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Health Care Workforce Housing: Strategies and Solutions

Health Care Workforce Housing: Strategies and Solutions

Health care is not immune from housing challenges facing working individuals and families nationwide. The strain directly impacts employee recruitment, retention and the overall health and well-being of health care employees. Hospitals and health systems are not only re-thinking health care’s role in workforce housing, but increasingly taking action to improve housing conditions and availability for employees and caregivers.

In this episode, Hall Render attorney Danielle Bergner explores the intersection of health care and workforce housing, sharing specific strategies and actionable solutions. She is joined by Milton Pratt, Executive Vice President of Development for The Michaels Organization, a national mission-driven housing developer currently working with health care systems on workforce housing solutions. Mr. Pratt discusses his organization’s innovative, tailored and multi-faceted approach to delivering workforce housing for America’s essential workforce, including health care.

Podcast Participants

Danielle Bergner

Attorney, Hall Render

Milton Pratt

EVP, Development, The Michaels Organization

Danielle Bergner: Welcome everybody. Thank you for taking time out of your day to join us for this very interesting conversation about housing, specifically workforce housing for healthcare employees. I’m Danielle Berger. I think we’ll maybe just start with a brief overview of where we’re going to go today. First, just we’ll take a couple of minutes to introduce both myself and Mr. Pratt. We’ll then switch to just giving a little bit of context to why we’re talking about housing in the context of the healthcare industry, and then we’ll dive right into a solution-based housing strategy and some very specific recommendations for healthcare organizations that are considering advancing a housing project to serve either employees or academic medical center needs. We have a lot of Hull Render clients joining us today. So for those that are not familiar with Hall Render, we are among the country’s largest single specialty law firms. We offer comprehensive legal and advisory services exclusively to the healthcare industry.

We specialize in most facets of healthcare law and the business of healthcare in general. I’m a little bit of a unique animal here at Hall Render. I joined Hall Render about four years ago. My career spans about 20 years, all in commercial real estate. I now work exclusively in the healthcare industry, but before joining Hull Render, I did a lot of housing work, and so one of my roles here at Hull Render is to help bridge that gap between housing and healthcare, really speaking both languages, if you will, trying to help our healthcare clients put together solutions specifically for workforce housing needs. I’m joined today by Milton Pratt, who Lauren introduced as the executive vice president at the Michael’s organization. Milton, maybe you could share a little bit about yourself and the Michaels organization for our listeners today.

Milton Pratt: Sure. One, thanks for having me on the webinar. We’re really excited to talk about this important topic. I’m Mil Pratt, executive vice president. Michaels a little bit about Michaels, I always like to say, I’ll give you the elevator pitch. Michaels is a national developer of affordable, attainable student military and market rate housing. We operate in about 39. We operate in 39 states. We have about 600 plus communities. We also are very active in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Hawaii. So we’re spread out all across the country and we’ve got most importantly, about 200,000 residents that we take care of each and every day. So that’s a big responsibility for us as an organization and our 3000 employees are spread out across this great nation helping to live lives. We also are a company that believes in giving back. We’ve given out a number of scholarships over the years to many of our residents, so we’re excited to talk about this new platform, this new housing crisis that we see across the country.

Danielle Bergner: Thank you, Milton. So I always like to start a housing discussion to a healthcare audience with just a very little bit of context, housing challenges. Our country faces are complex, they are market specific, so it really is important to understand the market you’re in. But just taking a step back, really big picture for our healthcare audience. The issue has been defined by the A HA, the American Hospital Association as a national emergency. They have defined it this way in a letter to Congress. It is a material barrier for advancing hospital strategy. And so in really very recent years, it’s emerged as a very important business issue for our healthcare clients. The challenge that I see with a lot of our healthcare clients is they’re just not really sure what to do with it. They see the problem, they feel the problem, but healthcare organizations are in the business of healthcare.

