Healthcare representatives from both Henderson Engineers and Henderson Building Solutions recently attended BOMA International’s MOB + Healthcare Real Estate Conference. A wealth of information was shared, networking was back in practice, and we were excited to see our friends in person again. As you can imagine, discussions revolved around speed to market, regulation and compliance changes, supply chain and logistics, capital challenges, and much more. We’ve sifted through the insights that were presented and picked out the most important trends and topics.

Getting Creative with Real Estate

While we continue to see a shift of (mostly) outpatient healthcare services from the main hospital campuses to the community, there are other spaces undergoing changes as well.  Health systems are taking advantage of retail or office space that is more convenient to patients and other highly trafficked areas, like business parks or malls, and cheaper to lease or build than traditional construction at a hospital.

Traditionally, health systems also struggled with administrative space on campus. Many of these functions have shifted to off-site or remote working functions leaving more space for treatment and healing.

We expect to continue to see health systems investing further in real estate making it more of a priority than it has been in the past.

Life Sciences

As we have seen through the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for research and laboratory space has increased. Additional space for incubators and others implanting research has already been happening.  All of this has led to a boom near larger campus style healthcare systems to increase space for these functions. Similar to healthcare spaces, some of the laboratory space can be complex, requiring heavy infrastructure.

There is a bright future of collaboration between health systems, academic institutions, and many other research groups. We expect that this will drive more discussions together working towards the goal of creating better patient care.

Healthcare’s Future

Keynote speaker Thomas Koulopoulus talked about where healthcare is heading and how through innovation, we can push for a more sustainable healthcare model for the future that will drive better patient care. Healthcare continues to add tools to better serve patients but can be held back by administrative costs, shrinking margins (not helped by the COVID-19 pandemic), and various silos that threaten greater collaboration.

Innovation

On a similar note, we learned from the lunch keynote speaker, Marcus Whitney of Jumpstart Health Investors, that innovation is undefeated.  He proposed three major innovation themes that can impact healthcare’s future:

• Reimaging the health system – looking differently at space for patients and staffing through different lenses than have traditionally been used;
• Domestic manufacturing – focusing beyond traditional manufacturing on materials like diagnostics or therapeutics; and
• Cities of the future – most of our cities have been built as a result of the past. What if we were more purposeful in design and constructing what and where? Some interesting studies on Blue Zones can teach us about healthier and better living.

Have any additional thoughts on what’s trending in healthcare? We’re ready to talk you through your ideas and help you find valuable solutions to any of the above topics and much more. Please reach out at any time.