3 Strategic Locational Tips for Healthcare Facilities

Healthcare

Site selection for a major healthcare facility relocation is very different from the process you'd use for other building types. Many of the concerns that drive office or retail relocations have little, if anything, to do with a health care facility. Some of the things you can largely ignore include:

Traffic counts. Hospitals are the ultimate destination location, and your patients will seek you out.

Supporting development. As you get up to speed, drug stores, medical offices and other supporting developments will pop up to take advantage of you.

Infrastructure. Not only will you bring your own systems, but many communities will bear some or or all of the cost of providing you with the services you need to be operational.

Zoning. Many zoning codes treat healthcare facilities more liberally than they would other buildings, although you may still need to deal with some NIMBY issues.

Income demographics. A good hospital can draw the best people to the worst areas, as evidenced by many urban facilities.

While you don't have to worry about those factors, there are three concerns that are neccessary to include in your site selection and relocation planning process:

1. Population Demographics

Demand for healthcare facilities is directly proportional to the population. A growing population points to growing demand, while a shrinking population could lead to reduced demand unless you have a strategy to attract patients from a larger areas. As such, the better the quality of the demographic studies that you can include in your site selection process, the better off you will be.

If your facility will be focused on particular specialties, you may also need to look for a specific set of population demographics. A facility with a large obstetric unit needs a different patient pool than one that turns to a relatively large cardiology unit for its profit base.

2. Workforce Concerns

There is already a national shortage of doctors and that many parts of the country are also experiencing a shortage of nursing staff. With that in mind, having your site selection team look for locations where you will not only have access to the staff you need now, but also ones that remain desirable in the future is of crucial importance. If you can affiliate with training facilities like medical and nursing schools that may be able to provide you with preferential access to new graduates as they enter the field, you may be able to sidestep some of these issues.

3. Consider Building to Suit

While many traditional site selection projects involve looking for existing buildings that can be easily retrofit, most healthcare facilities are highly specialized. As such, your team can include vacant land as well as properties that can be demolished as a part of the process. While general offices or retail spaces can be converted into clinics, hospitals require such specialized construction that building to suit is almost always the most cost-effective strategy in the long term. When coupled with the liberalized zoning that some communities grant healthcare facilities, this can open up sites that might otherwise not be suitable for other types of equally sized and equally dense commercial developments.