There are many challenges healthcare providers are facing, and these include shifting policies, shrinking budgets, tight operating margins, and fluctuating expectations of healthcare consumers and how to make admissions easier. In addition to finding solutions to these challenges, most health systems desire to increase their facilities to accommodate more patients and have somewhere to send referrals to. 

This has led to an increase in the area occupied by real estate to make healthcare services convenient by taking them closer to patients. This has been fueled by consumer-driven care, cost and improvement in technology.

Healthcare is being transformed towards giving customers value-based services and the owners are getting interested in an unexpected source: retail sector. This inspiration is causing providers of healthcare services to come up with ways of making the service affordable and convenient to patients. 

To healthcare systems, the situation is uncertain and continues changing, and as a result, they are borrowing concepts from the retail industry. Some of these concepts are seeing patients as consumers and making sure located rural health care clinics in areas with many people in need of the service and offer patients the correct mixture of services. If you are an investor and you are looking for residential properties, it’s recommended to check property listing platforms such as Movoto.com.

The real estate under which healthcare structures sit on is highly underutilized. When remote dispensaries are added in retail settings complicates their real estate portfolio further. According to research by MedCityNews, regardless of possible economic and political headwinds, medical office property and outpatient care is expected to rise across the United States, making real estate portfolios more sophisticated. The research also that in the last ten years, outpatient care has grown by 25% and will continue to increase. The health industry stays in a state of flux as it looks at the coming years.

The following trends will help healthcare businesses to remain competitive to improve the experience of customers, promote financial performance and uncover game-changing efficiencies.

1. Increased Demand for Healthcare Real Estate

It is an undeniable truth that the health sector has been the largest employer in the United States besides been the fastest growing sector in the entire economy. However, although the real estate health care sits on has increased to over $1.2 trillion and is highly diversified, the rate at which hospitals have been built is slow. Most healthcare providers are considering more outpatient services to meet the demand, providing care to patients more conveniently, efficiently and safely.

It is expected that by 2026, annual spending in healthcare will grow to $5.7 trillion from $3.5 trillion in 2017, approximately 5.5% increase per year. Moreover, the population is the US is expected to increase by 79 million people by 2060- another cause of the current economic growth in healthcare.

2. Technology pushes healthcare out of Hospital Walls

Healthcare is evolving from the usual hospital branches to outpatient care because of the new technology. The evolution is aiming at having a more decentralized structure way from traditional inpatient care. Consumers of healthcare services are also increasingly expecting the service to be more available and of better quality. To respond to that demand, organizations in the health sector are investing in areas that patients can access with ease.

Outpatient located healthcare services have been highly fueled by technology. Although financial incentives and patient preferences promoted the change from traditional hospitals which are costly to less costly outpatient locations, advancements in technology are adding flavor to this trend.


 
Many diagnostic or medical procedures and surgeries that could only be carried out in an inpatient setting can now be carried on in outpatient facilities. This has been made possible by minimally invasive surgical processes like robotic and laparoscopy surgery and better anesthesia procedures that minimize complications allowing patients to leave the clinic sooner.

3. Medical Offices Become the Most Popular Type of Property

Generally, healthcare real estate has developed. However, the most significant growth has been noted in medical office buildings. With features more resistant to cycles than any other property sector, investors majoring on medical office structures have doubled because the industry is stable and the likelihood for continued strong performance.

Every sector of healthcare is benefiting from the increased medical property because REITs don’t any more dominate real estate investment in specialty healthcare.

The Future of Healthcare

The growth in healthcare spending is projected to increase by approximately $2 trillion in the next ten years and account for 19.7% gross domestic product by 2026. With that, it is even more vital to get and offer effective and safe care with the highest efficiency. It is the role of real estate to re-imagine a more accessible, convenient and efficient health system.

In other words, it may not be possible to tell how the political climate maybe, but it is sure there will continue to be growth in health care real estate.