Unplanned moves cost more than most operators think. Here’s what’s driving them.

Most operators have a rough mental model of what it costs to turn over a resident, but more often than not, the number they’ve landed on is lower than what it actually is. 

The 2026 Cost of Senior Care report, conducted by SafelyYou, puts the actual figure at $8,480 per resident in assisted living and $8,760 in memory care. For a community of 100 residents losing 25–30 per year, that’s $210,000–$255,000 in annual resident turnover cost, in direct costs alone.

The report found that some of the cost drivers contributing to these numbers include:

• Vacancy days. The gap between a move-out and a move-in is rarely zero, and every day a unit sits empty is revenue lost. Depending on how quickly a community can identify a qualified prospect, vet their needs, and complete the move-in process, those days can accumulate fast.
• Marketing and sales labor. Finding residents to sign on with a community takes a lot of resources. Marketing spend, sales team time, tours, follow-up communications, and the often lengthy decision-making process families go through all come at a cost. When a resident who was supposed to stay for years leaves prematurely, that investment has to restart from scratch.
• Move-out, cleaning, and apartment turnover. The physical work of preparing a unit for the next resident — repairs, deep cleaning, any reconfiguration for a new resident’s needs — also needs to be taken into consideration. 
• Reassessments and onboarding for a new resident. Every new resident arrives with a distinct health history, care needs, behavioral profile, and family dynamic. Clinical and care staff have to get to know that person. Building a new care relationship takes time.

Indirect costs–like reduced family confidence, reputational harm, lower referral volume, and the downstream suppression of new admissions–further compound the exposure. And while it’s important to fully understand what these figures are, it’s even more important to highlight the reason why residents are leaving in the first place. The report has a clear answer to that question, too.

What the Cost of Senior Care Study reveals about why residents leave.

Most unplanned moves have an underlying story: a resident’s needs changed, the change wasn’t caught early enough, the care plan didn’t keep up, and by the time the family made a decision, the community was already reacting rather than leading.

The report identifies a visibility gap at the center of this pattern: only 20% of assisted living leaders and 33% of memory care leaders rate their care planning process “very or extremely effective.” 

When care plans aren’t updated proactively, staff can feel like they’re playing catch up. A resident’s mobility has declined, another resident’s acuity has shifted, but their care plans still reflect the level of support they needed when they first moved in a few months ago. Whatever the case may be, at some point, the unmet needs become visible to the family and that can spark mistrust. 

Rising acuity compounds this. 50% of assisted living leaders and 48% of memory care leaders cite rising acuity as a top barrier to delivering high-quality care. Leaders across both care settings describe increasing challenges in every dimension of care need: mobility, cognition, continence, behavioral health, activities of daily living. 

Falls are the single biggest driver of unplanned moves.

The residents arriving today are older, more medically complex, and require more intensive support than the same community would have anticipated a decade ago. The average age at move-in has risen from 78 in 2009 to 87 today. The average assisted living resident now has more than 14 chronic conditions.

A fall, especially an unwitnessed one, can move a resident to a higher level of care or cause them to leave a community altogether. The 2026 Cost of Senior Care report found that falls lead to hospitalization, short-term rehabilitation, or a permanent transition. That cascade hits everything: vacancy days, turnover costs, staff morale, and the community’s reputation with families who are watching.

The scale of the problem starts with what goes unseen. Per SafelyYou analytics cited in the report, up to 40% of falls in assisted living and up to 80% of falls in memory care may go unwitnessed or unreported. Without documentation of what happened, what led up to it, and what the resident’s condition was in the moments after, the care team has to work from an incomplete picture. The risk of a missed injury, another fall, a delayed intervention, or an inadequate care plan update increases dramatically.

When a fall does result in a hospital transfer, the economics shift as well. The average fall cost per incident is $10,900 in assisted living and $9,330 in memory care, per the report and those figures have risen sharply. Fall costs have doubled in assisted living over the past three years, compared to a blended average of $5,267 in 2022. For a community experiencing 35-45 falls annually, the dollars accumulate quickly.

When staff time, documentation, clinical follow-up, and revenue loss from vacancy or transition are factored in together, the SafelyYou Cost of Senior Care Report estimates the combined fall-related cost exposure at an average of $380,000 per community per year.

What longer length of stay actually means for the business.

SafelyYou internal analyses cited in the 2026 Cost of Senior Care report show that earlier identification of rising acuity — combined with fall detection before incidents escalate — can extend average resident length of stay by 174 days. 

Real-time visibility into how care is being delivered, including staff time spent in a resident’s rooms, also improves care plan accuracy and the alignment of billing to actual care delivered. Communities that can see what’s happening are better positioned to update care plans as acuity shifts and avoid the lag that leaves residents under-served and care plans outdated.

The report also surfaces a dimension that goes beyond individual resident economics. 71% of senior living leaders say improved care planning would extend resident length of stay. And 62% say it would improve their community’s ability to support new admissions.

What operators who are getting this right are doing differently.

The report reveals a pattern of practices among the leaders who are extending length of stay, reducing unplanned move-outs, and managing fall costs more effectively.

• They’re updating care plans more frequently than after-the-fact. The leaders who see better outcomes are updating on a shorter cycle, driven by real-time changes in resident condition, not by a fixed calendar date or a crisis that’s already occurred.
• They’re building visibility into events that used to go unseen. Communities that can detect and document care gaps earlier have more time to respond before a situation becomes acute.
• They’re communicating with families proactively rather than reactively. When the first call a family receives about a change in their loved one is from a hospital social worker, the community has already lost the narrative. The leaders who maintain family confidence are the ones reaching out before a crisis, not in response to one.

The 2026 Cost of Senior Care report describes an ideal care-plan model that these leaders are working toward: risk signals that trigger reassessment prompts automatically, fall events that flow directly into care plan updates, and billing that reflects the actual care being delivered rather than the care that was planned months ago.

SafelyYou Safety AI is built around this model. For operators, what it surfaces is straightforward: earlier visibility into resident condition, fall events captured and documented even when no staff member was present, signals that prompt care plan review before the quarterly cycle, and the integration that allows what’s observed at the bedside to inform clinical decisions in real time. 

Reducing resident turnover doesn’t start with marketing a new unit. It starts with seeing the resident you already have clearly enough to meet their needs before they change their mind about where they live.

Download the full report.

The 2026 Cost of Senior Care report surfaces the full resident turnover, fall cost, and care planning data from 175 senior living leaders. Download the report to see the complete findings, including the financial exposure model for a 100-resident community, the care planning effectiveness data, and what leaders say they need to improve outcomes in the year ahead.

Download the 2026 Cost of Senior Care report →

Frequently Asked Questions

Citations

1. SafelyYou / Merrill Research. (2025). 2026 Cost of Senior Care. Conducted Q3 2025, n=175 senior living executives, operators, and clinical directors.
2. SafelyYou. (2024). Cost of Falls Report: 2024 Edition.
3. SafelyYou. (2026). Length of Stay Meta-Analysis.
4. SafelyYou Internal Analytics. (2024). Unwitnessed fall rates in assisted living and memory care settings.
5. CNA Financial Corporation. (2023). Senior Living Claim Report.
6. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Older Adult Falls Data. https://www.cdc.gov/falls/data/index.html
7. National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care (NIC). Senior living occupancy data, 2024.