don’t know sort of central enough to who you were that at that time it was a source of comfort or or help or did that come later on

Jay Solomon: I think when I was first diagnosed I didn’t really look at it as why me in terms of why God did you choose to do this to me what did I do wrong I didn’t think about it at that point in my life later on in my life when there were depressing moments or if my site you know when I would go to the ophthalmologist who was always like oh please don’t let this be the appointment that we see you know further fall off so I think that you know in the early days I was very very involved in Jewish youth programs you know traveling across the United States with a teen tour going to Israel with the program and it goes back to something I said earlier on those programs I made friends that understood what my deficits were and they helped me they assisted me you know if we were doing nighttime traveling or something like that um I think it was later on you know probably more in my 20s where I was questioning why me why did this happen to me and you know I looked around and nobody else had this and you know and I would find solace in talking to rabbis that through my days of being involved in the youth programming and then ultimately even becoming a youth advisor in these Jewish teen programs I become friends with a number of rabbis and we would talk and you know ultimately what it came back to was the way in which I was approaching it and that I needed to continue to approach it as that handicapable person you know with RP you know one of the as I said the first thing you lose is your night vision so I would choke with people Dracula and I are twin brothers he flies by night I fly by day and you know what a little bit of self-deprivation ain’t a bad thing

Anthony Codispoti: bring some levity the situation makes makes you feel a little bit more comfortable as well as those around you who probably aren’t always sure like what to do or how to act yes yeah and so fast forward to today how does your Jewish faith show up for you in your work and why is it such an important component of what you’re doing there at Aviva?

Jay Solomon: Honor thy mother and thy father I think it’s the best way of saying it or in Hebrew we would use the term lador vador which translates into from generation to generation and I was very very fortunate to have a great grandfather until I was a junior in high school and I learned so much from him and my grandparents I mean my grandparents didn’t pass away until I was in my late 30s and seeing the family the family bond the family heritage and sharing the holidays whether it be rosh Hashanah or Passover and for example here we’ve already started planning for Passover which the first Satyr is not until April 12th but we’re underway with planning on how we’re going to seat 200 people in our space for Passover because for me Passover always always represents the family and therefore it’s my responsibility to make sure that my residents whether they’re 80 or 100 have that opportunity to share the holiday of Passover with their family and I think that’s how my Jewish faith continues to guide me in ensuring that my residents some of who are Holocaust survivors are able to be proud of their faith and enjoy their faith.

Anthony Codispoti: What percentage of your residents are Jewish is it a strictly Jewish community there?

Jay Solomon: No right now we’re caring for about 270 individuals on the campus right now and about 70% of our residents are Jewish and that’s also been something new for us as an organization to see that our population here is changing and so we have a religious activities committee that’s formed by the residents and this past year you know something strange happened which is that Hanukkah and Christmas day same day and so we were trying to figure out how can we do this appropriately so Christmas Eve we did what we called a Christmas Eve dinner no it didn’t have the seven fishes and no it didn’t have ham but we tried to make it as festive of a Christmas Eve dinner as possible so that was 24th on the 25th we had a Hanukkah buffet lunch so that way we felt that we were recognizing everybody on this campus we have a resident in independent living who’s retired clergy and so she led a Christmas Eve mass she’ll be leading a Good Friday mass and an Easter Sunday mass and those masses are taking place inside our chapel and that chapel was designed as a temple it has the holy ark it has a Torah but it’s being used for everybody and I believe that continues to be the belief in faith believe in religion

Anthony Codispoti: I love that uh and Jay you um you talk a lot about extraordinary lives for seniors what does that actually look like in practice and how do you foster that kind of an environment at Aviva

Jay Solomon: you know it’s interesting when I had my first administrative shift I was 26 it was 1988 and I was a man-man I would walk up and down the halls and I would want to know why aren’t the residents out of their rooms and activities and an activity therapist had a lot of guts and said to me Jay because if they always wanted just to stay and read a book a newspaper or watch TV that’s enriching their lives and that taught me a great deal and what I am so proud of here is something we call Aviva University and it’s got multiple pillars one of the things about the Sarasota community is it’s known for its arts culture and entertainment and the residents here said to me Jay we can do the same thing inside this campus as we do when we go out so we offer a classical music series that today had a classical violinist and there was 136 attendees at it both our residents and people from the community we are very fortunate that in Sarasota we have an aquarium the moat aquarium well they are rebuilding the aquarium about a mile mile and a half from our front door so they’re co-hosting with us an environmental series for the second year we have an authors series where we look to find authors that are you know that live in our surrounding areas and they come in we have a health series we have a health and wellness program where we have a certified trainer who does you name it the type of exercises from chair exercises to the specific fitness center that we have that the weights are not the weights that you and I think about the solid weights these are compression weights and you’re able to slip what looks like a credit card into the machine that has a memory of what was if you want to call the the pressure the air pressure that you were lifting and we have somebody that just teaches the residents that but he also is all over our campus working in all levels of care trying to get the residents to if you want to say be more limber and enjoy exercise and and so forth so you know for me an enriched life for the resident is the lesson I learned in 1988 that we have to understand that each resident is an individual with likes and dislikes the challenge is for us to be able to understand what that translates into for an everyday life you know many people compare our independent living to being on a cruise ship because there’s always something going on on this campus and that to me means that as an individual I can pick and choose I could choose to do none of them I can pick and choose to be busy every hour and that to me is really what senior life enrichment is all about

