One of America’s “Most-Wired Hospitals”

Ranked three times in the Top 100 “Most Wired Hospitals in America” with the most advanced computer systems, according to Hospitals and Health Networks Magazine, Major Health Partners relies on state-of-the-art technology to provide quality care. This commitment to technology for patient well-being extends to the healthcare provider’s choice of building controls for its MHP Medical Center. The Alerton Ascent building management system they rely on, along with other building design features, helps MHP save close to $360,000 in energy costs annually while providing a comfortable indoor environment for patients and staff.
The new MHP Medical Center – opened in January 2017 – replaces the 59-year-old Major Hospital in Shelbyville, Indiana. The full-service, replacement hospital occupies 305,000 square feet and houses 55 inpatient beds and 38 outpatient rooms, along with operating rooms and medical office suites. The hospital outside Indianapolis serves patients from throughout southeast Indiana, and beyond.
MHP’s design objectives for the new medical center included using conventional heating and cooling systems in unconventional ways, for significant energy-efficiency gains. To this end, the project team targeted an aggressive ENERGY STAR goal of 95 or higher. “It will be one of the more efficient hospitals in Indiana,” says Douglas R. Hundley Jr., PE, principal with CMTA Consulting Engineers. Hundley predicts the facility will use 53% less energy than the national average for hospitals (125 kBtu/sf/year vs. 266 kBtu/sf/year).
img src=”http://automatedbuildings.com/news/sep17/articles/alerton/pumps.PNG” alt=”Pumps” align=”right” />One of the key challenges in meeting the project’s energy saving goals is the new building connects to an existing 46,000 square foot cancer center. As the existing building was designed as a more conventional system, and energy was not a significant consideration when it was built, the new hospital central plant had the challenge of back feeding the existing heating and cooling systems.

“Some minimal upgrades were added, to help improve the system efficiency at the existing cancer center, and Btu metering was added in the hot and chilled water mains feeding the cancer center, so we could monitor energy usage, and inform the owner if additional system adjustments need to be made,” says Hundley.

CMTA recommended numerous control strategies to help achieve the energy savings goal for the new medical center. Among these was integrating operating room occupancy sensors with the supply and return air terminals in those spaces, to allow for the airflow to be reduced, while maintaining a positive pressure. The project team also specified a heat recovery chiller to reclaim waste heat generated from chilled water production and provide the hot water for all summer time reheat.
To help cost effectively optimize building operations for energy savings, the project team chose the Alerton Ascent building management system. Alerton Ascent includes Ascent Control Modules, Compass software, and Microset 4 wall units. “Ascent’s features and ease-of-use were the perfect fit for a sophisticated building owner operating a critical facility,” says Ed Ransom, vice president of operations for the Envelop Group’s Open Control Systems (OCS) division. Of particular benefit to the hospital are Compass software’s alarm management, scheduling, and trending capabilities, notes Ransom.

”The owner and entire project team were sold on Ascent, and MHP Medical Center uses Alerton controls top to bottom,” adds Travis Ihnen, president of Envelop Group.

We couldn’t have achieved the energy targets we set for this buildings without a sophisticated building management system like Alerton Ascent,” says Jeff Williams, vice president of facility operations for Major Health Partners. “This is a critical facility that will be used around the clock, and we wanted to ensure energy savings and comfort throughout – from the ORs to patient rooms to physician offices. Alerton is the brains of the entire system.”

Commenting on the power of the Alerton Ascent product suite, Hundley notes, “Recently, I was on site helping the owner evaluate a system deficiency, and using the controls, we were able to quickly diagnose the problem, and fix it in a matter of hours. Typically, we would have had to have the controls contractor, mechanical contractor, and T&B contractor on site to correct this problem. With just some phone support from OCS, we were able to make the adjustments needed, and address the problem.”

With six months of operating data, MHP Medical Center is well on its way to meeting or exceeding CMTA’s projection of $360,000 in annual energy savings.

