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Amazon’s One Medical Ramps Up Its Expansion In Primary Care

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Amazon’s One Medical membership-based primary care unit that provides on-demand 24/7 access to telehealth services and offers in-person care continues to report steady growth.

Having recently added two new health system partners and leveraged the Amazon Prime membership model, One Medical is connecting with employers and the roughly one-third of consumers who do not have a primary care doctor.

Below are three ways One Medical is extending its reach.

1. Forging More Employer Relationships

So far, more than 8,500 employers have engaged with One Medical’s services throughout the 20 regions the company now serves nationally. And just last week, news came that One Medical will serve as the primary care provider for the Health Transformation Alliance, a cooperative of nearly 60 employers including Coca-Cola, American Express, Marriott, Boeing and J.P. Morgan.

Takeaway

Amazon hopes to build momentum for lower-priced, primary care services that offer convenient access and give employers more choices to help manage health care benefits for their employees.

2. Building Health System Partnerships

New Jersey-based Hackensack Meridian Health and CommonSpirit’s Virginia Mason Franciscan Health recently became the latest health systems to partner with One Medical, bringing the company’s number of health system partners to 12. Virginia Mason will become One Medical’s specialty referral partner for its eight primary care clinics in the Seattle area. Meanwhile, One Medical plans to enter New Jersey this year, building new clinics in partnership with Hackensack Meridian Health. One Medical will manage and staff the clinics, which will become part of Hackensack’s clinically integrated network. The first clinic is slated to open by the end of 2024 at a location to be determined.

Takeaway

Some health care executives believe One Medical is taking a wise approach by partnering with health systems on specialty referrals and working with a company that has a digital-first, consumer-centric mindset.

“This new offering from Amazon is smart and certainly supports the way we all need to think about delivering better services,” Jeffrey Sturman, senior vice president and chief digital officer at Memorial Healthcare System in Hollywood, Florida, recently told Becker’s Health IT.

3. Extending the Prime Membership Model to Medical Care

Earlier this month, Amazon stated that it would begin offering a One Medical Prime membership for $9 per month or $99 per year — $100 less than the standard One Medical membership fee. Prime members also can add up to five additional memberships, each for $6 per month or $66 per year. In-office visits to One Medical Clinics are not included in the membership fee. Amazon also is leveraging its pharmacy business to provide greater convenience to members. Amazon’s RxPass will deliver prescriptions to customers’ homes for $5 per month. In addition, Amazon has developed a new feature to make it easier for consumers to use manufacturer discounts on branded medications by integrating coupons into the checkout process.

Takeaway

The long-anticipated move by Amazon to come up with a Prime membership model for health care services appears to be taking shape. With an estimated 167 million Amazon Prime members in the U.S., this could be a significant source of new patients for One Medical and its partners. How effectively One Medical manages these patient relationships and consumer expectations will go a long way toward determining the long-term scope and reach of its operations.

 

Source: American Hospital Association

GFH Financial Group Acquires U.S. Medical Offices Portfolio In $400M Deal

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GFH Financial Group, an investment bank based in Bahrain, has acquired a portfolio of medical clinics in the US in a deal valued at $400 million, expanding its real estate portfolio in the world’s largest economy.

The income-yielding medical clinics portfolio consists of 11 assets with more than one million square feet of space and is spread across California, Texas, Maryland and Louisiana, GFH said.

“We are pleased to announce the acquisition of this prime, income-yielding medical clinic portfolio as part of GFH’s ongoing expansion in the medical office building sector in fast-growing cities across the US,” Nael Mustafa, co-chief investment officer of real estate at GFH, said. “We believe strongly in the long-term fundamentals in the healthcare sector and the dynamics that are supporting an increase in demand for high-quality medical office space.”

To date, GFH has built a portfolio of assets in the US medical office building sector valued at $1 billion. In December, it acquired a portfolio of medical offices in the US in a deal valued at $200M. The medical offices portfolio consists of 11 assets with more than 400,000 square feet of space spread across North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Utah, Wisconsin, Ohio and Texas.

The latest portfolio is anchored by investment-grade credit tenancy through Baylor Scott & White (Moody’s Aa3), Texas A&M Health Science Centre (Fitch: AAA), Texas Tech University (Fitch AA+), Memorial Hermann (S&P A+) and Tidal Health (Moody’s Aa3), GFH said. The assets also offer unique specialisations within their respective submarkets, positioning them for high occupancy and rent growth, it added.