They’re not in the business of housing, and I typically advocate that they shouldn’t be. That’s not what healthcare organizations are built to do. And so how do we go from all of these headlines and financial and operational difficulties that our healthcare clients are seeing to real solutions? For those of you who maybe have joined some of my webinars in the past, I have several other webinars on our website that talk about a spectrum of potential solutions for healthcare organizations. Just to set the stage a little bit for this discussion, we’re really going to laser focus on the development solution. So creating new housing units for healthcare workers. That’s really the sole focus of today’s discussion. I personally would tell you that I’m seeing more and more healthcare organizations going down this road after having unsuccessfully tried to solve the solution without doing it this way.

So after several years now of really spinning a lot of wheels and trying to get creative with alternative solutions, I’m seeing more and more clients turn to developer partners like Michael’s to help put together meaningful solutions that are really going to move the needle for employees and caregivers. So with that said, let’s shift right into it here, Milton. I want to talk about one of your initial observations about a housing project in the context of a healthcare organization. And one of the things we talked about that really struck me was your sentiment around the project having a champion. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Milton Pratt: Yeah. Every project that we work on really has to have a champion within the healthcare organization because why are they even deciding to do housing? It’s because every time I talk to a healthcare CEO, he or she says, we have a crisis. We have a recruitment and retention challenge. We want to recruit the best and the brightest to work for our organization and we want them to stay with us for many, many years. Doesn’t matter if it’s a young physical therapist or it’s a resident doctor. They want to recruit the best and the brightest. And most of the time when I talk to the CEO or the head of human resources, they’re the ones that are the champions because the head of human resources is the one that conducts the exit interviews and she talks with a physical therapist that is leaving the organization and she’ll say, Hey, why are you leaving?

And the answer will be, I can’t find a place to live that’s affordable, or I can’t find quality housing for me and my family. And so what can these organizations do to stop that flow of people out of their teams? And housing is key. Housing is the number one thing you can do to go from being a three star hospital to a five star hospital. And because hospitals are not in the business of managing residential apartments and financing those apartments, the best solution really is to turn to a developer partner like Michael’s to help you through that, help you educate yourself on the opportunities that exist for how you finance a deal like this or how you manage it or how you even continue to own it long term.

Danielle Bergner: Yeah, I totally agree, and I really don’t think this can be stressed enough. Having worked with a number of our healthcare organizations on this issue, if housing for employees and for I would also say graduate medical students is not made a priority at the highest level of the organization is going to be very difficult to make progress. It’s out of the box. It really needs a high priority put on it by somebody in the highest level of the organization, and that really is where it starts. The projects that I’ve seen go from zero to placed in service, successful, everyone’s happy. What’s behind that and where it all started was a strong executive commitment to meeting the housing needs of their workforce.

Milton Pratt: And one other thing, every organization has different goals. Sometimes an organization’s goal is to create housing for just their employees. Sometimes it’s to create housing for their employees and people that live around the neighborhood to maybe stabilize the area surrounding the institution. So one of the things as a developer we like to do is we like to listen, listen again, and then finally listen a third time and make sure we got it right. We want to know what the goals of the organization is so that we can respond to those goals in the form of a new community that we develop in partnership with them.

Danielle Bergner: That’s great advice. So Milton, in talking about workforce housing with you, I liked how you framed your approach, your firm’s approach to the three pillars of workforce housing. So maybe I’ll start with just a little bit of background before we get into all of the pillars, but one of the questions, I mean I don’t think you have to look very far in LinkedIn feeds and headlines to know that workforce housing is a crisis around the country, not just for healthcare but for all workers. And I always say one of the reasons I’ve always enjoyed working in and around housing is for the most part, housing problems are solvable with money. And I always say, if that’s the only obstacle to solving a problem, I like our chances because a little creativity can go a long way. You kind of talked a little bit about your three pillars for how to solve those financial gaps that exist in workforce housing.

