A New Model for Occupancy: Retain, Don’t Just Replace
by Thomas Tredinnick, CEO and Founder, Ally Cares
Rethinking occupancy strategy
Ask any care home operator what drives occupancy and you’ll likely hear the same thing: enquiry generation and conversion. But while filling beds is essential, focusing solely on bringing new residents through the door overlooks a quieter, and often more powerful lever for sustainable success: extending length of stay.
For too long, the conversation around quality of care has been framed around risk reduction, compliance, and “doing the right thing.” While these are absolutely critical, they miss one fundamental truth: quality of care is a direct driver of financial performance. Residents who live a healthier, happier life simply live longer in your care. And that changes the game entirely.
When residents leave early – the financial cost
To understand just how powerful an increase in length of stay can be, let’s run some numbers.
Imagine you run a 34-bed care home, and your average occupancy sits at 30 residents. If your average length of stay is 18 months, you’ll need to find 20 new residents every year just to maintain your current occupancy.
Now imagine your average length of stay increases by just two months — from 18 to 20. That seemingly small improvement reduces your annual move-outs from 20 to 18. If your enquiry conversion remains the same and you continue to bring in 20 new residents per year, your occupancy climbs to 32. That’s a net increase of two residents, equivalent to a 7% boost in occupancy without increasing marketing spend, enquiry volume, or operational costs.
For care homes that are already at full occupancy, extending stay length reduces pressure on marketing and admissions, cushions the financial hit from any sudden move-outs, and builds resilience into your business model.
Whichever way you cut it, longer stays mean fewer costly gaps, less reactive marketing, and more stable revenue. It’s not just a clinical or operational win, it’s a direct driver of profitability.
Why residents leave early and why it’s not inevitable
So what drives residents to leave early?
The most common reason for early move-outs from care homes is an early decline in health, resulting in the resident’s needs becoming more complex, or they sadly pass away.
When care needs become more complex, residents may be moved because the home, family, or health professionals feel those needs can no longer be safely met. In some cases, a moveout could be due to a breakdown in trust between the care home and the family.
Both scenarios can shorten a resident’s length of stay.
However, many of these health declines represent missed opportunities, either to prevent them from occurring in the first place, such as avoiding a fall, or to improve the speed and quality of recovery. For example, ideally, a resident’s health should be strengthened which in turn will reduce their risk of developing a chest infection when unwell, or give them greater resilience to fight off and recover from one more effectively.
This is where reframing quality of care as a business performance issue is key. If we know that early deterioration and move-outs impact both residents and finances, then improving these touchpoints becomes not just a moral or regulatory responsibility, but a commercial priority.
By focusing on ways to not only maintain but improve resident health, care homes can reduce the risk of early decline and premature move-outs.
The data behind longer, healthier stays.
Over the past five years, we at Ally Cares have been working closely with our care home partners and alongside the NHS and Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) to measure key indicators of care quality and resident wellbeing.
Across a cohort of more than 1,800 residents, we’ve recorded some remarkable outcomes:
- 50% improvement in sleep quality
- 85% reduction in high-risk falls
- 30% reduction in low-risk falls
- 50% reduction in infections
- 56% reduction in hospital admissions
We’re also building a growing body of evidence showing meaningful improvements in weight, hydration, mood, time spent active during the day, and reductions in the use of sleep medication, antipsychotics, and antibiotics.
Whilst we’re immensely proud of the positive impact these care homes are having on residents’ health and happiness, these outcomes have prompted two important questions:
- How much do these improvements affect a resident’s lifespan
- Which factors have the greatest impact—and should be prioritised first?
Our latest results from care homes show that residents’ lifespans increase by an average of four weeks per year through improvements in clinical and wellbeing outcomes. When you also account for enhanced trust and fewer early move-outs, this increases to five weeks per resident, per year.
Of the longevity gains:
- 4% can be attributed to a 50% reduction in infections
- 35% from fewer bedroom falls
- A significant 62% comes from improved sleep, driven by residents’ improved mental and physical resilience as a consequence of improved rest.
To put this in context: for a care home with 30 residents, these improvements could equate to increasing occupancy to 31, without changing the number of admissions over the year.
Sleep: The silent driver of length of stay
Sleep is often overlooked in care planning, yet it has profound effects on a resident’s health, mood, and ability to remain in a care setting long-term. Ally data shows that residents in care homes often get less than 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep per night, which contributes to increased falls, confusion, infections, poor appetite, and can impact length of stays by making them shorter overall.
Poor sleep isn’t just a comfort issue, it’s a risk factor. Addressing it can have a measurable impact on resident outcomes, length of stay, and the financial stability of the care home. This is why homes using Ally Cares’ AI resident monitoring technology are starting to see sleep not just as a care indicator, but as a strategic KPI.
Homes that improve resident sleep also see knock-on benefits in nearly every other area of care. With better sleep comes fewer bedroom falls, calmer behaviour, greater participation during the day, fewer infections and fewer hospital transfers. Improved sleep also leads to more regular eating and better response to medications, both of which support longer, more stable stays.
In essence, sleep acts as a multiplier. It doesn’t just make residents feel better, it makes the whole care ecosystem work better.
Changing culture: empowering a positive sleep environment
When sleep is prioritised in a care home, it shifts the mindset of the care team.
Night staff begin to prioritise creating a positive sleep environment for each resident, focusing on enabling them to rest as well as they would want to in their own home. This includes being quieter, dimming lights, keeping doors closed, and minimising noisy activities like hoovering or leaving TVs and radios on after residents have fallen asleep.
And finally, relying on a robust resident monitoring system like Ally allows staff to enter residents’ rooms less frequently—or not at all—while they’re sleeping, reducing unnecessary interruptions. No one wants to be checked on every couple of hours, and evidence from our initial studies showed that 70% of these checks disrupted sleep, with residents waking fully 20% of the time. That’s a significant amount of disruption.
Creating a care home that invests and prioritises sleep not only improves resident wellbeing but also boosts staff morale and retention. Team members report feeling more effective, less reactive, less stressed, and having more time to provide meaningful care alongside other tasks and duties. All in all, it’s a win-win.
Sleep drives trust and influences admissions
Families want to know their loved one is safe, settled, and happy. Good sleep is a key part of this. When homes invest in sleep, residents are more alert and active during the day, so when families visit, they spend time with a happy relative, not one who is tired and fatigued.
This is a big part of why I started Ally. When I visited my grandmother in care homes, it became increasingly difficult to catch her when she wasn’t asleep or tired. It was hard to witness, and I often felt guilty for disturbing her. I would have loved to see her alert and happy each day, just like she was at home.
Coupled with improvements across the board in areas like weight, hydration, reduced medication use, and fewer falls and infections, families’ confidence and trust in the care home grows, as they see their relatives’ health improve, rather than gradually simply decline.
That trust can lead to more word-of-mouth recommendations, a stronger reputation, and helps to support enquiries and conversions. In one example, improved outcomes have even supported the reopening of a closed dementia unit which has strengthened financial sustainability.
From quality to stability: rethinking ROI
It’s time to shift the mindset. Quality of care isn’t just about compliance, it’s a growth strategy. Longer stays mean lower acquisition costs, fewer transitions, better staffing consistency, and more predictable revenue.
Improving sleep, reducing falls, and supporting staff with technology like Ally doesn’t just improve resident life, it improves the life of the care business too. And in today’s climate, that’s not just desirable, it’s essential.
Learn more about how better sleep and smarter monitoring can transform outcomes in your care home today. www.allycares.com