Florida-Based Developer Acquires Mult-Tenant MOB In Tampa

A Florida-based developer has acquired a 25,634-square-foot, multi-tenant medical office building in Tampa, Fla., from a group of local investors.

The asset traded through a 1031 exchange for $8.6 million and at a 7.44 percent cap rate. Director James Ullrich, Senior Director Jeff Matulis and Associate Michael Macchia of Stan Johnson Co. worked on behalf of the seller, while the company’s Houston office represented the buyer.

Located at 4531 S. Dale Mabry Highway in a dense residential area, the asset is close to important developments in the South Tampa submarket, such as the Gandy Bridge overpass project or the waterfront housing development in the Westshore Marina District. According to Ullrich, the lot is one of the deepest on South Dale Mabry. Tampa Sports Academy anchors the property, occupying roughly half of the building, while the remaining space is leased to three tenants on triple net leases.

 

Source:  CPE

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Tenants Increasingly Seek Medical Office Space Near Jacksonville’s Major Hospitals

The medical office market in Jacksonville, Florida continues to improve as vacancies among medical office buildings have reached their lowest point in the past 10 years, at roughly 5.8%. This is around 280 basis points below the metro average for all office inventory. Vacancy levels are not expected to rise much, as construction in the region has slowed.

Medical office properties in Jacksonville have generally performed well this cycle, as demand for this subset of office space has been increasing. While medical offices comprise merely 15% of total office space in the metro, it has accounted for around one-third of office deliveries over the past decade.

Overall, medical office properties are typically built adjacent to major healthcare facilities and hospitals, creating clusters of healthcare services and tenants. For example, developers have built several medical offices surrounding St. Vincent’s Medical Center’s Southside campus. Around 76,000 square feet of space is either underway or has opened in the area since 2010. The largest building, at 7021 A.C. Skinner Pkwy., is home to the Jacksonville Surgery Center’s 21,200-square-foot location.

With minimal construction activity compared to previous years, year-over-year rent growth is around 4.5% in the medical office subset. These facilities are generally more standard-built as opposed to the sprawling office parks found in Jacksonville’s top-performing Southside submarket. Thus, rents are more on par with Class B properties in Jacksonville, with gross asking rents of around $20 per square foot.

An aging population, and the popularity of outpatient services, has helped fuel demand for medical office buildings in recent years. In Jacksonville, population growth among those aged 65 years or older has increased faster than any other age segment over the past five years. On the economic side, jobs numbers in the education and health services industry have grown at a faster pace than almost any other industry in the past 10 years, behind only professional and business services. These demand drivers are expected to remain vital pieces of the demographic and economic profile of the region in the coming years.

 

Source: CoStar

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$65 Million Expansion Of Sebastian River Medical Center Due To Open In February

A $65 million expansion of Sebastian Medical Center, that adds 48 private patient rooms, is scheduled for completion by the end of December.

It is expected to serve its first patients in February.

Officials from Steward Health Care, which owns the hospital, joined with general contractors from Suffolk Construction Wednesday to ceremonially place the final beam in the three-story building under construction at the rear of the hospital, 13695 U.S. 1 near Roseland Road.

The 90,000-square-foot expansion was announced in January 2016 by former owner Community Health Systems Inc. and was expected to be completed in 2018. But the acquisition of Sebastian River Medical Center by Steward in May 2017 changed the construction timeline.

The expansion moves the hospital’s main entrance and registration toward the back of the building. All pre-surgical services, operating rooms and recovery facilities now will be on the first floor.

The second and third floors of the new wing each will have 24 beds, bringing the total number of licensed, inpatient patient beds to 202, an increase of 31%.

“It was definitely time to upgrade to a new facility,” said Kyle Sanders, president of Sebastian River Medical Center. “This is a $65 million investment into the community.”

A similar tower wing was opened in 2010, providing 42 private rooms and a 16-bed intensive-care unit. That expansion cost about $25 million.

Sanders said the addition and reconstruction of the hospital’s first floor will help meet the needs of the Sebastian community well into the future.

“With the last beam going up, it is a great time to celebrate this construction milestone,” said Sanders. “It also gives us the chance to recognize the great work they’ve done on this project.”

Sebastian River Medical Center competes for patients with both Cleveland Clinic Indian River Hospital to the south and Health First’s Palm Bay Hospital to the north. Its new facilities will be attractive to patients who prefer private rooms, Sanders said.

Surgeons and primary-care physicians participated in planning the expansion/renovation. The medical center is expanding its primary-care physician affiliations, particularly in Vero Beach, where 51 percent of primary-care doctors now are part of the Stewart Health Care network.

“We’re definitely here for the long haul,” said Sanders. “We feel this project will allow us to better serve the community as a whole.”

 

Source: TCPalm

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Are Coworking Spaces Essential For Medical Practices?

Collaborative work environments remain one of the biggest trends in office space. These coworking spaces have proven to improve the happiness, productiveness, and well-being of employees. However, the use of coworking spaces remains greatly underdeveloped in a medical industry that has seen private practice rates plummet in recent years.

