Robert A. “Bob” Rosenthal has always been quick with a joke, as evidenced by his reaction after winning the HREI™ Insights Award™ for Lifetime Achievement honoring a career that spanned more than four decades in healthcare real estate.

“This proves that if you stay with anything long enough, you're bound to get one of these,” Rosenthal said, shaking the HREI Insights Award above his head while on stage at a ceremony in Scottsdale, AZ.

We must mildly protest Rosenthal's joking justification for winning the award. Yes, he was involved in the sector for a long time, starting his focus on healthcare facilities in the 1960s as an architect in Madison, WI, and later, after moving to San Diego in 1967, as an MOB developer who completed numerous buildings for the larger health systems on the West Coast.

However, it's not just Rosenthal's longevity that made his career so remarkable. It's also the innovations and financial structures that he and the company he started in 1988, Pacific Medical Buildings (PMB), brought to the sector that make his long career stand out.

A panel of judges from the HREI Editorial Board noted that they consider him a “mentor” to many in the sector as well as a “pioneer” who, as a long-time, high-profile spokesperson for the MOB industry, helped build the sector into what it is today.

The panel also indicated that Rosenthal, influenced by his background as an architect, helped upgrade the design of modern outpatient facilities. In addition, they noted that he brought institutional lenders into the HRE sector.

Ever humble, Rosenthal says that his bread-and-butter development deal structure – in which PMB and private investors funded MOBs at no cost to the hospitals they served – grew out of necessity. As hospitals reeled financially from a new reimbursement method in the 1980s, Rosenthal says the only way to get projects moving forward was to line up the financing himself.

When a real estate crisis hit the country, he turned to high-net worth individuals as investors in individual projects, including Dr. Jeffrey Rush, who would become a long-time business partner and the chairman of PMB.

In addition to all of the innovations and expertise that Rosenthal brought to his clients and the sector over the years, perhaps one thing stands out most of all: his integrity.

One long-time hospital system executive told HREI in 2007 that Rosenthal was always true to his word.

“The integrity was certainly there and Bob would make sure a project was done on time and on budget,” Jim Terry, formerly in facilities management with Sharp HealthCare in San Diego, told HREI. 

Today, PMB has vast holdings and has an arrangement to sell some future developments to Ventas Inc. (NYSE: VTR), the largest healthcare real estate investment trust (REIT) in the country.

The Lifetime Achievement Award was one of nine HREI™ Insights Awards™ presented for 2013. The others included awards for various types and sizes of healthcare facilities as well as for the executive of the year.