The market has a difficulty putting this product in service because frankly just the cost, right? The cost of building new construction is not going down. The cost of labor is not going down. Interest rates, I mean they’re inching a little bit, but not much. I think most people in this industry have accepted that we have a structural housing deficit. We have a structural problem with housing finance, and I really am intrigued by your company’s approach specific to workforce housing and how to tackle some of these issues. So maybe could you talk us through your three pillars?

Milton Pratt: Sure. First, the most important thing that we like to stress is we like to go into these developments assuming that we’re not going to take any form of subsidy like low-income housing tax credits or section eight, that’s the basis of this because we want to make sure that the goals of the hospital are being met. And the only way to do that is to, one, ensure that we get a project put together that’s financially feasible. And the three pillars are pretty simple things when you think about it, but you have to learn how to put ’em together in order to make a deal financially feasible. It starts with low cost land. That is probably the single most important thing a hospital institution can provide is land. Now every hospital doesn’t have land. Some hospitals decide to go out and buy land so that they can undertake a project like this, have one housing partner we’re working with if they have a hospital that they decided that it was no longer meeting their needs.

They built a brand new facility a mile or two away, and they realized they’ve got this large building with all this infrastructure in it that’s costing them money to maintain a few million dollars a year to maintain. And when they thought about what they could do with it, it’s not going to turn into another hospital. So they realized from a pitch from us, it could turn into some type of housing to again, help meet one of your specific needs. So low cost land is pillar number one. We also need to get some type of a real estate tax exemption or an abatement or some type of an agreement with the local taxer to ensure that the property operations are not going to be taxed because many hospital systems already have a nonprofit status. They may or may not be paying full taxes anyway. So in some communities, it’s an easy pitch to say, Hey, we’re not going to have a hospital here any longer, but we’re going to have something that is a public benefit.

And that is another part of one of the other pillars is the real estate tax exemption and then of course figuring out how we can get some of our impact fees waived, hookup fees, permit fees. These are small things, but when you add ’em all up together, low cost land, real estate tax relief and some sort of support from the local administration, that’s the basis for a project that is financially feasible. And every one of these transactions that we’re working on, they all look different. They really do. There isn’t a structure as if it were a tax credit project. We have a very well-defined structure. We think we’re uniquely positioned to do communities like this because of our experience both on the market rate side and military side, as well as our core strength in the affordable housing business.

Danielle Bergner:

I think that’s a great transition, Milton, to talk a little bit about your, I’ll call it a famous quote, but I don’t know how many people know it, but every deal is a snowflake. And when we were talking, that really struck a chord with me because it’s very true. It’s driven by what are the organization’s goals, make sure you really understand what they’re trying to achieve with the project. What are the natural assets? Who are the natural stakeholders, and how do you bring that all together to make a project that works? I’d like to spend a little time pulling apart some of these different options, what I’ll call structure options to give our audience a sense of how flexible this really is for those joining us. Maybe without the background and affordable housing. I do want to be clear, we’re not talking about tax credit financed affordable housing, whether it be section eight or section 42 or some other sort of public subsidy program.

We’re trying to make these projects work for workforce housing without using those programs. And I think that that’s a really important distinction because those programs are very inflexible. There’s a formula and a way that those projects have to work and a way that they have to be managed. Workforce housing, the models that we’re talking about in this program are much more flexible and I would say much more capable of being tailored to a healthcare organization, specific needs, specific workforce base, whether it be educational, whether it be staff, and really being able to deliver a product that the healthcare organization knows is going to meet what they’re trying to achieve. Could we talk a little bit about ground lease structure? So we have, what I find with a lot of our healthcare clients is on that topic of low cost land, right? Pillar number one, we often encounter a lot of reluctance to donate or just give away outright land. There may be a variety of reasons for that. A number of our healthcare organizations, many of them actually are religious ministries. There may be religious or ethical directives that would limit their ability to do that. There may be strategic reasons, long-term strategic reasons why they would not want to divest entirely of the land. Can you talk maybe Milton a little bit about how a ground lease helps to mitigate those concerns for a healthcare organization?

