Across the nation lately there was a rash of mergers of healthcare organizations hoping that extra scale will assist them notice efficiencies and decrease prices.
“System integration is seen as a central technique for bettering medical outcomes, market progress and monetary efficiency whereas mitigating the results of accelerating labor prices and inflation,” famous a abstract of a CBRE Healthcare Discussion board on the subject of mergers.
The issue is obvious. Working margins in March 2023 fell 27% in comparison with the identical interval in 2020. Healthcare techniques are dealing with rising labor prices due to labor shortages, that are additionally driving declining medical volumes. The shift to outpatient procedures from inpatient care is one other complication. These and different components “require important structural enhancements that end in sustainable and systemic options,” CBRE acknowledged.
To attain this objective, Intermountain Healthcare Regional in Colorado, shaped by the merger of SCL Well being and Intermountain Healthcare, adopted a single working mannequin. And it adopted a standardized footprint for its major care medical group of their Colorado and Montana markets. Each major care facility is developed with the identical sq. footage and structure that allows sooner service and creates an environment friendly workflow, CBRE famous.
For a healthcare merger to succeed, the organizations concerned have to combine a number of medical, operational, procedural, monetary and labor fashions. They could additionally have to rethink the best way actual property is managed. “Well being system integration brings important worth in each price and progress synergies with a direct affect on the supply of company actual property, amenities administration and challenge administration companies,” CBRE acknowledged.
Nonetheless, CBRE discovered that constructing administration, engineering and development challenge administration had been among the many least built-in features throughout the well being system’s administrative companies post-merger. And actual property was solely barely extra centralized.
“The breakdown of CRE/FM/PM means that actions that contain setting strategic course or deciding on systemwide third-party companions are extra centralized, whereas the tactical supply of companies at a selected web site are extra decentralized,” CBRE concluded. “The journey towards efficient integration [of these functions] might seem overwhelming, nevertheless, a well-built plan paired with the assist of skilled integration companions will function the muse for a profitable integration.”
