By Healthcare Facilities Today

Moving more healthcare off campus and into the community, is no recent phenomenon according to Ian Morrison, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based author, consultant and futurist. In an article in the December issue of Health Facilities Management magazine, Morrison said the migration of the health care built environment has been under way for two or three decades. 

"The single biggest factor has been medical technology," Morrison said in the article. "Particularly the combination of less-invasive surgical procedures on the one hand and better drugs on the other, so you can treat patients in the outpatient setting who would have previously required significant lengths of stay."

Morrison said the move off campus will accelerate even faster under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as hospitals quickly expand their reach through a variety of off-site facilities.

"I think with accountable care organizations and other provisions of the ACA, that's just going to require hospitals to really engage across the continuum of care," he said in the article. "If you're a large hospital system, you'll likely be acquiring, either through ownership or partnership, skilled nursing facilities, ambulatory surgery centers, imaging and outpatient diagnostic campuses that are part of an integrated or virtually integrated system of care."

Read the article.