MINNEAPOLIS—The Affordable Care Act and other factors are reshaping the healthcare field, and some of the nation's top developers now see opportunities to help providers secure the new facilities they will need to serve patients in the future.
The Opus Group, for example, a Minneapolis-based developer in the multifamily, student housing, industrial and other sectors has just appointed 31-year industry veteran Tom Shaver as president, Opus Healthcare™, a new division that will expand the company's services into the healthcare sector.
The ACA has transformed the healthcare field by adding millions of new patients and switching it from a fee-for-service model into one that seeks to control costs by closely tracking individual outcomes, and providers have decided they need to move closer to consumers.
“It's really putting pressures on their systems, so healthcare providers are putting less focus on acute care and more on clinical and ambulatory care,” Shaver tells GlobeSt.com. “They want a retail approach that creates a more welcoming environment.”
At one time, big hospitals used a bricks-and-mortar strategy and financed their own centralized facilities, but today systems have to do more with less. This has led many to start using developers like Opus who use sale-leaseback transactions to build the collection of smaller clinics and ambulatory centers where patients can get services like same-day surgery at a cheaper price.
“That's what we're seeing in a majority of the markets we're in,” he adds. The company will focus on developing smaller clinics with between 15,000 and 50,000 square feet and the larger ambulatory centers of between 50,000 and 100,000 square feet. Much of its work in the field will focus on the regions where it has an office such as Phoenix, Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City and others. However, the firm also “sees tremendous opportunities throughout the US especially in Florida and Texas.”
The healthcare sector has a unique set of building codes and other requirements that must be followed, so jumping into the field is not something to do lightly. Opus completed a two-year strategic study before launching the healthcare venture, Shaver says, and “we're forging strategic relationships with healthcare design firms. We believe this will be a significant vertical for Opus.”
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
