The 30-day IT playbook for a newly acquired senior living community.
Acquiring a community means inheriting its entire IT environment, on day one, whether or not it was documented. The Post-Close Stabilization Playbook is a fixed-scope, fixed-price, 30-day engagement that brings a newly acquired community from whatever it inherited to a standardized, monitored, HIPAA-documented environment. A checklist, not custom consulting, so the second acquisition costs less than the first.
The chaos is invisible
until it isn't.
Most communities enter a new portfolio with an IT environment that was maintained reactively for years, regardless of the previous owner's size or reputation. None of this shows up in a purchase agreement. All of it becomes your liability the moment the deal closes. If you haven't run pre-close IT due diligence yet, see what IT due diligence should look like before you buy.
No Asset Inventory
Routers, switches, wireless access points, workstations, and nurse call hardware are rarely documented. The incoming team learns the environment by walking the floor.
Active Remote Access, No Accountability
Previous IT vendors, EHR support teams, and former employees may still hold active remote access credentials. None have been revoked. This is the highest-risk gap in the first 30 days.
Mixed or Absent Endpoint Protection
Some workstations run current antivirus or endpoint detection and response. Others run nothing. The difference is invisible until an incident occurs.
Vendor Contracts in the Wrong Name
The internet circuit, phone system, and software subscriptions are billed to an entity that no longer controls the community, creating gaps at the worst possible moment.
One price. One written scope.
No surprise invoices.
Network & Infrastructure Cutover
HIPAA Documentation Binder
Staff Training & Enablement
24/7 Monitoring & Workstation Validation
A fixed sequence,
not an open-ended project.
Discovery & Risk Elimination
Full asset inventory, vendor and remote-access audit, revocation of any credential that can't be attributed to a current employee or vendor, and a confirmed, tested backup restore before anything else moves.
Standardized Cutover & Compliance Build
Network and wireless replaced or certified against the portfolio standard, monitoring and endpoint protection deployed, the HIPAA binder drafted against the new ownership entity, and EHR connectivity validated end to end.
Training, Validation & Handoff
Staff security awareness training completed, executive director walkthrough of the new environment, final clinical workstation validation, and a formal handoff meeting with signed close-out documentation.
Fixed price,
written before you sign.
Community Size
Inherited Documentation
Network Hardware Condition
The playbook ends
where managed services begins.
Answered directly.
What's included in the Post-Close Stabilization Playbook?
The playbook is a fixed-scope, 30-day engagement for a single newly acquired community. Scope covers a standardized network cutover onto your portfolio's stack (or a clean-slate build for a first acquisition), staff training on the new environment, a HIPAA documentation binder built for state licensing surveys, 24/7 monitoring activation, and clinical workstation validation to confirm EHR and eMAR connectivity survived the cutover intact.
How long does the engagement take?
30 days from kickoff to handoff, on a fixed schedule: discovery and risk elimination in the first stretch, standardized cutover and compliance documentation build in the middle, and staff training plus a formal handoff in the final days. Communities with heavily customized or end-of-life clinical systems may need an extended window for that specific system while the rest of the environment stays on schedule.
What happens after day 30?
The community is handed off on your portfolio's standard stack: monitored, documented, and indistinguishable from any other site in your portfolio from an IT standpoint. Most operators move directly into an ongoing managed services agreement at that point, priced per community rather than per user or device, so the transition from stabilization to steady-state support has no gap in coverage.
Does the fixed price cover everything, or are there hidden costs?
The $4,500 to $6,500 fixed price covers the scoped 30-day engagement: cutover, training, documentation, and monitoring activation. It does not include net-new hardware the site needs to replace, such as aging switches, access points, or workstations past end of life, or clinical software licensing, which are itemized separately once the discovery phase identifies what the site actually needs. You get a written scope before anything outside the fixed price is proposed.
Do you handle multi-community portfolio acquisitions?
Yes. The playbook is built to be repeatable, not custom consulting, so the second and third community in a portfolio move faster than the first. We currently run this model across a multi-community senior living portfolio under a 36-month managed services contract, with each new site brought onto the same standardized stack.
What if the community's electronic health record (EHR) is heavily customized or end-of-life?
The rest of the environment, including network, identity, monitoring, and documentation, stays on the 30-day schedule. The clinical system itself may need a separate, vendor-coordinated migration timeline, which we scope and communicate before day one so it does not quietly extend the whole engagement.
Just closed on
a community?
Free 30-minute scope call. We walk through what your specific acquisition inherited and confirm the fixed price in writing before anything is proposed. Portfolio operators: bring all the sites you're acquiring and we'll scope the sequence for the whole batch.