First few Article Sentences
The trend in healthcare real estate, in the Puget Sound region and nationally, can be summed up with one word: “big.” In addition to the need for scale in order to address the high cost of electronic medical records and to amass the large number of patients required to form Accountable Care Organizations (“ACOs”), the consolidation of healthcare systems, of smaller practices into larger systems, the expansion of already large healthcare systems into new territory, and the expected sheer number of citizens newly insured via the Affordable Care Act tie into this theme. An article in the June 29, 2013 Economist describes the trend at the national level: “The most visible change so far is that big hospital companies are getting bigger. In the latest of a string of recent mergers and takeovers, on June 24th Tenet Healthcare said it would buy Vanguard Health Systems for $4.3 billion including debt. The combined group will have 79 hospitals and 157 outpatient clinics.”