For many physicians, having a private practice is the optimal professional scenario. And yet, private practices are in steep decline. In 2016, less than half of practicing physicians in the US-owned their medical practice, marking the first time in which physician practice ownership was the minority arrangement. Collaborative workspaces offer a way to salvage the private practice and are proving to be perfect for physicians who are overwhelmed by the challenges of setting up a private practice of their own.

A medical coworking environment offers physicians many advantages, including a fully managed business facility, with bite-sized pieces to fast track their pathway into owning their own private practice. A coworking space can help medical professionals reduce their costs while also allowing flexibility to meet their specific demands and increasing their efficiency.

After spending years gathering debt, many recent medical school graduates are forced with the impossible prospect of taking on even more debt to start their own private practice.

It’s estimated that it takes a minimum of $70,000 to secure commercial office space. On the heels of huge student loan debt, this proves to be insurmountable for many physicians. When you take into account the cost of specialty equipment, office furnishings, and other miscellaneous purchases, costs can easily surge well into the six figures.

On top of these base costs, regulatory measures have been working against private practitioners in recent years. With a 2% cut in medicare payments to doctors and healthcare providers, the overall healthcare climate does not favor physicians attempting to run a private practice. In a poll, 65% of physicians call these diminishing reimbursements the top issue negatively affecting practice profitability.

Luckily, coworking spaces help alleviate many of the costs associated with owning one’s own private practice. Coworking spaces handle all construction, regulatory issues, and filings for locating, securing and building out the office environment. The physician is able to afford their own practice without debt and regulatory burden that is typically associated with it.

An efficient pooling together of resources

Essential rooms such as waiting rooms often take up a significant amount of space in medical offices. In coworking spaces, many of these spaces are shared in order to boost efficiency while reducing cost. A shared infrastructure, common space, and staffing resources allow for a leaner and more efficient mode of operation for medical care providers.

Reception desks, waiting areas, and other rooms can be shared amongst various medical practitioners of a coworking space. Administrative staff such as receptionists or cashiers can be shared as they do similar work in their respective practices. Some workspaces even have automated receptionists, where the patient walks into the waiting room, picks his doctor on an iPad, and a notification is sent to the doctor to indicate that his or her patient is ready.

A flexible practice that suits your needs

Collaborative workspaces also allow the physicians to be as flexible as they like in terms of work schedule, length of the contract, and level of business control. This flexibility allows physicians to customize their entire practice, from a number of employees to size of their office space.

Physicians go through years of training in order to become experts in their designated field. However, most are given little experience when it comes to owning and running their own business before they are expected to run their own private practice. Over half of businesses fail – private medical practices included. Private physicians are forced to wear multiple ‘hats,’ one being that of a doctor and the other a businessman. Many times this is overwhelming for someone with little to no business acumen.

Fortunately, a collaborative work setting takes much of the risk of owning a business out of the equation and simply lets the doctor do what he or she was trained to do: help people. The coworking space can act as the central platform for all operations, including reception, new patient processing, billing & collections, EHR (electronic health record), digital and web marketing, and more.

Many times the physician doesn’t need a large office space. They just need room to conduct their specific operations. Some even just want to work part-time. For these types of physicians, it would be inefficient and unsustainable to rent out their own office. Collaborative workspaces allow the physician to rent out a single room if need be. In fact, the doctor can expand at his or her own pace: room by room until they are able to afford their own private practice.

In an environment with a steep barrier to entry, medical doctors must find a way to maximize efficiency and lower operating costs. A shared space that is managed for medical purpose is a viable solution to many physicians as they can share common resources, meaning they can concentrate their energy where it matters most. For many, it’s just a temporary solution, acting as a private practice accelerator as they gain the skills, money, and business acumen to be able to start practices of their own. But as it becomes harder and harder to start your own private practice, collaborative medical workspaces will become the most viable option.

 

Source: HIT Consultant

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Medical Innovation Center Opens At Miami Dade College

Miami Dade College has unveiled its new Center for Learning, Innovation and Simulation in Miami.

The five-story, 135,000-square-foot facility was built on the college’s Medical Campus and will enable the school to expand its health sciences offerings, and create partnerships with Miami-area health care providers.

“Health care occupations are expected to grow by 18 percent by 2026,” says Dr. Bryan Stewart, Medical Campus President. “We’re going to be able to offer students the technology and resources they need to fill many of the ‘hot’ new jobs.”

An advanced medical simulation center occupies the building’s third floor, enabling students to gain essential hands-on experience working in a variety of clinical environments, including emergency, surgery, labor and delivery, primary care and home health care.

It features 15 hospital/patient rooms with high-fidelity mannequins, a simulated ambulance, a simulated one-bedroom apartment, 10 exam rooms where students will interact with actors trained to portray patients, a five-sided CAVE virtual reality space, debrief rooms where students and faculty gather to review just-completed exercises, and a partner/sponsor space.

In addition to the simulation center, the Center for Learning, Innovation and Simulation has a variety of classroom, collaboration and gathering spaces.

Among them are active learning classrooms; a 300-person multipurpose conference center; a 150-person tiered lecture facility with technology at each seat; smaller lecture classrooms; wet labs; physical therapy, occupational therapy and physician assistant labs; a radiology suite and student breakout spaces.

The Center will primarily be used by college students and faculty, but it also will be available to local health care organizations for staff training and research.

 

Source: American School & University

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