As a leading real estate developer specializing in healthcare facilities, Avenue Development is at the forefront of innovation and transformation within the industry. In this interview, Laurie Schultz, Principal and Co-Founder of Avenue, shares insights on how the delivery model in healthcare real estate has changed.
There are three ways the healthcare delivery model has changed recently, and a lot of it has to do with changing trends in healthcare, but also the consumer base.
1. Retailization in Healthcare
One that has been happening for the last several years has been the retailization of healthcare, pulling out healthcare from a hospital campus and bringing it closer to a neighborhood near you. The second trend has been the implementation of technology and how that will make the square footage of the buildings, needed in medical, smaller. The last way is that it’s more than just physical healthcare now we really look at the social determinants of health and what makes a person healthy besides their physical well-being. It can be mental, it can be social as well, and how that impacts the delivery and the real estate.
2. Social determinants of health
When we’re talking about social determinants of health and how in healthcare specifically, that means if you’re delivering healthcare in a physical environment, how do you do that and make it more than just healthcare in a building? How do we address that whole person-centered care? There are several groups doing this in different ways, but it goes back to what are the trends in senior housing too. It’s going about wellness, it’s preventative health, and so there’s a lot of behavioral health, and our mental well-being that are coming into these buildings too. A space for therapists, for counseling, for even meditation in a space. It’s not just a lobby and an exam room anymore. We’re also looking at adjacencies or having fitness centers, wellness centers incorporated into the clinical space. We’re looking at ways to integrate housing. Avenue is doing this with our active adult Viva Bene model. We can integrate senior housing with a primary care clinic and that can take care of nutritional needs. There are groups that are doing cafes and nutritional programming inside of the clinic space as well.
3. Technology
Another way the healthcare delivery model is changing is technology. This is not unique just to our industry and AI is changing at leaps and bounds of even what we thought about 12 months ago. I think there’s no doubt technology implementation is going to make the footprint, the actual real estate of healthcare, and what clients and tenants need, smaller, that’s definitely impacting it. It also means like anything that there are opportunities for new uses in the physical space that we didn’t need before. The way that offices are configured for providers and clinicians is going to be different because they now need a physical space to see patients, especially those with higher acuity that need that physical touch, but then they’re going to need HIPAA compliance space that is gonna be for virtual care as well. And those two spaces may be the same and they may be different depending how the workflow is for that particular provider.
Avenue is positioned well to address the changes that are coming in the healthcare delivery model. Because we have been in it, we have been in the forward movement of value-based healthcare for almost a decade. We’ve been seeing the changes happening in real time and we’re able to help our clients implement what is coming in the future. Maybe before some of them know all of the changes that are occurring too because of our work in this space.
We’re also incredibly passionate. This is one of the areas that Team Avenue is truly passionate about healthcare and delivering wellness-based care to seniors. And so it’s an area that we focus a lot of time on what are the innovative trends and how we can incorporate that into our real estate development process. Avenue can help our clients in two different ways with the ever changing environment in healthcare. We do a lot of consulting with clients, especially in the value-based primary care space about how to implement these changes into their growth. We also can help clients and are really doing a turnkey approach so they can come to us with a location where they wanna expand and we can create a platform that consist of site or building selection, full development and full financing of these projects all including all these trends that are happening in healthcare.
With the expertise and passion for wellness-based care, Avenue is well-positioned to navigate and address the future changes in the healthcare industry, offering consulting services and turnkey solutions that incorporate innovative trends into the real estate development process.
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