Feature Story: PJ Camp: There from the beginning

He closed $17 billion in transactions and helped to create the HRE sector

By John B. Mugford

In a way, perhaps Philip J. “PJ” Camp did stumble into a business sector that, while it would eventually take off and grow, wasn’t even considered a business sector back in the mid-1990s.

But then again, he does deserve credit for, as he puts it, “seeing a good opportunity” and making the most of it.

“It was a little bit of being in the right place at the right time,” he acknowledges. “But … as is the case with many things in life, there’s one element of luck, and there’s also an element of taking that luck and doing something with it.”

Mr. Camp certainly did do something with it, as not only did he embark on and enjoy a long and successful career in what became the healthcare real estate (HRE) business, he played a major role in creating the mature sector it is today, with investors of all types and sizes interested in acquiring medical outpatient buildings (MOBs) and related property types.

It is for that reason that Mr. Camp has been selected as the recipient of the 2025 HREI™ Lifetime Achievement Award. Since 2013, HREI has presented the award to 15 of the sector’s most significant contributors – and, yes, “pioneers” – who helped to make the sector what it is. HREI presented Mr. Camp with the award Feb. 3, during the Revista Medical Real Estate Investment Forum event at the Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., near Los Angeles.

The importance of being Ernst

Before getting involved in HRE, Mr. Camp started his career as an architect in the early 1990s before receiving his master’s in business administration (MBA) from Columbia University. He joined Ernst & Young Kenneth Leventhal, now known as Ernst & Young (NYSE: EY), in New York City in 1995 and worked as an investment banker focused on mergers and acquisitions (M&A).

Then, in a fortuitous moment that led to his long career in HRE, he was given the opportunity to join a new platform at Ernst, the Real Estate Capital Markets Group. That team, it should be noted, also included another prominent HRE pioneer, Jonathan L. “John” Winer, who was an EY partner until joining Seavest Investment Group (now known as Rethink Healthcare Real Estate) in 2008, where he is currently president and chief investment officer.

Shortly after Mr. Camp joined the new capital markets team at EY, Mr. Camp recalls, the group began working “with one particular CFO (chief financial officer) at a hospital system, and he was wondering if there wasn’t a better way for them to operate their MOBs, and, if they could, figure out a way to tap into the capital they had tied up in those buildings.”

“We were doing real estate investment banking work, mostly for EY clients, and the firm always has had a lot of healthcare system clients, for whom they serve as auditors, advisors and consultants and do a lot of great work for,” Mr. Camp says, noting that at one point the group “started working with one particular CFO at a hospital system, and he was wondering if there wasn’t a better way for them to operate their medical office buildings, and, if they could, figure out a way to tap into the capital they tied up in those buildings.”

That CFO, Mr. Camp continues, also realized that “there was a potential conflict of interest in having the hospital being the landlord and setting the rents and structuring the leases … for the for-profit doctors and physician groups.”

It was with this assignment, he says, that the EY visionaries developed “the structures that everybody takes for granted today, which includes the ground leases that allows the hospital system to own the land on which on-campus MOBs are located, and then selling, or monetizing, the buildings to third-party owners.”

Mr. Camp and his EY compatriots then spent the next several years as HRE evangelists.

That included plenty of other factors to consider as the team set out to help health systems sell MOBs, including making system executives feel more comfortable with the idea of no longer owning the buildings, which included, among many other factors, letting them know that they would still have certain controls, such as which tenants could occupy space, and maintaining a certain look and upkeep of the facilities, Mr. Camp notes.

In addition, there was plenty of other work to do, as, “at the time, there weren’t a lot of buyers looking to acquire MOBs and there weren’t many, if any, lenders willing to provide acquisition financing for the product type” Mr. Camp recalls. “We had to educate both the lenders and investors that this was a good product to lend to, and to invest in. This took quite a bit of work and time, and the investors came along first, and then the challenge became to convince the lenders that this was a good product to lend on, as they hadn’t really done it before.”

The efforts of Mr. Camp and his EY colleagues undoubtedly contributed to the tremendous growth that the HRE sector has experienced during the past three decades.

Biggest system monetization ever

Mr. Camp left Ernst & Young in 2001 to join Shattuck Hammond Partners, a “boutique” healthcare investment banking firm based in New York, to help it launch a healthcare real estate group.

“Their primary client base was healthcare providers, and so they realized that having a healthcare real estate group could make a lot of sense, and I agreed, and that’s why I joined them,” Mr. Camp recalls. “The platform, that of a boutique d investment banking firm, allowed the firm to execute those kinds of transactions for hospital systems while still being able to maintain our level of independence.”

After the firm was acquired by Memphis, Tenn.-based Morgan Keegan & Co. in 2007, he stayed through 2011. Mr. Camp was then part of a group that founded another healthcare-focused investment banking firm, New York-based Hammond Hanlon Camp (H2C), in 2011.

