First few Article Sentences
I just returned from Boston, having completed my first Boston Marathon. Participation in this momentous event will color my world view in the near and distant future, including my perspective on healthcare real estate. My colleagues in the retail, general office and industrial segments of commercial brokerage often comment on the patience required in the medical office brokerage world; it’s a business of lease and sale transactions that can take years to progress due to specialized requirements such as Certificate of Need applications, hospital board approval processes, ground lease concerns, and more. The business of healthcare real estate, and the healthcare business in general, takes time and careful thought about the future. It really is more comparable to a marathon than a sprint.
However, since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) implementation on January 1st, there has been a noticeable increase in health care real estate activity throughout the Puget Sound area. Quiet over the last six months, both health systems and physician groups are actively seeking to expand on-campus facilities and services while at the same time working to establish strategically located, high-exposure clinics throughout the region. Providers are seeking to capture some of the nearly 1,000,000 (as of late April, 2014) newly insured Washingtonians that have signed up for healthcare through either the new state healthcare exchange or private insurance plans since the system went live in October 2013.