Editor’s Note: McKnight’s Long-Term Care News, McKnight’s Senior Living and McKnight’s Home Care are profiling the McKnight’s 2023 Pinnacle Awards honorees daily in April and May. For additional McKnight’s Pinnacle Awards content, visit this page.
Doing well by doing good has certainly proven true for Lynne Katzmann.
In 1988, at the age of 32 and with a PhD in health policy from the London School of Economics, Katzmann started Juniper Communities in Bloomfield, NJ. Begun as a way to invest in undervalued skilled nursing facilities and improve them, the company since has grown to develop and manage senior living communities.
There are now 24 of them — traversing New Jersey, Texas, Pennsylvania and Colorado.
Her company remains the only woman-founded, owned and led firm among the top 40 national assisted living companies.
A pioneer and visionary who also contributes to multiple boards, Katzmann has been relentless in her drive to improve the lived experience for the aging, including creating new financial models to support the industry.
In 2020, she led the effort to form an operator-owned Medicare Advantage network called the Perennial Consortium, offering Perennial Advantage.
Another innovation, Connect4Life, was developed at Juniper and licensed to AllyAlign Health. Integrating primary care onsite, encouraging the use of data and electronic health records to drive care, and dedicating a coordinator to be the bridge between the senior living resident and the providers are all pillars of the program, which ultimately aims to improve outcomes and save money.
Before founding Juniper, Katzmann held positions at HealthChoice Inc. and Metrocare Inc. Later, she was vice president of JMK Associates Inc. from 1986 to 1987.
In 2019, she was the first recipient of the McKnight’s Women of Distinction Lifetime Achievement Award. She followed that up the next year with induction into the American Senior Housing Association’s Senior Living Hall of Fame.
The McKnight’s Pinnacle Awards program is jointly administered by McKnight’s Long-Term Care News, McKnight’s Senior Living and McKnight’s Home Care. Honorees were recognized March 7 at a gala banquet and awards ceremony in Chicago. The program’s Platinum sponsor was MatrixCare. Omnicare was a Silver sponsor, and additional sponsors included Pinnacle Quality Insight, HealthDirect and Sentrics.