 

Source: Automated Buildings
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Anchor Health To Build 285,000-SF Florida Facility

Anchor Health Properties, a national, full-service healthcare real estate development, management and acquisitions company, is partnering with The Villages community in central Florida to develop The Center for Advanced Healthcare at Brownwood, a 285,000-square-foot multi-specialty building that will be connected to a 150-key hotel, conference center and spa.
The project is slated to break ground in early 2018 and will take about two years to complete. The Center for Advanced Healthcare at Brownwood will be built on a 31-acre site in The Villages Brownwood Paddock Square Town Center. It will be integrated with the Brownwood Hotel and Spa, which will have 10,000 square feet of conference space, a multipurpose courtyard for meetings and events and a restaurant run by celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck.

“We are thrilled to be part of this project, which is a continuation of our long-term relationship with The Villages Health. This project will extend the mission of The Villages Health to provide high-quality, patient-centered care that is accessible to the community,” Paula Crowley, chairman of Charlottesville, Va.,-based Anchor Health Properties, said in a prepared statement.

Anchor Health Properties began working with The Villages Health in 2011, when the company helped to develop a primary care model that changed delivery of service to patients within the community, home to than 120,000 residents and one of the fastest growing areas in the country.

Healthcare Services

The center will have more than 25 clinical specialties such as oncology, imaging, ophthalmology, dermatology and plastic surgery, along with an ambulatory surgery and rehab surgery center. Other specialties represented will include cardiology, neurology, orthopedics, general urology and rheumatology. A retail pharmacy and lab will also be part of the facility.
The managing operator of the hotel and spa is AHC + Hospitality of Grand Rapids, Mich. The architect for the project is Earl Swensson Associates of Nashville, Tenn.
In July, Anchor Health Properties opened its first West Coast office in San Diego and also acquired Fletcher Parkway Medical Center, an 82,024-square-foot medical office building in the San Diego suburb of La Mesa, Calif. The asset is adjacent to the campus of the Sharp Grossmont Hospital and features tenants such as Sharp Healthcare and United Healthcare Group.
Source: CPE
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Medical Office Building Sales On Record Pace

Medical office building sales are on pace for a record-breaking year, according to the latest research from JLL.
JLL reported that in the first half of 2017, the country saw nearly $5.5 billion in medical office building sales. How big is that number? It’s nearly the total volume of medical office building sales recorded in 2012 through 2014 in the United States.
The biggest sale in the first half of the year was HTA’s $2.2 billion acquisition of the Duke Realty healthcare portfolio this June. There are other major sales in the pipeline, though, with JLL predicting that 2017 medical office building sales will shatter the 2015 record of $9 billion.
The best news? The market has not been slow to respond to the increased demand for medical office properties. JLL said that developers have been quick to create new medical supply, pointing to the large developer-built portfolios offered by companies such as Duke Realty and Meadows & Ohly.
JLL only predicts good things for this segment going forward. Saying that new capital from investors seeking high yields will only provide a greater boost for this segment of the commercial real estate industry.
Source: RE Journals
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Duke Realty Closes $2.8B Sale Of 72-Building Medical Office Package

Industrial REIT Duke Realty has completed its $2.8 billion sale of 72 medical office buildings to Healthcare Trust of America as it ramps up its bulk-space strategy.

“I am happy to announce that we have substantially completed the previously announced sale of our medical office business, generating $2.45 billion in proceeds to date, with the remaining properties expected to close during the third quarter,” said Duke CEO Jim Connor in a second quarter results statement.

Duke used some of the sale proceeds to pay down its debts and placed $796 million in escrow to finance future acquisitions and development, according to Mark Denien, Duke’s chief financial officer.
Source: Real Estate Weekly
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Medical Destination Market: The Rules Are Different Here

While Miami has made a science of marketing its world-class beaches, hotels and retail locations, promoting Miami as a medical destination for tourists has a different set of rules. Local health centers and the convention and visitors bureau are finding new ways to market Miami as a global health care destination.
Medical Tourism is a unique brand of tourism because it’s not always appropriate to use the same advertising channels, said Rolando Aedo, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau.

“When people call our 800-number, we don’t tell them about medical procedures they can have done, but we have collateral materials in different languages if people request that information, and we refer them to the professionals,” Mr. Aedo said.

Though the bureau doesn’t actively advertise Miami’s hospitals, it promotes Miami as a medical destination by hosting meetings and conventions.

