Located just metres apart, the latter has a 24-hour urgent GP centre, which is able to take the pressure of the public hospital’s emergency department.
“This is an example of the public system working with the private system to balance out queues and get costs out of the system,” he said.
Hemming said Centuria’s strategy is to work closely with operators such as Nexus Hospitals or Medibank.
“Their strong brands and care models have the ability to attract doctors. That translates into insurance contracts, which means the doctors may not need to charge patients out of pocket,” he said.
But finding sites with the appropriate zoning and floor plate is tricky. For instance, hospitals require a floor plate of around 1000sq m, which means all the theatres can be on the same floor.
This creates an efficient patient-doctor journey, so doctors and nurses don’t have to walk too far, leading to fatigue and mistakes, which leads to cost.
“Of course, the hospital environment is a balance between patient-centred care and improved cost efficiencies, but largely the focus on patients to have a better all-round experience is factored into hospital designs,” he said.
“Patients also want to be handled with care and want to be able to see their doctors. All these elements are factored into hospital design.”
It’s also hard to find good opportunities due to heightened competition between developers to identify appropriate sites.
Commenting on the operating environment, George Websdale, Dexus’s head of healthcare partnerships, said there were few groups that are actively investing in large scale health assets, due to the high barriers of entry for healthcare property investors.
“The specialised nature of healthcare assets and the relationships with operators and governments is crucial to unlocking healthcare development opportunities,” he said.
Groups with scale and specialised healthcare capability are placed at a competitive advantage.