Milton Pratt: Sure. So a ground lease structure, we use this a lot in the public private partnerships that we do all across the country, whether it’s with housing authorities or with cities or with universities. And it’s a mechanism that literally, it is just that the partnership, let’s just say that will own the building improvements does enter into a long-term ground lease, 75 years, 50 years, whatever the right term is. So that one, the institution continues to have long-term control over what happens and who lives in this community. That’s one of the fundamental things that we like when we talk to our partners and early on in the engagements, we tell ’em we don’t need to own the land. That’s not a goal of ours. We just need to ensure that the land is provided to the project at low or nominal cost. And so if it’s a religious organization that is prohibited, let’s just say from donating land, they’re not donating the land, they’re investing it into a development and it’ll have a long-term ground lease and in 75 years theoretically they’ll get the land back with the building on top of it

Danielle Bergner: Then. So a master lease structure is a little bit different. So a masterly structure, and tell me if you think about it differently, Milton, but I think of a masterly structure first and foremost as a credit enhancement for the financing of a project. So this is where a healthcare organization would master lease just what it says, a number of residential units, whether it be an entire project, whether it be just a number of units within a project, but that the hospital itself would actually master lease enter into a master lease to secure rental stream for those units. And then those units are subsequently leased to employees through a property management arm, but the master tenant is the hospital or the healthcare organization itself. And so the benefit of that, there’s multiple benefits. So maybe you can talk a little bit about your success using that as a tool.

Milton Pratt: Yeah, so master releases, you’re right, they are a credit enhancement, but the thing to keep in mind is some hospitals may decide that they don’t want to have that obligation. They don’t want to have that long-term obligation to agree to master lease 200 units in this apartment community. And so we could do a development where they only master lease 50% of the units, and then we as a developer would have to ensure that the other 50% are able to be leased to the general public. Or maybe there’s a community benefit arrangement that only people that live in a specific neighborhood or work for specific other maybe partnering employers, stakeholders can live there. But again, because these deals are like snowflakes, we can do whatever we choose to do based on one of the financing that we’re trying to bring to the transaction as well as the goals of the institution, the hospital and the organization.

Danielle Bergner: Right. Another question that we field periodically from healthcare clients is the topic of joint venture ownership of projects. And without maybe getting into all of the stickier legal issues around joint venture housing projects involving healthcare organizations, maybe just talk a little bit about your experience and successes using that as a potential option.

Milton Pratt: Joint ventures normally exist or come about when a hospital says they want to be in the ownership structure so they can enjoy some of the financial benefit and makes sense on some transactions. But oftentimes hospitals don’t want to take on any of the guarantee risk. They don’t want to take on any of the obligation in the event that something bad happens like another covid pandemic and the units don’t get leased up. So joint ventures can be structured, but hospitals are already in the business. That’s tough and many times they don’t want to get in a residential apartment business, and that’s what they would be getting into. And oftentimes the boards don’t want to take on that kind of responsibility as well, but again, we can do it. We’re very flexible about our approach because it’s based on the goals of the universe, rather the goals of the hospital as well as what type of financial investments they want to make.

Danielle Bergner: I agree with that 100%. I think the idea of joint venture ownership always sounds attractive in theory when people think about it. The reality of it though, once you work through the legal and risk management issues, I think are very difficult for hospitals and boards to get their arms around, which is why my advice I would say pretty consistently to healthcare clients is do not try to be a housing developer. Try to find the best possible housing developer you can find to do that because that’s what they do. We did also talk a little bit Milton in our discussion about use of a nonprofit ownership intermediary. This would be where we bring a nonprofit organization into the ownership structure potentially. I mean, one of the upshots of that could be, it could help the tax exemption analysis depending on the jurisdiction that we’re in. It could also potentially open tax exempt bond financing as a potential financing option depending on the scale of the project and the financial assumptions being made in terms of rents and incomes of people living there. Is that a strategy that you’ve seen used in your work? And if so, what are your feelings about that?

