In an article published this week by RE Journals, HSA PrimeCare EVP Robert Titzer discusses the recent increase of urgent care facilities and the consolidation of healthcare real estate.

Bob Titzer, HSA PrimeCare EVP

Healthcare providers are focused on continuing to provide quality care while cutting economic inefficiencies, which has driven a dramatic rise in urgent care facilities. According to a recent Cushman & Wakefield report, urgent care centers have increased by 44% in the past five years.

“There are huge cost pressures on hospital systems these days and by using urgent care centers they can take some of the patient traffic that they would ordinarily see in their emergency rooms, which is a very high-cost place to treat people,” said Titzer. “They can either divert it from the emergency room or they can pick them up before they even consider coming to an emergency room.”

Along with locations in stand-alone retail buildings, urgent care centers are being integrated into larger medical office buildings where patients can be easily referred to specialists within the building and laboratory and imaging services can be shared.

“As part of consolidating facilities, hospital systems are adding those urgent care centers in with their bigger facilities that are out in the community so that they can keep more services in one spot, consolidate their operations and make them more efficient,” Titzer said.

One example of this, is the medical office building HSA PrimeCare is developing on campus at Silver Cross Hospital. The 40,000-square-foot facility will house the hospital’s urgent care, primary care, and occupational health clinics among other medical tenants, and it is expected to relieve the campus’ emergency room by diverting lower-risk patients to urgent care. The building is scheduled for completion in December of 2019, and there is medical space available for lease.

To read the full article, visit RE Journals.