Community Care Centers

A Better Way to Bring Care to the Community

Community Care Centers Could Be the Future of Outpatient Facilities

Traditionally, when a hospital needed to add outpatient space, the next step seemed obvious: build a large medical office building (MOB) on the existing campus.

During the past 20 years or so, however, most providers have recognized that off-campus facilities can often be a lower cost and more effective patient-centric way to deliver care while achieving their organizational objectives.

Now a fresh approach to off-campus development is taking this concept a step further. A new generation of off-campus outpatient facilities called "Community Care Centers" holds the promise of further increasing patient convenience and reducing costs while better supporting patient-friendly provider strategies.

While lacking formal definition, Community Care Centers generally share these characteristics -

• freestanding
• one or two stories
• 25,000 - 50,000 sf
• situated at busy, high-visibility, easily accessible sites
• located in growing, demographically attractive suburban or exurban areas
• flanked by ample, free surface parking
• home to multiple healthcare services, but all provided by a single hospital or system
• usually focused on primary care, urgent care, imaging and/or rehabilitation services with flexibility to support specialists
• fun, colorful, inviting, non-institutional designs with higher-level finishes and patient-friendly touches than enhance the patient experience
• branded by the provider

Perhaps most importantly, Community Care Centers are a dramatic departure from the concept of healthcare facilities as a destination. These facilities are integrated into the community, putting healthcare services closer to where people live and work.

From the exterior design and signage to the size and location, Community Care Centers also have more in common with neighborhood retail centers than most MOBs.

Outpatient facilities as strategy

Technology and treatment advances have enabled the shift to outpatient care, and economics have made it a necessity. But more sophisticated healthcare providers have also seen it as a strategic opportunity.

Delivering healthcare at off-campus outpatient facilities can -

• Increase patient / customer convenience, satisfaction and access to care
• Grow providers' brands and market shares in developing suburbs and exurbs
• Increase and diversify revenue streams
• Enable providers to more cost-effectively add service lines and to create a new source of referrals
  

Although larger, more traditional outpatient centers can often help providers to achieve these same strategic objectives, Community Care Centers might be even more effective.

Off-campus facilities are often more convenient than on-campus facilities simply because they are located closer to where most patients live and work. That means there is less need to contend with urban traffic congestion, expensive parking ramps, inner-city safety concerns, and acres of labyrinthine buildings. But Community Care Centers go one step further. After all, what could be easier, cheaper, safer and more convenient than having a healthcare facility located on a major street in your own town? Patients and their families can drive to a nearby Community Care Center within minutes, park near the entrance - free - and be inside within moments.

Setting up shop in a suburban market where an urban hospital previously had no physical presence is a proven strategy for growing and defending its market share. If appropriately situated on a campus of 25 acres or more, these projects may be the precursor to the eventual construction of a full-blown medical campus, complete with inpatient beds.

Yet a major development can be many years in the making - and regulatory hurdles, obstructionist competitors, and neighborhood opposition can scuttle projects altogether. Likewise, the size and scope of some of these projects can limit their development to a handful of large sites. Community Care Centers allow providers to be more nimble by utilizing smaller sites which can allow the more rapid expansion of a hospital's brand and perhaps a preemptive market move. Approvals can also be easier to obtain and construction doesn't take nearly as long - generating revenues in as little as nine or 10 months ... rather than two or three years.

Community Care Centers generally also cost less to develop. Traditional off-campus MOBs and other outpatient facilities are usually sizable buildings - often multiple stories and upwards of 50,000 sf. Community Care Centers tend to be smaller, often single-story structures. Site acquisition costs are less because not as much land is needed, and construction costs less because there is little square footage is lost to public lobbies, elevators and stairwells. Community Care Centers can also take advantage of steel-reinforced, tilt-up concrete slab construction, which saves time and reduces costs.

"You can build about four of these for about the cost of one 100,000 sf medical office building - and cover more geographic area," notes Phil Taylor, AIA, Senior Vice President of Architecture for Lillibridge.

And while Community Care Centers have the look and feel of several individual physician offices - sometimes even with separate entrances - they can be designed to be interconnected behind the scenes. That allows further savings through the sharing of support services and back office functions.

The future is now

Will the Community Care Center concept become the preferred model of future outpatient facility development? At least one pioneering system is committed to finding out. Lillibridge developed Adventist Health System's Florida Division's one-story, 24,000 sf Victoria Medical Park in DeLand, Florida in 2010. It is a neighborhood-style facility in the fast-growing Victoria Park master-planned mixed-use development - near Florida Hospital DeLand, but off campus.

The hospital-owned building is occupied by physician offices, an imaging center, a women's center, rehabilitation services and a laboratory. Each suite has its own outside entrance, eliminating the expense of building public spaces - although there is a non-public interconnection between the suites to foster the cost savings provided by shared support services.

"With this new medical park, we will be able to provide more services to better serve the needs of our patients, as we continue to deliver healthcare close to home," said Daryl Tol, President of Florida Hospital DeLand.

Closer to the customer

Community Care Centers aren't always the right choice. By their nature, they are smaller and more neighborhood based. That means a larger outpatient center might be a better option if the goal is serve a wider geographic area, or if the facility is seen as the first step in the development of a fully integrated medical campus.

But for situations that demand a relatively quick, highly cost-effective, patient-friendly strategy for extending a hospital's services and brand to other geographic locations, Community Care Centers could indeed be the outpatient center of the future.

For more information - contact John Montgomery, EVP Facility Development.