(This interview was conducted by Healthcare Real Estate Insights^TM
and is provided special to GlobeSt.com.)

KNOXVILLE, TN—As nearly 1,000 attendees watched Scott D. Evans co-chair the 2015 BOMA International MOB & Healthcare Facilities Conference in Cleveland this past May, we figured it would be a good time to catch up with him.

We were right. Since 2012, Evans, a 30-year veteran of commercial real estate, has helped to grow Knoxville, TN-based Realty Trust Group LLC (RTG), a well-known real estate advisory firm that serves a number of healthcare systems.

The company, according to Evans, has “the capabilities to implement any type of real estate solution a health system or physician group would need.”

Its largest client is Atlanta-based Northside Hospital, which outsources its real estate functions to RTG for about 3 million square feet of space. The services RTG provides include property management, construction management, leasing, acquisitions, dispositions and others.

HREI: Tell us why the BOMA MOB conference is so popular and share with us some the feedback you've received.

Evans: The BOMA MOB conference is the premiere annual event in the healthcare real estate industry, and I had the good fortune to co-chair it this year and next with Peter (Volas). There have been a large number of industry volunteers, like John Winer, Gordon Soderlund, Danny Prosky and many, many others, who have given their time to help bring in cutting-edge speakers and educate attendees on the industry. We had just under 1,000 attendees this year in Cleveland, about the same number as last year in Nashville, and the education is unparalleled. It's also a tremendous opportunity to network. The BOMA national organization has done a great job in marketing the conference and doing all of the behind-the-scenes work, led initially for years by Lorie Damon and now by Amy Chisholm. The feedback we've received has been terrific, and we're planning some significant changes for next year (May 3-5, 2016 in Orlando) in large part due to attendee feedback. 

HREI: What factors do you think are having the biggest effects on the health systems today, such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), the big leaps in medical technology, the move to outpatient care, competition for patients, changes in reimbursements, consolidations, etc.?

Evans: All of the things you mentioned are dramatically impacting the healthcare industry, which is one of the reasons it is so dynamic and so interesting. I think it is very, very challenging to operate a health system in this environment. Certainly, implementing the change from a fee-for-service model to a value-based care or population health model is going to be incredibly difficult for all health systems. Dealing with a merger or other combination is hugely impactful as well. All of these things you mentioned have an impact on the real estate. In a merger, for example, there may be the need to consolidate certain programs or services, which can have a big impact on a real estate portfolio. Clearly, the need to reduce costs across the system and shift more services out of the hospital has a major impact on real estate. Having said that, I've found that each hospital/health system has its own unique needs and issues, and what may be relevant in one situation may not translate to another. The key is to understand what issues are affecting your client and figure out how to help them deal with those issues.

Look for part 2 of this story on tomorrow's GlobeSt.com.

John B. Mugford is the editor of Healthcare Real Estate Insights™, the nation's first and only publication totally dedicated to covering news and trends in healthcare real estate development, financing and investment. For more information, please visit www.HREInsights.com.