Milton Pratt: Yes, that is a strategy that we’ve seen work. Oftentimes the hospital has a foundation and like many universities, they have their foundation. My alma mater, I was on the foundation board, and the foundation board was responsible for developing all of the on campus, but privately financed dormitory. So think of it in that fashion. So a hospital that has the foundation could be in the ownership structure. They could be the entity that owns the land and leases it to the partnership in order to get their real estate tax exemption. All of it comes down to figuring out what’s the most advantageous way to finance the project. And if we discover that because there’s a nonprofit foundation affiliated with the hospital, if they own the ground and the improvements, we can find a way to structure a transaction to make it work with private equity.

Danielle Bergner: Right. Milton, so I have a point here about at risk versus fee for service developer models. I think to me this falls under the heading of every deal is a snowflake. Some developers are not open to fee for service development models. I don’t know what your sentiment is about that, but I think for some hospitals they would rather pay for development services and potentially even own it and not have third party ownership up. Is that a possibility?

Milton Pratt: Absolutely. We can either be an fully at risk developer where we will go in, we will hire the general contractor, hire the architect, the civil engineers, design a community, present it to the hospital organization with their input. They have to be at the table, they have to be at the table in the beginning. We’ll need to conduct focus groups to understand who they expect to live here. We’ll have to figure out what types of amenities and services we need to have at this community because it’s still got to be an attractive community. People still have to want to live here. It’s going to be their home and it might be right across the street from their jobs. So it really needs to be competitive in the marketplace, but we can operate it as an at-risk developer or we can operate as a fee developer where maybe in the instance where the hospital is self-financing it, whether it’s through their foundation or through the hospital directly, and then we could be simply a developer who oversees the development, meaning we could do things like hire the, or we could simply manage the contractor and the architect and the engineer and put together the project.

We also operate as a property manager as well, and that’s one of the things that if I were a hospital, CEO, I would never try to get into the first the real estate residential development business, but the property management business as well because it’s very intensive and you have to have the experience to ensure that you do it well because you have to make sure that people are happy that are going to live in these communities. And so we have don’t have one set model. We can just operate across the spectrum based on the individual needs of the healthcare organization.

Danielle Bergner: I’m really glad you mentioned property management because every residential project that I’ve ever been involved in it succeeds or fails on property management. And property management in my experience is often overlooked. It might be kind of the last thing somebody thinks about. I would argue that property management needs to be on the list of priorities at the outset because it is the day-to-day interface between a hospital’s, the workers who are actually living there and this is their home. And so I always say, do not overlook property management, whether it’s the Michael’s organization or another third party qualified local management firm. There’s options for how you do it, but do not overlook it at the outset. You can design and construct the best project in the world, and if you don’t have property management, right, it can still not work.

Milton Pratt : Correct. One of the things we do, and as I said earlier, we’ve got about 3000 employees, 2,500 of them roughly are involved in the property management business. They’re taking care of our soldiers and sailors or military basis. They’re taking care of our seniors and senior communities. They’re taking care of affordable housing families and they’re taking care of students that are just going off to college for the first time. But we bring our property management team to the table day one. And the reason is because we aren’t just designing a building in a vacuum. We need to know what type of amenities and services, but we also need to know simple things like we need to make sure we use the right type of flooring so that it has long-term benefit. We need to make certain that we’re putting in the right types of closets and doors and furnishings and light fixtures.

And our property management people have the experience. They tell me, milk, do not use this type of a toilet device because it breaks or these type of light fixtures. We’ve had experiences with them over the last 20 years and if they say they’re going to last 10 years, but they only last three years, so they are an integral part of the development, but you have to bring ’em in the beginning. You can certainly farm it out if you choose to, if you’re a university that wants to do that or hospital that wants to do it. But I would tell you bring property management to the table. Your very first meeting with your developer. Ideally you want your developer and your property manager to be one organization like the Michael’s organization, but if that’s not the case, you want to make sure you have that input.

