Healthcare owners continue the conversation on doing more with less and providing more value. During The Registry’s “The New Health Care Environment” event in San Francisco, the panel–made of healthcare owners and experts–provided insight on how the Affordable Care Act is affecting the healthcare industry.

Panel members from left to right: Carladenise Edwards from Alameda Health System, Heather Chung from SmithGroupJJR, Pete Delgado from Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare System, John Kouletsis from Kaiser Permanente, and me (Hamilton Espinosa from DPR)

Here are 10 big takeaways from the event:

1. Building may be different than it has been in the past.
2. The A/E/C industry needs to provide flexible building infrastructure so owners can use buildings for as long as possible (60 years rather than 25-30 years).
3. Healthcare owners are looking to reuse existing building stock where possible.
4. Value is important to owners (lean project delivery was mentioned as an example).
5. Reform is incentivizing owners to incorporate technology.
6. Providers want to use technology to tailor the experience to patients’ preferences (integration into phones/social media, home care, etc.). This will result in the need for IT infrastructure and potentially more data centers.
7. The trend will be more towards outpatient facilities with hospitals reserved for the sickest patients.
8. With healthcare reform, people will be getting more choices and providers are looking to move to a consumer model.
9. The system is transitioning to wellness care.
10. Hospitals will need to provide evidence-based data to show what treatments are successful.