Anthony Codispoti: so to be able to provide such an incredible environment for your residents all these programs and the care that they need you’ve obviously got to have a great team behind you what’s your philosophy what’s your approach to attracting and retaining good team members

Jay Solomon: that’s probably the toughest issue today in the general workforce and absolutely in our workforce this morning we happened to have an orientation class of 15 new hires from all aspects of our community and I always start off my talk by asking them why why are you here what brought you here and I hope the word comes out to care to serve to be there for the residents or patients and this morning I had a nurse who actually was an agency nurse who worked here periodically but what he said was he enjoyed the atmosphere so much because of the residents and the staff that he decided to leave the agency and come to work for us to answer your question in a short fashion I believe it’s all about caring for the individual staff member for me and my leadership team to know what’s going on in my staff’s lives whether I ask a staff member how is their 13 year old son doing or we have a couple one works in maintenance one works in housekeeping and the mother-in-law works here as well so I said to her yesterday so how’s baby Aviva doing because her daughter just gave birth like three weeks ago and I think it’s that aspect of really trying to to know your staff and being able to talk to them about who they are I think that’s how you retain them is to really be there for them in terms of recruitment I gotta tell you I haven’t found the secret sauce we have been using hiring bonuses referral bonuses all kinds of new payways you know because healthcare is so much into agency workers or people that just work for a day here a day here we now have a system where I can actually pay my employees daily as opposed to waiting for a week or two weeks for a paycheck you know I always thought health benefits were such a big big portion of recruitment I’m embarrassed to say that it frustrates me that so many people in the workforce choose not to have health benefits and here you know when I got here eight years ago I enriched our health benefits believing that that was going to be the secret sauce for for recruitment and in the end of the day it’s really the word of mouth it’s really people talking to their friends their family about you know what a great workplace this is yesterday a week how their rock star annual luncheon which is basically our employee of the month and one of the recipients a certified nursing assistant we were joking how many people that she has brought to us to work friends families you know members and I think that’s probably for us as a 150 plus employer I think that’s the best way.

Anthony Codispoti: Jay I’ve just got one more question for you but before I ask and I want to do two things first of all everyone listening today pretty sure you love today’s content because Jay’s been a great guest if you want to continue to get great shows like this hit the follow or subscribe button on your favorite podcast app Jay I also want to let people know the best way to either get in touch with you or to continue to follow your story or that of a Viva’s

Jay Solomon: okay we are on Facebook as Viva senior living so please feel free to friend us and you’ll be able to see what’s going on here almost on a daily basis we try to post on a real regular basis there’s also of course our website which is you know AvivaSeniorLiving.org not Tom.org and then you know if people want they can email me directly it’s initial Jay S-O-L-O-M-O-N at AvivaSeniorLiving.org.

Anthony Codispoti: Great thanks for that Jay. The last question for you as you look to the future what are some of the changes in your industry that you’re most excited to watch and fold?

Jay Solomon: I think that one of the biggest things is the change of the age of the demographic that we’re caring for we were joking that the days of the Glenn Miller band are gone and we better get our blue suede shoes on because our residents are now of the rock era and therefore it means that we have to change how we think and it may sound crazy just by using the the music as the analogy but those individuals that grew up in that period of time you know in the 50s and the 60s they experienced a different society and they have different wants and different needs and for me that’s exciting because it means for us we have to shift we have to you know as they like to say change the paradigm but what does that mean for us?

It means for us that we have to look at things such as you know I said the music but something like the menu we all love food right we all need food but do people want to sit in a formal dining room or are we now starting to see the generations that were grab-and-go kind of people you know because they were working and family and you know so what I think that is upon us is understanding that we’re caring for different people and that those individuals are bringing to us a whole new set of needs and wants and if we’re going to be a exceptional provider we better darn well recognize that and understand that we need to look into the future we need to be Michael J Fox and go back to the future.

Anthony Codispoti: I like it that’s a perfect place to wrap up Jay I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today I really appreciate it.

Jay Solomon: Anthony thank you so much for inviting me this as I said to you was my first time doing a podcast and you were 100% right I felt like we were having a conversation so thank you.

Anthony Codispoti: That’s the ultimate compliment Jay I appreciate that folks that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast thanks for learning with us today.