Paperwork Pile Threatens Structural Integrity of VA Building

Healthcare developers – encourage your clients to go paperless!  The Associated Press reports that mounds of paperwork threaten the integrity of a VA facility in Winston-Salem, N.C.

(From the AP article:)

VA paperwork could crush N.C. office building

The Department of Veterans Affairs is notorious for red tape, but the piles of paperwork at a facility in North Carolina have grown so high that their weight had bowed the floor, prompting worries the building might collapse.

A recent report issued by the VA's Inspector General found the agency's regional office in Winston-Salem had huge numbers of folders containing veterans' benefits claims stacked on the floor and on top of filing cabinets.

The report advised that so much paperwork had accumulated that it "appeared to have the potential to compromise the integrity of the building," thereby creating an unsafe workplace for the federal employees.

According to the report, the VA has since begun moving the files to other sections of the building until a long-term solution is found.

Good news on the Medical Office Real Estate Front

We love to hear news like this, don’t we?  Note the mention of healthcare at retail sites – something covered in a previous post on this blog by Phil Runkel.

Medical Office Building Market Heating Up

PRWeb

Will medical office building (MOB) sales soon return to the levels of the boom years of 2006-08?

It’s too soon to tell. But recent MOB sales activity has clearly taken a step in that direction, according to the most recent edition of Healthcare Real Estate Insights™.

HREI™, the only national publication that reports on and analyzes healthcare real estate news and trends, cited new data from the commercial real estate research firm Real Capital Analytics Inc. indicating that the total dollar volume of MOB sales increased sharply during the second quarter (Q2) of 2012. During Q2, there were 183 properties sold with a total value of more than $1.63 billion, according to RCA.

“That is the highest quarterly sales level recorded since the fourth quarter of 2010 and the fourth highest ever – at least since RCA began tracking MOBs sales in the first quarter of 2001,” HREI™ Editor John B. Mugford says. “Even during the MOB sales heyday of 2006-08, only two quarters saw greater sales volume than was recorded last quarter.”

And the rebound might continue, Mr. Mugford adds. “We don’t make predictions. But I can tell you that we are already tracking several large transactions that have either closed or are likely to close before Sept. 30 that could make Q3 another high-volume quarter for MOB sales,” he says.

“One or two quarters are not definitive proof of a sustained market recovery,” Mr. Mugford cautions. “But Q2 was the third consecutive quarter during which MOBs sales topped $1 billion, and that hasn’t happened since Q4 2007 and the first two quarters of 2008. So the recent increase in MOB sales activity certainly suggests that healthcare real estate investment and development have picked up steam.”

Other healthcare real estate trends: ambulatory strategies, repurposing and healthcare at retail sites.

 (Read on at http://news.yahoo.com/medical-office-building-market-heating-150108582.html

Medical Groups Increasingly Turning to Real Estate Ownership

I’m seeing great deal of this lately—business owners and medical groups taking advantage of favorable factors to diversify their investments to include real estate ownership. Often, this includes the very building that they currently occupy.  The article below highlights two recent examples from California (from the Sacramento Business Journal):

Owners/users snap up office buildings

“Real estate agents say more small business owners are capitalizing on relatively low real estate prices, motivated sellers and low interest rates to buy property rather than lease.

Such is the case in Roseville, where a medical group bought a 3,650-square-foot office building at 902 Cirby Way for $614,000. The buyer intends to operate a pediatrician office, said Tom Bacci, a Voit Real Estate agent who, along with colleague Jon Walker, represented the seller, Wells Fargo Bank. Another example is on Sun Center Drive in Sacramento, where a medical-billing company bought a 31,680-square-foot building for almost $2 million. Cushman & Wakefield handled that deal.

‘Owner/users are especially active in the buying market as they take advantage of competitive pricing on higher-quality properties,’ Walker said.

Health-related businesses are particularly active, and are leading the way, especially in Roseville and Rocklin, Walker added.”

(Taken in part from Sanford Nax’s article “Owners/users snap up office buildings” in the Sacramento Business Journal, August 31, 2012.)

http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2012/08/31/ownersusers-snap-up-office-buildings.html

Healthcare Project Manager, Architect Reimagine Medical Office Building for New Economic Normal

We’ve been hearing this for years now:  healthcare has to reduce costs and be more efficient.  Smart healthcare real estate players will note this need and proceed accordingly, offering reduced costs and economies of scale. A recent article in Healthcare Design provides a compelling look on how this can be done:

Reimagining the Medical Office Building

By Cinda Z. Terry, RID, and Brenda Bush-Moline, AIA, LEED AP, EDAC

Recent shifts in culture, labor, workflow, and design are challenging many of the long-held roles and criteria that dictate how healthcare facilities are developed, designed, and managed. One of the most prevalent trends taking shape as a result of these changes to the nation’s care delivery model is thoughtful reevaluation of the design of medical office buildings (MOBs) and other outpatient facilities.

Not long ago—before these sweeping changes began taking place—most MOBs were designed as multitenant facilities organized to house numerous independent physicians or medical practice groups. Typically, that meant floor plans calling for long public hallways linking numerous separate suites, each with its own entrance, reception area, waiting room, exam rooms, restrooms, physicians and business offices, records storage, staff break room, imaging center, and lab.

However, the transformation of the healthcare industry is forcing providers, designers, and developers to reconsider this sort of isolation and duplication.

In a marked change from just a few years ago, hospitals and health systems now employ more than half of all physicians—and the proportion continues to grow. The impact of this trend alone on MOB design has been remarkable.

This new reality demands that providers, architects, and developers look at MOB design in a new way. Rather than multitenant MOBs, what’s needed are multispecialty MOBs designed to better support physician integration and collaboration, while boosting productivity and efficiency.
Instead of collections of independent doctors’ offices, each with their own infrastructure, future MOBs must be designed to house complementary practices, co-located services, shared support staff, and centralized common areas.

This new breed of multispecialty MOBs will require floor plans that include fewer public hallways—or perhaps no public hallways at all. Main entrances will open into larger, shared reception areas and waiting rooms for all patients, serving as central gateways to all doctors within the facility. Waiting areas will be focal points, and will be designed to provide a soothing, aesthetically pleasing experience while they handle the functions of registration and administration.

Not all spaces can be shared, due to local regulations, American Institute of Architects (AIA) guidelines, or both. However, assuming co-location of the types of medicine being practiced is permitted, many types of shared spaces can be created.

Exam rooms will be organized into groups of standardized pods that can adapt to the ebb and flow of patient demand for particular specialties at any given time. Restrooms, storage, imaging centers, and labs will be shared. Offices for physicians practicing different but complementary specialties will be grouped, facilitating easier interaction and consultation. Break rooms and conference rooms will also be shared, offering additional opportunities for both planned and serendipitous interaction.

Business offices will be centralized—perhaps even eliminated altogether, if those functions are absorbed by employer-hospitals. Even some medical personnel and support staff will be shared, cross-trained, and cross-utilized. MOBs will increasingly incorporate shared conference centers and auditoriums, in both common areas and suites, for staff training and patient education.

(Read on at:  http://www.healthcaredesignmagazine.com/article/reimagining-medical-office-building?page=show)