H2C experienced significant growth during the next 9 years or so. Notably, in 2016, the firm served as the advisor and broker for what remains to this day the largest health system sale, or monetization, of MOBs on record: the $725 million sale by Englewood, Colo.-based Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI) of a 51-MOB, 3.1 million square foot portfolio to Physicians Realty Trust, which is now part of Denver-based Healthpeak Inc. (NYSE: DOC).

In late 2020, after Mr. Camp led the HRE arm of H2C for about a decade, the firm was acquired by Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bancorp (Nasdaq FITB). There, Mr. Camp headed HRE investment banking and expanded the group into a wider variety of healthcare property types. He remained with Fifth Third through late 2024.

As Mr. Camp reflects on a career in which he was involved in more than $17 billion worth of transactions, he notes, “It wasn’t all that many years ago that this was a nascent industry, where today it is now a mature industry that is considered its own category of real estate with its own data and statistics. The sector also has plenty of competition and a lot more liquidity than I would have ever thought it would have.”

A man of integrity

One HRE professional who had a front-row seat to Mr. Camp’s understanding of the sector, as well as his dedication to serving the needs of clients, is Jay Miele. Mr. Miele, who is currently vice chairman and co-head of the U.S. Healthcare Capital Markets team with Newmark Group Inc. (Nasdaq: NMRK), worked for Mr. Camp during an 11-year period at Shattuck Hammond Partners, H2C and Fifth Third Bancorp.

“Over the many years I worked with PJ, I saw firsthand his deep knowledge of the medical outpatient sector and his ability to understand what matters most to clients,” Mr. Miele says. “He played an early role in educating health systems and investors as the MOB market evolved from traditional office buildings with physicians into a distinct asset class within the alternatives sector.”

During his three decades or so in the business of advising clients, Mr. Camp worked on several transactions for David Willie, who served as CFO for at least three health systems to which Mr. Camp provided services and advisory work. In total, those transactions, including facility sales, or monetizations, as well as developer selection processes and others, topped $300 million in value.

One of those systems was PeaceHealth, a West Coast health system that operates 10 hospitals and dozens of locations in the states of Washington, Oregon and Alaska. Mr. Willie served as the system’s CFO from 2006-12.

In one particular transaction, Mr. Camp led the H2C team that advised and represented PeaceHealth on the monetization of a portfolio of MOBs totaling more than 500,000 square feet.

Mr. Willie tells HREI that he has “worked with PJ Camp for over 25 years in three different organizations,” with transactions entailing “recapitalizing existing real estate and selecting developer partners for new real estate projects.

“His knowledge of the real estate market and his advice was instrumental in our ability to close various deals during differing market conditions. He was able to bring a considerable line-up of potential real estate partners for both existing real estate and new development.”

Across the HRE sector, one word consistently comes up when colleagues and clients describe how PJ Camp served them: integrity. Mr. Willie echoed that sentiment.

“His integrity during our engagements was what brought me back to use his services each and every time we had real estate needs,” he said.

Murray W. Wolf, founder and publisher of HREI, says that when he was exploring the idea in 2002-03 of launching a publication focused on the rather obscure niche of HRE, Mr. Camp was one of a handful of enthusiastic supporters.

“PJ’s encouragement played a significant role in convincing me to launch HREI, along with the support of several other healthcare real estate pioneers, including John Winer of Ernst and Young (now with Rethink), Bruce Rendina of Rendina Companies (now Rendina Healthcare Real Estate), Malcom Sina of DASCO (now with Sina Companies), Bob Rosenthal of Pacific Medical Buildings (now PMB), Tommy Tift of HealthAmerica Real Estate (now with Lincoln Property Company), Sharon Harper of Plaza Companies and a few others.

“I remember having a lot of conversations with PJ about how challenging it was to sell advisory services for monetization transactions because it required a two-step process. Before he could even begin to sell health system executives on the idea of working with him, he first needed to sell them on the monetization idea itself.

“I can only imagine how many miles PJ and his fellow healthcare real estate trailblazers racked up, crisscrossing America to educate providers. It’s thanks to their efforts that the monetization concept is now widely understood and quite routinely used, usually in the form of sale-leasebacks.”

Still busy in his so-called ‘retirement’

Since leaving Fifth Third in 2024, Mr. Camp has been active in a range of ventures.

Among other endeavors, he has been engaged in consulting and advisory work for a seniors housing development company, Chicago-based Andev Group Development, where he is also helping raise capital to “expand their business line and to help them grow the development pipeline.”

In addition, he’s an investor in Indianapolis-based Prevounce, a remote patient monitoring company, and is “also involved in a couple of corporate boards,” including the HREI Editorial Advisory Board.

As Mr. Camp reflects on how much the HRE sector has grown since he first joined a fledgling real estate capital markets team at Ernst & Young more than 30 years ago, he notes that “this industry has evolved a lot, going from there being a lack of understanding about the product type, a lack of capital and a lack of transactions…

“The biggest change is that it is now a mature industry in which there is a lot of competition and interest, a lot more liquidity … and it is a sector with its own category of real estate, healthcare real estate, for which it also has its own statistics. It wasn’t all that many years ago that it was a nascent industry, and today it is a really mature industry.” ❏