Feature Story: Systems are planning for the post-COVID world

Executives discuss strategies during InterFace Carolinas conference

The Oct. 2 InterFace Healthcare Carolinas conference featured a session titled “What is the Future for Hospital and System Real Estate Usage Post-Pandemic?” (HREI photo)

By John B. Mugford

In the world of healthcare real estate (HRE), everyone involved understands that the drivers of the sector – including the amount of development space needed, and even the price for which properties trade – are the country’s health systems.

Their financial health, their strategies for delivering care and their needs for outpatient space are of utmost importance to the third-party firms involved in HRE, i.e., developers, investors, brokers, property managers, advisors and others.

So, who better to ask how the country’s health systems are faring amid the COVID-19 pandemic and what their plans are for the future, including how real estate fits into those plans, than health system executives themselves?

That’s exactly why the recent InterFace HRE Carolinas conference held by the InterFace Conference Group, part of Atlanta-based France Media, included a discussion with a panel of experience health system real estate administrators and others who work closely with them. The panel, held Oct. 2, was titled “What is the Future for Hospital and System Real Estate Usage Post-Pandemic?”

“This is a year that’s created dynamic problems, healthcare issues, not just in the United States but around the world,” said David Park, the panel’s moderator, principal of DG Consulting LLC, and the former senior VP of corporate real estate and facilities construction with Novant Health.

“Twenty-twenty has been a year that’s required healthcare to reshape itself probably more than anything that’s impacted it in the last 50 years.”

Indeed, the panelists acknowledged this, indicating that the pandemic has forced their organizations to

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