Mergers and acquisitions have become a prevalent strategic move in the healthcare industry, impacting the landscape of healthcare facilities in various ways. In this blog, we will explore the implications and effects of mergers and acquisitions on healthcare facilities, shedding light on the potential benefits and challenges faced by industry stakeholders. Understanding these dynamics is crucial in comprehending the constantly evolving nature of healthcare delivery and its impact on patient care.
New approaches to Healthcare Facilities Management mean hospitals are sitting on an enormous amount of underutilized real estate following intense M&A activity in recent years. However, most organizations have yet to prioritize facilities optimization strategies. In this environment of constant transformation and uncertainty, healthcare organizations are missing out by not optimizing their facilities management programs to address this strategic gap. Here, we discuss this significant transformation underway in the healthcare sector and what you can do to prepare for the years ahead.
As the healthcare industry shifts toward value-based population health, M&A activity is expected to accelerate, creating mega-sized, nontraditional health systems. Meanwhile, the industry continues to grapple with regulatory uncertainty and increasing costs per patient. These mergers and never-before-seen cross-industry collaborations with pharmaceutical companies, faith-based organizations, and nontraditional healthcare players will continue to impact the healthcare industry.
How Changes in Healthcare Impact Facilities Management.
Consolidation is creating some of the largest health systems in the country, along with new kinds of healthcare organizations involving healthcare providers, payers, retailers, pharmaceutical and device companies, and even the financial sector. On the cusp of this major transformation, innovative approaches are required for healthcare facilities to remain current. The purported goals of M&A in the healthcare landscape are to improve efficiency and quality of care while lowering costs, thus enhancing profitability.
The most crucial element of a successful healthcare practice is a clean and maintained facility, with well-planned additions, renovations, and upkeep factoring strongly into its overall management. While this issue faces even the neighborhood doctor’s office, it’s especially challenging for multi-building, multi-site hospitals and physician medical groups.
Discover how software can help improve healthcare operations.
For many years at Intellis, we have heard from analysts that the growing trend of mergers and acquisitions in healthcare shows no signs of abating. Further, pressure is increasing to transform healthcare into a more efficient, responsive, technologically advanced, responsible, and accessible enterprise.
Maintaining healthcare facilities is time-consuming and costly. As we interact with our partners and friends in healthcare facilities management, we continue to hear about the value and return on investment facilities managers are coming to expect from their resources. With the right resources, keeping costs low and correctly planning for improvements can be more intuitive and efficient. This is why we developed The FOUNDATION Solution.
Our FOUNDATION software platform enables deficiency-based physical asset renewal and replacement management for organizations with multiple buildings and sites. With thorough configuration from your internal teams, working against your goals, expectations, budgets, rules, and restrictions, FOUNDATION can assess and plan anything from minor plumbing issues to total building renovation and construction.
Want to learn more about how The FOUNDATION Solution can help you and your team? Contact us.
Healthcare facilities face similar challenges when it comes to preventive control and risk mitigation, and there are precautionary ways to minimize these challenges. Containing the spread of infection is not limited to employees keeping the facility sanitary but also making sure ubiquitous items like air conditioning units, lighting, outlets, generators, and more are either cleared or isolated from contamination.
If any of the infection outbreak components fail, this can lead to an outbreak of infection across a facility of any size. (For example, Legionnaire’s disease is one of the most common diseases resulting from poor infection control, and mitigating the risk of this infection falls to facilities managers to ensure that air vents are adequately sanitized or contained.)
Additionally, the design of the healthcare facility (or facilities) requires long-range planning, including developing assessments, plans, and budgets for everything from building renovations to additions and even finishes and surfaces within the building. Healthcare facilities also have very complex water and sewage systems, making it hard to track leaks and structure damage.
Another major issue for healthcare facilities is fire safety devices being incorrectly installed and not maintained according to industry-regulated ordinances. Between all the machinery and flammable products, a fire in a healthcare facility is a very likely risk. Maintaining and preparing your facility is crucial to containing and putting out a fire. Installing and maintaining proper preventive equipment such as firewalls, fire detectors, smoke dampers, fire sprinklers, and adequate safety lighting is lacking across the healthcare industry nationwide.
Many facilities lack proper fire safety equipment because constantly checking the condition of these devices is time-consuming and costly. FOUNDATION cannot only provide a detailed assessment of facility safety products' conditions but can also help ensure that they will continue to work in the most cost-effective and safest form.
Doctors' offices, nursing homes, clinics, hospital networks, physician groups, and many more healthcare facilities spend enormous amounts of money on the upkeep of these complex facilities and their components. Not maintaining a facility can not only be costly and damaging to a health network, but it can also be deadly.
A tool like FOUNDATION can help prevent dire outcomes and ensure the budget is wisely allocated. FOUNDATION is the only software to provide configured systems for evaluating a myriad of aspects related to facilities, reports based on these assessments, and project planning for renovation to align your needs and goals to your budget correctly to align your needs and goals your budget properly.
FOUNDATION has been proven successful on over $50 billion in building and infrastructure plans, ranging from large to small environments. It continuously improves budgets using feedback from project history. When it comes to assessing, sharing, reviewing, and reporting needs and progress, having a single resource to rely upon is not only a time-and-headache saver—it can often also result in saving money.