Medical providers continue to evolve, treating a growing number of patients in smaller facilities and fewer in sprawling hospital campuses. This, of course, is changing the way healthcare real estate looks.
JLL recently released a report on the surge of new smaller-scale surgery centers popping up across the United States. JLL said that there are 5,532 ambulatory surger centers in the United States, compared to 5,534 hospitals.
The number of surgery centers in the country has grown 82 percent since 2000, while the number of hospitals has declined by 5 percent during this same time.
This isn’t surprising considering the way medical treatment has evolved. JLL says that two-thirds of surgeries today are performed on an outpatient basis. That’s a jump of 30 percent since 1990. You can credit technology improvements for this switch, as the cases that can be handled in an outpatient setting continue to grow.
Outpatient settings are more convenient for patients. They don’t have to drive to giant hospital campuses and struggle to find a place to park. Instead, they can travel to smaller outpatient buildings closer to them.
Surgery center ownership is fragmented, according to JLL. The company reported that the top six operators of ambulatory surgery centers manage just 20 percent of all these centers. JLL also reported that 64 percent of ambulatory surgery centers are owned in part or full by physicians, while 29 percent are joint ventures between physicians, operators and/or hospitals.