The other thing that’s important is compliance. And it isn’t compliance in the sense of a tax credit compliance or in the form of HUD compliance. It’s compliance to make sure that the right people are getting admitted into the community for leasing and ensuring that, again, it’s meeting the goals of the hospital. I talked to a school district actually that had developed some tax credit developments over the years and they realized initially they had, I don’t know, 80% of their employees living there, but over a long period of time, actually not a long period of time, four or five years, because families move on, people get promotions, people move out that they only had about 25% of the development filled with their current employees. So they were asking themselves, well, why did we do this? That’s not the situation you want to be in. You want to make sure that the property manager, again is admitting the right people leasing to the right families, and your employees are going to tell you one way or the other if they’re happy. And property management is really what makes it happen.

Danielle Bergner: I wholeheartedly agree. Residential property management is a really high touch business. It’s a really human business, and it’s very different than commercial property management. Commercial property management is not quite the high touch that residential is. It’s a lot of people management. It’s just a very, to my point, it’s a different world. So just because an organization has deep knowledge of facilities management does not mean that they are qualified to manage residential housing. It is apples and oranges, and I really could not agree with you more, Mel, when you talk about the need for that partnership upfront. The other reason, to your point, the other reason I like when the developer is also the project manager or the property manager is if you have to design and construct a building that you are then responsible for after it’s delivered, you look at the design and construction of that building a little bit differently

When there is a difference between management and design and construction. I know you’re laughing because you’ve probably seen this many times. I have too. But that disconnect creates, I mean, for a developer who isn’t managing the asset, they’re just not as invested in the long-term operation of the building. And so that would be another reason I would argue, to seek a development firm that is also capable of providing the high level of management that you want for your workforce.

Milton Pratt: I was laughing because of the natural tension between the developer who wants to build this beautiful community for the lowest possible number, and the property manager who wants to have the beautiful communities as well, but they wanted to have the highest possible services, amenities, fixtures, because they’re going to be there for the next 50 years taking care of this community, and they know the things that break. So we listen to them constantly in the beginning. We take feedback from them. We have a full design standard that we’ve applied across all of our companies, all the different housing types. But the information that went into our design standard, it came from real time experience from the property manager. They’re the ones that tell us, do not use carpet in certain types of housing, do not use this type of vinyl flooring. And that information is what we’ve created or what we’ve used to put into our design standards that we apply across the company. And it is critically important to the success of any development.

Danielle Bergner: Agree. So our next slide here is kind of naturally transitioning into what should hospitals and healthcare organizations be looking for? So say you have an organization, they have a champion or multiple champions, they’re ready to go. They know that they cannot do this internally. They know that they need to find a partner. Given your years of experience in development, what do you think of this list? I’ve kind of pulled out four concepts that I would be looking for on behalf of a healthcare client in an RFP process. But as you look at these, the one that I always come to sometimes first is mission match. Because healthcare organizations in many cases, not in all cases, but in many cases are nonprofit mission-based organizations themselves, they care deeply about their workforce, their caregivers. They want to make sure that they do right by them in undertaking a project like this. And I tell our healthcare clients just this is so important to have mission because every project has its ups and downs, right? You have to have a high level of trust in who you’ve selected. I would always advocate for asking for referrals, but on these other items, I’m curious, when you look at this list, what kind of jumps out at you?

Milton Pratt: Yeah, this is a great list. Let me start by saying these partnerships that we create, they are like marriages and that the housing are like the kids. That’s a great analogy. I think you want to find a partner that has experience both in the market rate sector as well as the affordable, because we call it workforce housing, but at Michael’s we like to call it attainable housing. And so we want to be a thought leader in this industry, this attainable housing, workforce housing space. So you have to have somebody that has both of those types of experience because you got a little bit of the components of a public-private partnership, like some of the work we do with cities, counties, and housing authorities. But then you also have to have the market discipline and the ability to raise private capital and equity to bring into these transactions.

