Senior living & post-acute — Wylie Performance Partners

INDUSTRIES · SENIOR LIVING & POST-ACUTE

A senior living community is a hospitality
business inside a healthcare coat.

We analyzed the reported spending of 833 continuing care, senior housing and post-acute organizations. The clinical categories cluster tightly. The hospitality categories do not — and hospitality is most of what a resident actually experiences.

THE CENTRAL FINDING

Clinical categories cluster more tightly.
Hospitality categories do not.

We measured how often an organization's reported spend in a category runs more than half again above the median for its peers. The split between clinical and hospitality categories is stark, and it is consistent across 833 organizations.

Clinical categories were standardized decades ago and are usually bought through a purchasing programme. Dining, maintenance, insurance and supplies were not — they are bought locally and renewed without being retested. That is not carelessness. It is what happens when the categories that define the resident experience are the ones with no benchmark attached.

CATEGORY	SHARE WITH FILED SPEND ABOVE 1.5× PEER MEDIAN
Property & sales tax		71%
Insurance		49%
Dining & food service		47%
Operating supply		46%
Office supplies		37%
Maintenance & plant		32%
IT hardware & services		18%
Medical supply		13%
Pharmacy		8%

Method note. Share of organizations whose reported spend exceeds 1.5× the peer median. Peer groups of 50 or more, same reporting period. Above median is not overspending — it is a reason to ask why.

What makes this sector structurally different

Liability insurance has repriced

Nearly half of organizations run insurance well above the peer median. Coverage in senior care has hardened, and many renewals were accepted rather than tested because the alternative was no cover.

Dining is a resident satisfaction line

Food service is judged on quality, not cost, and rightly. That makes it politically difficult to examine — which is precisely why it drifts.

The campus is the cost centre

Plant, grounds, elevator, HVAC, life safety, waste and linen are bought campus by campus, often with no benchmark to work from.

Occupancy pressure compresses everything

Rate increases meet resident affordability at some point, and payer mix is largely fixed. Recovered value is one of few levers that touches neither resident nor staff.

Where a conversation usually starts

Insurance

Median 0.93% of expenses, and 49% run well above it. Rarely tested at renewal because the market has been hard.

Dining and food service

Median 2.71%, and 47% run well above. Usually the second largest controllable line on the campus.

Plant and maintenance

Median 1.64%, and 32% run well above. Bought campus by campus, almost never consolidated.

WHERE WE WOULD NOT START

Medical supply or pharmacy. They sit close to the median across this sector, which is what a well-used purchasing programme looks like, and we would tell you so in the first conversation.

WHAT THE WIDER RESEARCH REPORTS

Little published benchmarking covers senior living specifically.

Little published benchmarking covers senior living specifically. The figures below describe healthcare and indirect spend generally.

Indirect spend in healthcare is put at 60% to 80% of total company spend.

Efficio, 2026

Indirect categories are commonly estimated at 20% to 40% of an organization’s total spend across sectors.

McKinsey & Company

62% of respondents named budget pressure as their leading concern, against 31% the year before.

RS Indirect Procurement Report, 2025

These figures describe ranges observed across an industry, drawn from samples that may or may not resemble your organization. We publish the source and the sample size for each one because a range is useful for orientation even when it cannot be a conclusion. None of them describe you. The analysis above comes from the reported figures of 833 organizations in this sector.

CONTINUE

See how cost recovery works

The four stages, the categories, and the fee model.

Read →

Other sectors

How the pattern differs elsewhere, and why.

Read →

The research behind this

What we publish, and what we are building next.

Read →

A 45-minute working session.
Your numbers. Your operating model. No assumptions.

We will talk through the hospitality categories where variation is widest, and confirm which of the clinical ones your purchasing programme already handles well.

No fee for the conversation, and no cost unless verified value is recovered.

Start a conversation See how cost recovery works