One Purpose Living (OPS Living) is expanding Medicaid waiver-supported senior living options for older adults in the Midwest and weighing future acquisition opportunities, according to CEO Sherri Berghoff.
Based in Fort Wayne, Indiana, OPS Living operates six communities and maintains partial ownership in all of the communities it manages. The organization is focused on offering affordable senior housing for older adults, with communities maintaining Medicaid waiver-supported living options.
Berghoff founded OPS Living after leaving Silver Birch Living in 2021 and has past experience with senior living operators including Priority Life Care and Gardant Management Solutions. Under the OPS Living banner, Berghoff also founded OPS Adventures, a nonprofit with a mission to fulfill bucket list items for low income older adults; and OPS Marketing, a marketing firm that offers consulting and marketing services for small-business owners.
“We want to care deeply for our staff and that’s what we want to focus on,” Berghoff told Senior Housing News. “In all the years that I’ve been in senior living, the communities that put precedence on the leadership and staff were the communities that were successful.”
Maintaining an ownership stake in the communities OPS Living operates is vital to Berghoff’s vision for senior living, one that creates strong support for staff and provides affordable living options for older adults in need of assisted living services.
OPS Living communities carry varying numbers of Medicaid units ranging between 30% in two properties and 80% in another, with the rest private-pay senior living. This commitment to affordable housing for older adults stems from Berghoff’s view of senior living built over a career in the industry of nearly three decades.
She brings experience in having worked with Medicaid waivers for assisted living services in a dozen different states.
“The need is only going to continue to grow, and it’s been proven that many individuals just don’t have the resources to pay for private-pay senior living anymore,” Berghoff said. “I think using waivers is here to stay and it’s only going to expand because it is much less expensive for states to allow assisted living waivers for us to provide services for individuals than to have that provided in a nursing home.”
According to the CareScout 2025 Cost of Care Survey, the annual median cost for a private room in a nursing home is now over $129,000 annually, while assisted living costs roughly $74,400 annually. Last year, the U.S. saw a 1.8% increase for adult day services, assisted living and private pay nursing home rooms. This is a sharp deceleration from past years when sharper cost increases were reported in 2022 to 2024 ranging between 5% and 9.2%.
To advocate for Medicaid waiver assisted living expansion in Indiana, Berghoff helped successfully lobby for legislation that was signed into law earlier this year that created a separate waiver program for assisted living in the Hoosier State.
“It’s important that we keep those lines of communication open with our elected officials and continue to have those discussions,” Berghoff said. “One of the biggest things we’re talking about right now is social isolation of seniors living at home and the benefit of assisted living being able to overcome some of that isolation.”
Berghoff said OPS Living was currently in the process of switching out call light systems and its care tracking platform to track outcomes better in the event that reimbursement or waiver rules change to allow greater access. That’s being done to take advantage of future reimbursement models available to senior living providers working with Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) programs.
In 2026, OPS Living also realigned the company’s corporate team, along with hiring a vice president of talent who is focusing on improving the employee experience and onboarding procedures. The company also added a specialist that focuses on Medicaid waiver navigation for families seeking recertification for their loved ones and to avoid any lapses in assisted living waiver coverage.
OPS Living will review future acquisition opportunities of distressed assisted living communities, Berghoff said. Markets of interest include Ohio, Kentucky and even as far south as Tennessee and Florida.
