Today, hospitals are focused on operational efficiencies, retaining staff, competing for local market share, and improving patient outcomes. Often these categories are prioritized and part of centralized campus-wide developments with complicated components and multi-year construction operations. However, the specific area of diagnostic work and preventative care offers a different direction.

This healthcare service came to a halt during the pandemic and has only recently started to rebound with an influx of patient demand. Not to mention that overall, there are more insured people since the start of the 2010 Affordable Care Act and a growing aging population (ULI Emerging Trends Report). Now hospitals are competing to recapture this market share and will need to build in the communities where people live. Not only that but as technology in healthcare advances, these medical spaces must be able to support and sustain the ever-evolving technology.

This is the path for Houston as the population continues to sprawl and new communities are built or communities that did not have the advantage of local healthcare now have the population to sustain the investment. Colliers International reported that providers are “increasingly taking on retail space as part of the outpatient clinic real estate strategy, particularly in Houston’s fast-growing suburban submarkets.” The Woodlands, Katy, League City are prime examples of areas building these spaces.

Healthcare has been one of the most stable and forward-moving markets for construction despite the pandemic, so the race is on to build these facilities. The general contractor has the role of guiding healthcare clients through early cost decisions and helping them align their programmatic baseline with the appropriate financial choice. This level of alignment is common on campus-wide construction projects, but these smaller, suburban medical facilities will need the same focus to mitigate cost and escalation and ensure healthcare providers have their return on investment and still provide quality care for their patients.