Each year on sister magazine Healthcare Design, we reach out to readers in the architecture, engineering, and construction sectors to share insight on how business is faring, via our Corporate Rankings Survey (For coverage, click here).
It’s a great opportunity to tap into the collective mindset of industry firms and get a feel for what’s coming down the pike. The questions we ask are updated each year, and recently there’s been particular interest on our end in collecting data on long-term care (LTC) projects in addition to acute care.
After all, it’s no secret the market is growing, and with that growth has come entry into the LTC field by a number A/E/C firms identifying a new opportunity.
Here’s a glimpse of what we heard:
- 6 percent of the projects firms were involved with during 2013 were in long-term care (assisted living, continuing care retirement community, hospice, etc.). This was an increase over 5 percent in 2012.
- 50 percent of firms reported working on assisted living projects, specifically, a drop from 55 percent in 2012. Meanwhile, 29 percent worked on memory care projects, up from 26 percent in 2012; 28 percent worked on CCRC projects, the same as in 2012; and 24 percent worked on hospice projects, an uptick from 21 percent in 2012.
- We added a couple of new categories this year, too: skilled nursing and senior independent living. Overall, 45 percent of firms said they worked on skilled nursing projects and 29 percent on independent living.
What’s perhaps the most valuable piece of the survey, though, is when we hear back from participants in an open-ended question on what threats and opportunities to business they’ve identified over the past year.
Similar to previous surveys, healthcare reform remained the most common trigger for unease in A/E/C firms, with financial unknowns still holding clients back from digging very deep into their capital pockets. With that said, though, reform is shaping a new care delivery system that requires rethinking the physical environment in a number of ways—meaning that threat is also a pretty significant opportunity.
A big piece of this is creating a continuum of care so that patients can more easily not only seek preventive medicine via community-based outpatient facilities but be cared for after a health incident without necessarily being in the hospital. This trend calls for all kinds of building types, from rehabilitation centers to medical office buildings that house nutritionists and social workers alongside physicians.
And for the sake of this conversation, it also means LTC projects are coming into the spotlight, too—and not just because of the growing need tied to an aging baby boomer generation. Again, the goal is to keep people in the least acute setting possible and to provide the services necessary to keep them well as long as possible. This all translates to project types like independent living, assisted living, and even hospice taking on a pretty important role in the continuum.
“The biggest opportunity is to leverage and apply our core understanding of health facility planning and design principles to ambulatory care and long-term care projects—project types that are becoming more prevalent,” noted one participant.
I expect to see these numbers only grow in the future. What types of projects are on your boards right now?
