For hospitals across the country, lower occupancy rates and higher costs have caused health-care providers to reconsider how they deliver their services to their communities. One result is a rise in the construction of outpatient facilities, according to a survey by Health Facilities Management. Due to advances in technology, approximately half of all medical procedures no longer require an overnight stay at a hospital and can be performed at an outpatient facility.
“We’re seeing a shift from a one- or two-day hospital stay to an outpatient setting,” says Jesse Balok, principal at ECG Management Consultants, a strategic health-care consulting firm. “The health-care industry has recently been expanding their ambulatory and outpatient networks to provide health care to patients in the lowest-cost facility settings,” says Jones Lang LaSalle, a real estate investment and property management firm. “We’ve seen this push realized in significant jumps in new construction in the outpatient field, as well as innovations in tele-medicine and at-home care.”