Tech Talk: The Healthcare Oasis

At Bisnow’s Sacramento Life Sciences and Healthcare CRE Summit, Taylor Design’s Heather Kampa participated in a panel discussing the subject “Healthcare CRE Outlook: Facilities Of the Future, Demand, Development & The Convergence of Healthcare & Life Sciences.” Here are some of her takeaways from a discussion about medical deserts:

When healthcare services are not readily accessible to a patient population, these areas are commonly known as a “medical desert.” In our panel session, we discussed the broader strategy of how healthcare systems are countering this deficiency by strategically placing facilities and providing essential services closer to the homes of patients that lack primary and specialty care services nearby. Factors in this trend include:

Overcoming Financial and Staffing Challenges. Constructing medical facilities to accommodate the growing demand requires capital, and providing good patient care relies on adequate staffing. Both can be hard to come by in the current environment. Healthcare systems need to find creative ways to overcome these challenges to better service patient populations in rural and other areas where close access to medical facilities is limited.

The Journey is Everything. For purposes of planning healthcare facilities, systems need to recognize that a patient’s journey begins long before they reach the front door of a hospital or clinic. It’s the entire process of getting to and arriving at the facility. By increasing access to healthcare services within these barren regions, healthcare systems can enhance the patient journey with reduced travel times and timely access to medical care within their community. Good patient care rests on efforts to make this often-stressful journey less burdensome.

Converting Office-to-Healthcare. One way that systems are addressing medical deserts – and could be doing more – is by repurposing underutilized office space for use as a healthcare facility. As remote and hybrid work policies reduce the corporate need for office space, the growing demand for healthcare services is increasingly filling the gap by leveraging unneeded office space to add medical capabilities closer to patient populations. Using an adaptive reuse model such as this can prolong a building’s life and conserve energy and resources by retaining some of the building systems such as the structure and the shell.

Technology Plays a Role. Technology advancements – including improved automation and the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) – can positively impact the patient-provider relationship. When establishing a facility to offset the effects of a medical desert, systems can further expand the available options by accommodating technology that reduces or negates the need to travel elsewhere (e.g., telehealth options, portable equipment).

Consistent Quality is Key. Healthcare systems must strive to ensure that their satellite facilities offer the same patient care and quality standards as one would expect to see in centralized facilities. The focus must be on wellness by creating a positive and meaningful patient experience that lessens anxiety, reduces perceived pain and promotes healing. It’s imperative to ensure that staff and nursing workflows are consistent, efficient and safe in order to reduce errors and fatigue, and improve staff processes.

Planning is Paramount. These and many other factors contributing to the complexity of healthcare delivery today drive the need for forward-looking, data-driven strategies that rely on evidence-based design (EBD). Only by thoroughly understanding and representing the organization’s mission, goals and challenges, and then adding insight provided by the strategic acquisition of EBD-driven data, can a healthcare system phase in a practical, workable and patient-centered plan for enterprise-wide growth. Strategic planning for a future state is a pertinent first step to any new healthcare facility. It provides a holistic outlook to the healthcare system’s needs based on research findings. Long-range planning better informs the path forward to counter a medical desert and lead to innovative solutions.

As a Project Director with Taylor Design, Heather Kampa, CID, WELL AP, EDAC develops and strengthens client relationships in the Greater Sacramento area. Heather is president-elect of CREW-Sacramento, the local chapter of the global organization that advances women in commercial real estate through business networking, industry research, leadership development and career outreach initiatives.