The medical clinics sector has been strong performing and proven to be highly resilient to economic downturns — with 99 per cent rent collection during the Covid-19 pandemic. The sector also benefits from population growth and the aging US population accompanied by an increase in healthcare expenditure, which accounted for nearly 19 per cent of the US GDP last year, GFH said.

“Aging populations and growth in outpatient care … continue to make the sector highly recession-resilient and unimpacted by economic cycles. We look forward to working with our partner Big Sky Medical to maximize the value of these assets,” Mr Mustafa said.

GFH’s partnership with Big Sky has resulted in a number of acquisitions totalling nearly $500M in the past six months. This transaction is the third in a series of joint acquisitions.

GFH Financial Group reported a 10 per cent increase in its second-quarter profit as investment banking income and income from co-investments rose as the company continues to boost its portfolio around the globe.

Net profit attributable to shareholders of the bank for the three months to the end of June climbed to $23.06M compared with $20.92M during the same period last year.

 

Source: The National News

UT Southwestern’s Move Is A Trend Breathing New Life Into Big, Empty Department Stores

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Turning abandoned mall space such as the closed Sears store in the RedBird development in Dallas into medical offices and clinics is a new use for tired shopping centers that has already found success in other cities.

RedBird owner Peter Brodsky just announced that UT Southwestern and Parkland Hospital are taking over vacant retail space at the former Red Bird Mall. UT Southwestern will open offices in a 150,000-square-foot Sears store that closed earlier this year. About 43,000 square feet of a Dillard’s store that closed in 2008 is already being retrofitted for Parkland.

Dallas developer Frank Mihalopoulos, who has been working with Brodsky since 2015 on the RedBird project, has already successfully adding university-affiliated medical offices to aging malls in Nashville; York, Pa.; and Atlanta.

 “Selling the RedBird development to local health care companies became a priority as community needs and wishes matched up with trends in the mall redevelopment business,” Brodsky said.

“Health care companies want to reach underserved populations and are trying to find ways to serve more people with the least amount of cost,” Mihalopoulos said. “Repurposing mall space can keep costs down. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, for example, has opened occupational therapy clinics and back offices in 22,000 square feet of the West Manchester Mall in York, Pennsylvania It’s lowered their overall cost of occupancy, and then the university medical center is able to rent its space that can fetch higher rents to others.”

In Atlanta, Emory Healthcare agreed in October to lease 224,000 square feet of a former Sears store at Northlake Mall to house offices for 1,600 administrative staff. That also adds daytime traffic to the mall, which is anchored by J.C. Penney and Macy’s. Northlake and the mall in Pennsylvania are owned by ATR Corinth, a partnership of Mihalopoulos and Dallas real estate investor Tony Ruggeri formed 15 years ago to redevelop ailing malls.

“Mall locations have a lot of what medical clinics and offices need,” Mihalopoulos said. “There’s parking, good real estate with good exposure to freeway locations. Old department stores have high ceilings that office tenants are looking for these days and those new office workers can shop and eat without leaving the property.”

ATR Corinth’s first big success was in Nashville, where Vanderbilt University Medical Center put administrative offices and medical clinics in One Hundred Oaks Mall.

“That project began in 2008, and within five years of the redevelopment, the stores in the center had experienced sales increases of as much as 100%,” Mihalopoulos said.

While they were considering the RedBird development, UT Southwestern officials visited that project. They also visited the Jackson Medical Mall in Mississippi, which was converted from a shopping mall in 1996 after it lost customers and stores to a newer mall in Jackson.

At that point, Red Bird Mall was also well into its decline. The former mall at the intersection of Highway 67 and Interstate 20 in Dallas was one of the early shopping center casualties. Several Dallas mayors and out-of-town owners tried to fix the center as the mall continued to lose traffic. There are 800 vacant anchor spots at the 1,300 malls and outlet centers in the U.S., according to an updated mall report from Green Street. In addition to health care uses, malls have been turned into call centers and even Amazon warehouses. When Brodsky first purchased the mall, Sears and Macy’s were still open.

“But it became apparent that anchor stores would have to be filled with other sorts of activities to draw people to the property,” Brodsky said. “The shopping center still has about 60 tenants, from Burlington Coat Factory to small mom-and-pop businesses that are doing well. A Foot Locker is under construction in a new green space being built on the Camp Wisdom side where Starbucks opened last year. I’m new to the real estate industry and I give Frank a lot of credit for his track record of converting malls into highly productive office space.”

 

Source: Dallas News