So that’s thing number one. Track record. Michael’s has been around for 50 years, more than 50 years actually. We’re a privately held business. I’ve been here 20 years. The people I work for, they’ve been here 30 and 35 years. So you need somebody that’s got a track record and a history with workforce housing. We’ve done a number, and you also need to make sure that you do check references and you go out and you kick the tires, go out and look at any one of our communities or military basis where we have housing or any of our student housing, and don’t call me, just go out and take a look at it. Do the same thing. If you’re talking to a development partner, you want someone that has some national expertise because they’ll bring more ideas and creativity and innovation to your project, but you also want somebody that understands that all real estate is local, so you need to have local partners, whether that’s in the form of civil engineers and architects and other consultants.

And mission match is critical because just like in every marriage, you’re going to occasionally have some good days and some bad days. And when you have those bad days, the type of organization that you are working with is going to make a huge difference. I know from experience that we’ve had communities that we’re in development and interest rate change and other things in the market, construction pricing goes up and you want a partner that’s going to tell you the truth, good or bad, and it’s going to work through and create solutions, not just throw out a problem and say, we’ve got a budget problem, give us 5 million more dollars. No, we’ve got a budget problem, and here’s some of critical decisions we have to make. We can do fewer units. We can not heavily amenitize them with a pool and at tennis court and a pickleball court, we have to find ways to have the same type of cultural fit.

Now, I know oftentimes when we are competing in an RFP situation, I always tell the partner, I’m going to listen to you and I’m going to figure out solutions to help you meet your goals. But at the end of the day, somebody might walk in here and say, they can build the building for less than I can, but are they going to be there? In 50 years, we’ve been a partner to the military, to cities, to HUD housing authorities, and literally we’ve been there for 40 and 50 years. And then of course, property management, which is the customer side of this, you need to make sure as a hospital that you have someone that has tremendous experience with customer service and has an ability to connect with the residents that are going to be living in these communities because they’re the ones that are going to make this project a success. If we can’t keep occupancy at 99, a hundred percent because the property manager isn’t doing their job, then there you go. We’re not going to be successful. We’re not going to help the hospital meet its goals of recruiting and retaining the best and the brightest people.

Danielle Bergner: Is there anything, Milton, that you can think of that I haven’t pulled out here that other things just from, if not hospital projects that you’ve worked on, other types of workforce, housing projects, other things that would be good for our audience to have on their list to keep an eye open for?

Milton Pratt: Wow, that’s a big question. No, that’s a great question. I should say, I’ll go back to one of the things I started out talking about in the beginning, which is you want to find a partner that’s going to listen to you. You want to bring a partner in and let them show you their team and let you find out, let the hospital find out about their organization. You want to definitely go out and look at some of the communities that they’ve done, and you want to make sure that you’ve got a partner that is going to, as I said, be there on those tough days. And again, there will be tough days, but on a positive note, I know there are other hospitals out there that are out talking to developers, talk to two or three developers and don’t have it be such a rigid, formal process. Just talk to developers, talk to the people that they worked with over the years, and figure out how they solve problems and created solutions.

Danielle Bergner: I love that. So before we wrap up, I always like to leave our audience with some practical, some just very quick practical takeaways. One, identify that champion or champions that are going to lead this project forward in your organization. Engage outside, help early if possible, to assist evaluating potential developer partners. Certainly in project structuring, there are always compliance issues in anything healthcare touches. Always be sure to pull in help early on those issues. Housing is very different than healthcare, and we work with wonderful, wonderful people around the country, but housing, it’s a different vocabulary. It’s a different world, frankly. And so don’t be afraid to pull in help on the front end. Select a qualified developer partner if you’re interested in creating new units to serve your caregivers and select a third party residential property management firm. If it’s not the developer itself, we’ve talked about real good reasons why it should be, but if it can’t be for some reason, making sure that you’ve got the right management team on the front end to make sure that the project is a success.

