Piedmont Hospital is eyeing consolidation of many of its spread out physician groups into larger MOBs. (It's like a mall filled with doctors, they should add an Auntie Anne's Pretzel kiosk.)
That news hit this morning during our 4th Annual Atlanta Healthcare Real Estate Summit at the Ritz-Carlton in Buckhead. Piedmont's VP of real estate Rob Simmons told our audience of more than 250 that the hospital system is looking to aggregate its clinics into mid-sized or large box MOBs to help reduce cost pressures as a result of healthcare reform. (Also children can do all their doctor visits at once so they miss less school. Sorry, kids.) This also is leading to a “pause” on Piedmont's aggressive acquisition path of physician groups in the metro area during the past five years, Rob says, which will allow the hospital system to assess what it has and get a hand on all its real estate.
When approached after the panel discussion, Rob tells us that it's “too early to say if it will happen at all,” and Piedmont is just studying the possibility at this point. Piedmont Hospital, of course, has been on an infrastructure tear in recent years, most recently with Piedmont Newnan Hospital (pictured here).
Rob was among six medical industry experts on our second panel, including Healthcare REIT's Mike Noto, Newmark Grubb Knight Frank's Todd Perman, Wellstar Health System's Chris Kane, Griffin-American Healthcare REIT's Stefan Oh, and Arnall Golden Gregory's Steve Kaye (not pictured). Chris told the audience a little more about its planned third “health park”--like the ones in Acworth and East Cobb--of I-575 and Sixes Rod in Cherokee County. Chris says it will include 200k SF of medical office space.
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