Discussing How To Bring Value To Healthcare Spaces At Bisnow's June 24 Healthcare Conference

Patients today have significantly more choices, and less loyalty, for where and how they receive care. This shift is forcing healthcare systems to think much more intentionally about how to optimize their real-estate portfolios while prioritizing higher-quality individualized care.

Architecture and engineering firm EwingCole lends its expertise to New York’s healthcare sector, often resulting in adaptive reuse developments and program expansions to existing sites. EwingCole principal Sophie Buttiens is at the helm of design and programming focused on ambulatory and outpatient environments, helping healthcare organizations align real estate strategy with evolving models of care.

Some of EwingCole’s projects involve converting retail spaces into medical facilities across New York City and Long Island. In addition to building hubs for people to access care, these projects aim to optimize the facility’s performance for as long as possible, she said.

“We’re always thinking about how we can create spaces to support patients throughout their entire care journey,” she said. “We’re simultaneously thinking about longevity, operational efficiency and how these environments continue to create value for healthcare systems well beyond the initial project delivery.”

Buttiens will be attending Bisnow’s New York Healthcare Real Estate Conference on June 24 and speaking on the Hospital Expansions: Strategic Healthcare Space Utilization Across Hospital Campuses and Ambulatory panel. Click here to register.

Bisnow caught up with Buttiens to discuss the sector’s challenges, how buildings can achieve their “highest and best use” — an appraisal concept that helps with finding a property’s probable and legal use that “results in the highest value” —and what attendees can expect to learn at the event.

Bisnow: How would you describe New York's healthcare market today?

Buttiens: We’re continuing to see a high demand for expanding clinical spaces. However, many healthcare systems are operating within extremely tight financial margins. A lot of our clients are navigating multiple challenges simultaneously. They’re focused on increasing their operational performance and revenue while also managing increased operating expenses, such as inflation, dwindling Covid-era funding support, challenges in the labor market and higher equipment costs.

Bisnow: What is EwingCole’s process of assessing buildings for their highest and best use?

Buttiens: Owners have to tie the decisions about real estate purchasing into how that building or space can function efficiently long after the design team is done with their project. While program location is part of the conversation, the larger question is how that property can be optimized operationally within its specific context and within the broader healthcare system network. 

It’s no longer about looking at one service line — or a group of services to meet a patient’s needs or ailments — but understanding how multiple service lines connect and support each other across an entire healthcare system or region. For example, a building may not be well suited for operating rooms with structural limitations on ceiling heights, or floor plates, but it may perform extremely well for imaging, oncology or ambulatory services. 

Our process may, for example, focus on studying a particular service line and determining whether it should be centralized, decentralized, consolidated within one hub or distributed across multiple sites depending on operational goals, patient access and long-term flexibility. In many cases, we are partnering with clients and stakeholders to think strategically about how care is delivered across an entire portfolio rather than within one individual building.

Ensuring the highest and best use of the space is also about optimizing flexibility, having the appropriate building material and system selection, and being stewards of our clients’ funds to ensure that everything we are designing is both operationally effective and financially responsible over time.

Bisnow: What does your position entail?

Buttiens: My current work is centered primarily around ambulatory healthcare environments, where I collaborate closely with clients and industry partners to help shape a long-term vision for their healthcare portfolio and carry that vision through implementation. What I enjoy most is that every project brings a new set of unique challenges and opportunities to rethink how this particular healthcare service can be delivered more effectively in the future.

Much of the work is driven by curiosity, exploration and forward-thinking conversations around patient and caregiver experience, operations and evolving models of care.

Bisnow: What do you think are going to be the hottest topics of conversation at this event?

Buttiens: With rising costs continuing to squeeze healthcare margins, it feels like every day there’s another conversation in the news around financial pressures facing hospitals and healthcare systems. As a result, I think a major topic at the conference will be how organizations continue to manage spending while delivering high-quality environments and the inclusive experiences patients and staff are looking for. Also, how can we help deliver the most value per square foot? This requires collaboration with the entire team: the owners, design and construction team, and vendors. 

I think there will also be significant discussion around how healthcare systems differentiate themselves in an increasingly competitive market. Conversations are no longer about what the highest revenue-generating service line would be. Instead, we are looking to understand what the differentiators are that ensure the region’s patients have tailored access to the best care possible. 

Bisnow: What do you hope attendees will take away from the Hospital Expansions panel?

Buttiens: Successful healthcare systems aren’t growing for the sake of growth but for optimization and better care access. In some cases, optimization is not about adding but subtracting, consolidating and repositioning. There are times when you have to decommission a system or facility, get out of a leasing agreement or hold off on expansion to prioritize infrastructure upgrades for example.

For owners, it means looking at the portfolio as a whole to ensure they have the right services in the right building and in the right communities. 

Attendees will likely continue to see healthcare owners have a more strategic conversation around operational and financial sustainability rather than a “build-it-and-they-will-come” model. Healthcare systems must be much more intentional about where care is delivered, how facilities perform over time and how those decisions support both patient experience and long-term operational goals.

Click here to learn more about Bisnow’s New York Healthcare Real Estate Conference.

This article was produced in collaboration between Studio B and EwingCole. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.

Studio B is Bisnow’s in-house content and design studio. To learn more about how Studio B can help your team, reach out to studio@bisnow.com.