Coming To A Consensus About Healthcare Deals

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Social and cultural shifts are making big impacts on the way healthcare facilities are built, managed and used. So said panelists at the recent GlobeSt. Healthcare conference in Scottsdale, AZ.

A rise in med-tail services, and the robust growth of life sciences have provided new avenues for CRE executives to invest and build medical properties and panelists said that business discipline has never been as important as it is today.

When Angie Weber, first vice president at CBRE, asked Ross Caulum, regional real estate director at Trinity Health, about what are some of the ways that owners, brokers and developers can do to make their life easier at Trinity Health, he simply said to “have patience,” noting that it takes a while to make a decision, then joked about rethinking that decision once everyone comes to a consensus.

“The way that the best transactions happen is when there is a compelling business case for advancing healthcare delivery, and that takes time,” Caulum said. “Today’s medical office building isn’t like yesterday’s MOB. The MOB of then was five days a week, 8-5. Not, it is seven days a week and is about providing the platform of delivering healthcare where and when it needs to be. But the challenge of that is finding the staff and the physicians, noting that there is a major shortage. The labor shortage, he noted, has affected the thought process in real estate decisions. We constantly have to ask ‘will the staff be there? You have to get to a stabilized staffing cost and I am not sure how it will get done.”

 “Back in the day, staffing wasn’t part of the thought process,” Weber explained “Now, decisions are being made with staffing in the forefront of the mind.”

“There has become more business discipline because of the capital constraint and the pressure on profitability too,” said Caulum. “You have to really walk through what the business case is, view it with open eyes, and not just think you can get the staff onboard because when you look at the past few years and track record, it hasn’t happened that way.”

 

Source: GlobeSt.

GI Partners Launches Health-Care Investment Platform

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Private alternative investment firm GI Partners is establishing UDLR Healthcare, a venture which will focus on investing in medical outpatient buildings.

The platform is a partnership between GI Partners and a team of former executives from Healthcare Trust of America.

The focus of the new partnership will be on medical outpatient buildings located in key markets, near demographic growth centers, as well as adding value through capital improvement. An initial property investment is set to close this month.

Previous HTA CFO Robert Milligan will lead UDRL Healthcare and will serve as the platform’s CEO. He will be joined by former HTA executives Todd Sloan, Olivia Waalboer, Jeff Spiller and Austin Brooker.

Joyce Chow, Principal at GI Partners, said in prepared remarks that the decision to create the platform comes as a result of increasing demand for high-quality medical facilities. In July 2022, HTA merged with Healthcare Realty Trust Inc.

Founded in 2001, GI Partners raised more than $42 billion in capital since its inception and has a real estate strategy that focuses on specialized domains, including technology, sciences and health-care properties.

According to CommercialEdge, the company has a footprint of approximately 11.4 million square feet, with investment mostly focused on office building assets, life science buildings and a few medical office properties acquired before launching the UDLR Healthcare platform. Among those is the 140,913-square-foot uCity Square, a Class A medical office in Philadelphia, purchased in 2021 for $79.5 million.

Investment Opportunity In Health-Care Real Estate

What used to be an alternative asset class, MOB is now considered a mainstream investment sector. The asset is recession-proof and despite a lower transaction volume compared to the previous years, medical outpatient properties have a low vacancy rate with stable tenants.

In a recent MOB Outlook series, experts weighed in on the state of health-care investment. Owners are looking to broaden their portfolios and despite the influence of macroeconomic factors, there is a general confidence that the sector will continue to fare well in the upcoming year.

 

Source: CPE

One Bankrupt Hospital, Eleven Freestanding Emergency Departments And Three Texas Hospitals: HCA’s Spending Spree

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Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare, one of the country’s largest operators of ASCs, is on a spending spree – inking three deals in the last week.

Most recently, HCA Houston Healthcare purchased 11 freestanding emergency departments from SignatureCare Emergency Center. The deal brings HCA Houston’s freestanding ED portfolio to 26.

HCA Healthcare’s Medical City Healthcare in Dallas acquired Decatur, Texas-based Wise Health System, a formerly locally owned, nonprofit system, and its three inpatient hospitals.

Additionally, HCA will acquire Trinity Regional Hospital Sachse in Texas in a $41 million deal which is expected to close at the end of January. The 32-bed hospital, which opened two years ago, filed for bankruptcy in August after defaulting on around $70 million of municipal bonds.

In 2023, HCA has been focusing on outpatient care, ramping up its urgent care acquisitions. The health system operates about 2,300 ambulatory care facilities, including more than 150 ASCs, and continues to double down on developing outpatient facilities and increasing outpatient procedure migration.

In the third quarter of 2023, HCA reported a 37.4% jump in outpatient revenue, while its operating income was down 4.1% from the previous year.

 

Source: Becker’s ASC Review