“When people come for medical care, their families stay at our hotels. They eat, drink and shop here, so it impacts our industry even though it doesn’t seem like it would,” Mr. Aedo said.

The bureau has dedicated staff charged with bringing more visitors and tourists to Miami and attracting people for meetings and conventions, Mr. Aedo said.

“The future is very bright for medical meetings in Miami,” he said. “Our health care excellence, our geography and the remodel of the Miami Beach Convention Center provide great opportunities to bring people here.”

The convention center is to open next September, and the American Health Information Management Association, a medical tech conference, is to be the first held.
The bureau sends staff to the World Medical Tourism Conference each year and runs miamihealthcare.org, a website dedicated to medical tourism, with visitor information on places to see, where to stay, things to do, events, special offers and a trip planning feature.
Baptist Health has the same approach as the bureau when it comes to promoting Baptist internationally:

“We proactively sponsor medical conferences, bring in speakers and interact with medical schools in the region,” said Mario Mendez, corporate vice president and chief medical officer at Baptist Health.

Medical tourism growth in Miami is largely organic, Dr. Mendez said:

“Baptist has been growing its footprint here for about 20 years by expanding and acquiring private hospitals. We have world-renowned centers of excellence in orthopedics, cardiovascular medicine and cancer treatment.”

It was natural for Miami to promote itself as a medical destination because of its location and medical infrastructure.

“Miami is the port of the Americas. It’s close to home, there are no language barriers and similar cultural influences” for many of the patients traveling to Miami for care, Dr. Mendez said.

While medical marketing is less conspicuous than travel brochures, Miami’s health centers still believe the heat plays a role in attracting patients.

“No one can beat our incredible weather. If you go to Ohio or Minnesota in the middle of the winter and your flight is canceled, you’ll never go back,” Dr. Mendez said.

When asked about how Baptist Health has an edge in Miami, Dr. Mendez said, “We have one of the most robust international programs in the country, so most of our competitors are not local.”

When patients go to Baptist for medical care, they don’t need to look far to find any specialty, he said: “We cover every specialty available, and only refer out major trauma to the Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson.”
The rise of international health insurance has expanded the scope of medical access and changed how people are paying for care when they travel to Miami.

“When I first started in the business side of health care in the early ’80s, the majority of patients were cash-paying,” Dr. Mendez said. “Today, about 82% of patients are commercially insured with the same plans we have, though some wealthier patients are still self-paying.”

While commercial insurance has allowed more patients to access affordable international care, some executive offerings don’t take insurance. The International Medicine Institute, or the IMI, at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine offers out-of-pocket executive physicals, marketed to companies with new leadership.

“We spend half a day doing a complete workup from top to bottom and provide a full report,” said Marianna Finizio, assistant vice president of the IMI.

Dr. Mendez attributes part of Miami’s medical tourism growth to the University of Miami’s Medical School.

“Though it was a desire of every medical system here, UM ushered in a lot of it in the last 15 years,” he said.

The international program at UM has a synergistic, three-pronged mission to research, educate, and provide clinical care.
The educational and research components help to promote UM as an international destination for patient care, Ms. Finizio said.
The academic mission helps feeds into clinical care because “the physicians who have come through our program have widened our bandwidth as they go into their own specialties and represent us,” Ms. Finizio said.
While the IMI has research and academic goals, clinical care remains a primary focus.

“We’re the only academic medical center in South Florida, so we haven’t been particularly robust in our marketing,” said Eduardo de Marchena, associate dean of international medicine at UM, “but we keep our prices competitive with other institutions and patients keep coming to us because of our relationships in education and research and because our doctors are so well known.”

UM markets patient care just as Baptist Health does: “the most organized form of business development is sending our doctors to local and regional conferences,” Dr. de Marchena said.
As for future plans, the University of Miami is continuing to grow its international patient care by investing “in highly innovative and impactful programs to attract international patients,” said Edward Abraham, dean and CEO of the medical school.

“There are about 7,000 international patients that come here every year,” Dr. Abraham said. “It could be far more if we expand our unique portfolio of clinical services.”

Medical tourism marketing may not be as overt and extravagant as campaigns to promote other Miami attractions, but local health care centers are strategically growing and hosting events to position Miami as a global hub for clinical care.

 

Source: Miami Today
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