Oxford Senior Living Turns To Improvement After Life Plan Community Acquisition

Fresh off of its latest growth push, Oxford Senior Living is looking inward to improve its operations in 2025 and prepare for a changing customer.

The company recently acquired a former life plan community in Kansas and is in the midst of stabilizing that property as the operator nears two dozen communities across the midwest and southeastern U.S.

In 2025, Oxford CEO Chris Dennis told Senior Housing News the Wichita, Kansas-based operator’s “number one goal” is increasing revenue as occupancy improves, while also eliminating overtime and collecting receivable payments sooner to improve financial reporting.

In 2024, Oxford acquired a closed on a life plan community campus in Wichita, Kansas, and reopened the 137-unit community without skilled nursing care last June. At present, Oxford filled the memory care portion of the property to capacity and is working on increasing census in assisted living as independent living demand has remained strong, Dennis said.

“We’re taking a look at what it is about some of the units that aren’t selling as quickly as we’d like,” Dennis said.

The company is exploring adding future memory care units to communities based on prevalent demand for high-acuity care and living options. Oxford also has incentivized its executive directors across its 23 communities to minimize overtime and eliminate agency through a monthly bonus program if certain metrics are met.

“The next big goal here is improving retention and in certain locations, we were churning employees and we’re going to stop that by improving onboarding, training and support,” Dennis told SHN.

Senior living operators in recent years have taken varied approaches at improving employee turnover and retention, and Dennis believes his company can move the needle by improving training for all departments, so that staff are better-equipped to do their job and deliver quality care to residents.

Prior to improving training, Dennis noted Oxford is changing its onboarding platform for new hires, an update that was last done in 2019 with a goal of implementing the new system by mid-year.

The effort to improve revenue generation was preceded by Oxford redefining its levels of care to better capture care revenue, a common lever operators have pulled in recent years to improve cash flow. That means new assessments and a point-based system to gauge resident acuity.

“We’ve seen a 20% increase in our level of care revenue just with that emphasis on those assessments alone,” Dennis said. “We wanted to take the subjectivity out of the process.”

As it stands in 2025, Oxford reported a stabilized occupancy of 85% with a goal of improving occupancy throughout the year coupled with staggered, 5% resident rental rate increases that are rolled out at communities depending on location, Dennis said.

To capture demographic-driven demand, Dennis said Oxford sales and marketing teams have relied on short-term incentives between three to six month discounts.

“Once you get past that, you get concerned about your value proposition,” Dennis said.

While residents are seeking larger units with more lifestyle amenities, Dennis said studio layouts would continue to play an important role as the most affordable living option for older adults on a budget.

“Going out two to even five years, affordability is going to be a big deal for us,” Dennis added.

To bring more affordable options to residents, Oxford created an “a la carte” system that separates base rates and then residents are able to pay for things like meals or housekeeping services dependent on care level.

“It keeps costs down and if people are still cooking, they can save money by not requiring our meal plan while someone might want the housekeeping services rather than doing it themselves,” Dennis said. “That’s been eye-catching for us and a way we think we can be at an affordable price point.”

On any new growth, Dennis said that could come in the form of new acquisitions rather than development given ongoing challenges in debt and construction financing. The growth would also take the form of building regional density, noting Oxford’s cluster of communities in the Dallas, Texas and Tulsa, Oklahoma markets while potentially expanding the company’s foothold in Kansas City, Missouri.

In the months ahead, Dennis sees the cost of staffing as one of the biggest challenges facing his organization and the industry in general, noting that wage growth had stabilized in the last two years as the operator “hit an equilibrium” for pay and perception of wages by new hires.

“We can resolve some of these issues because we’re not in crisis mode anymore,” Dennis said.

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