CREJ - page 83

September 16-October 6, 2015 —
COLORADO REAL ESTATE JOURNAL
— Page 11B
Spotlight
ne thing seems per-
fectly clear about the
future of healthcare –
no one knows exactly
what the delivery model will
look like in coming years. Our
smartphones, however, could
hold the key, as they and other
mobile devices will continue to
drive how caregivers interact
with, monitor and even treat
patients.
The pending “disruptive”
impact of technology on the
delivery of medicine and,
subsequently, healthcare real
estate was a common thread
during many of the 26 keynote
addresses and panel sessions
at BOMA International’s
2015 Medical Office Buildings
& Healthcare Real Estate
Conference held April 29 – May
1 in Cleveland.
For the second straight year,
BOMA held the country’s
largest healthcare real estate
conference that attracted
approximately 1,000 attend-
ees, with brokers, developers,
property managers, architects,
physicians and health system
administrators descending
upon Cleveland’s new Global
Center of Health Innovation,
a massive facility that is home
to a permanent showroom of
medical products.
This year’s conference, per-
haps more than any of the
previous annual gatherings,
had an eye to the future.
Setting the tone for the con-
ference was opening keynote
speaker Daniel Kraft, M.D., a
physician, scientist and entre-
preneur who gave a dizzying
presentation of the numer-
ous mobile innovations and
smartphone apps that allow
patients to transmit health
data to healthcare profession-
als, monitor their own illnesses
and treatments, check their
hearts, test their eyes for dis-
ease, receive check-ups and
much more.
The potential bad news is
that such innovations could,
over time, reduce the need for
certain types of facilities, Kraft
noted. For example, he said,
myriad heart monitoring apps
currently on the market, such
as the AliveCore heart monitor,
could replace the need for car-
dio catheterization labs.
“These applications and inno-
vations are not part of health-
care in the distant future,” he
said. “They are already being
used today, or will soon be in
use.”
However, the good news for
those in attendance was the
optimism of the professionals
who served as panelists, many
of whom noted that the future
of healthcare real estate is
promising because there will
continue to be a need for facili-
ties in which caregivers can
visit with, treat and operate on
patients.
In fact, sev-
eral panelists
state that, in
this new age
of medical
technology,
there likely will be a wave of
new development in coming
years, as aging and poorly
located healthcare facilities are
replaced with technologically
advanced, efficiently designed
and eco-friendly outpatient
buildings and clinics in retail-
like settings close to where
people live, work and shop.
With this in mind, much of
the conference centered on how
developers, architects, medi-
cal office building owners and
others can assist health sys-
tems as they go about building
community-based ambulatory
networks in order to grow their
businesses and attract new
patients during an era when
they are likely to see reductions
in federal reimbursements.
“Healthcare, for the first
time, has become a consumer-
centric industry,” said panelist
Gina Weldy, vice president of
Real Estate for Northwestern
Memorial HealthCare in
Chicago. “We need locations
that are accessible, convenient
and transparent, and our goal
is to get patients in the door
and make them a part of our
continuum of care.”
As attendees learned, other
types of technology, such as
heat mapping, are being used
to help health systems and
developers find the ultimate
locations for healthcare facili-
ties.
“Technology allows us, as
well as architects and develop-
ers, to use a variety of tools
to find the location where a
health system or group practice
can get the maximum exposure
and visits and, as a result,
increase business,” said fellow
panelist Rebecca Baron, the
national director of Strategic
Real Estate Planning &
Transition for Catholic Health
Initiatives.
Joan Sabba, an architect and
partner with NBBJ, added
that “using all of the public
data available concerning
demographics, patient patterns
and behavior and many other
factors allows us to determine
what size a building should
be, in exactly what location,
and what services and types
of physicians should be in the
building.”
And a variety of experts
made it clear throughout the
conference that the demand
from investors looking to
acquire healthcare properties
is as strong as ever, as pric-
ing has risen to historic levels
for medical office buildings,
specialty hospitals and clinics,
long-term care facilities and a
variety of others that are affili-
ated with quality health sys-
tems or groups.
As health systems face finan-
cial strains and more stringent
requirements for keeping peo-
ple healthy, some are at least
considering selling a portion of
the facilities they own in order
to raise capital for growth,
upgrade their credit ratings
and get out of the business of
owning real estate.
A few health system admin-
istrators provided details about
their recent sales, or monetiza-
tions, of facilities. One involved
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania-
based PinnacleHealth’s sale
and partial leaseback of eight
buildings to ARC Healthcare
Trust II for $174.1 million.
William H. Pugh, Pinnacle’s
chief financial officer, described
the monetization as a way to
take advantage of a strong
market and garner capital to
help fuel planned growth.
“Typically, the mindset of
many health system CEOs is to
own and control their proper-
ties,” Pugh said. “But they’re
not thinking of what can be
gained by such a sale and how
it can add value to an organiza-
tion.”
According to the experts,
however, traditional hospitals
are unlikely to see as much
expansion as other health-
care property types in the
future. As panelists noted,
O
John B.
Mugford
Editor, Healthcare
Real Estate Insights
1...,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82 84,85,86,87,88,89,90,91,92
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