Milton Pratt: I concur with all of those. I’ll go back to the champion because that champion is the person that’s going to provide the executive leadership to get through these developments. It takes a number of years. So from the moment I get an opportunity to meet that champion at a hospital until the first family moves in to a house or into an apartment, it might be three or four years because you’ve got to go through a planning process and a listening process. You’ve got to go and then design the building, then you got to build the building, and then ultimately, you got to move the families into the community. And that’s why you need that champion to help drive the bus, to help you get to meet your ultimate goal of taking care of your caregivers, recruiting the best and the brightest to your organization, and ultimately being the best hospital you possibly can be.

Danielle Bergner: Thank you, Milton. I would invite everyone who joined us today to visit our website. We publish all of our webinars, all of our articles on our website. There are hundreds and hundreds of healthcare related of publications there. They’re all really great material. I’ve included our email addresses here. Please feel free to email Milton or myself if with any questions you think of.

Empowering Primary Care: Real Estate Innovation for Value-Based Health Care

Empowering Primary Care: Real Estate Innovation for Value-Based Health Care

In this episode of the Health Care Real Estate Advisor podcast, host Joel Swider chats with Dr. Leonard Fromer, President of Healthcare Initiatives at Turner Impact Capital. Dr. Fromer shares his journey from family physician to health care innovation and explains how his firm uses market-driven strategies to design and build health care facilities in underserved communities. The discussion highlights the shift toward value-based care—focusing on quality, prevention, patient experience, and provider well-being—and dives into the challenges and opportunities of creating sustainable, patient-centered real estate infrastructure.

Podcast Participants

Joel Swider

Hall Render Attorney

Dr. Leonard Fromer

President of Healthcare Initiatives at Turner Impact Capital

Joel Swider: Hello and welcome to the Healthcare Real Estate Advisor podcast. I’m Joel Swider and I’m an attorney with Hall Render the nation’s largest healthcare focused law firm. I’m excited today to be speaking with Dr. Leonard Fromer, president of Healthcare Initiatives at Turner Impact Capital. Dr. Fromer is a nationally recognized expert in the areas of primary care, practice, redesign and transformation, quality improvement and outcomes measurement, vaccine compliance, quality improvement, and health system reform. He also served on the American Medical Association’s Commission on Healthcare Disparities and as the executive medical director of the Group Practice Forum, he’s been a practicing physician for over 28 years. Dr. F Fromer, thanks so much for joining me.

Dr. Fromer:  Well, you are welcome. It’s great to be with you and I dunno if others say good morning, good evening, good afternoon, wherever people listening in this modern technological world, but happy to be here.

Swider:  Well, thanks. Before we delve into Turner Impact Capital and its business model, I’d like to hear a little bit more about you and how you ended up in your current role. I know you went to both undergraduate and medical school at SUNY. Are you from New York originally?

Dr. Fromer:   I am born in the Bronx, grew up in the city, long Island. Went upstate for undergraduate in Albany, SUNY Albany, and then down to New York City for medical school. And then, I don’t want to use the word escaped, but I would say migrated west to do my residency training program and 45 years later still here in the west coast.

Swider:  Got it. Okay. What led you to become a doctor and how did you decide to specialize in family medicine?

Dr. Fromer: Great questions. In my case, it was pretty straightforward. I had a great role model. My family doctor when I was growing up, made house calls middle of the night in the winter many times from myself and my brothers when we needed him. He was a great role model. I don’t know how many people listening to this podcast remember or are of a vintage to remember. Marcus Wellbe, MD on television, the quintessential family doctor. The show ran on TV for about 10 years almost, I think, and he made an influence for sure on people of my generation. If you were thinking about going into medicine that the thing to do was family medicine, to take care of the whole person to address the social impact issues that people lived with and made a difference in their lives and their health. So when I went into medical school, there happened to be a kind of very experimental type program right off the bat, first year medical school, allowing those of us who were interested to do a primary care rotation that was unique.

Dr. Fromer:  Most medical schools who didn’t do clinical rotations until your third year, and then it was really looking at every specialty in medicine. Trying to find the one that you thought would be a great fit as a student when you’re going through medical school to get your MD degree. Well, in our case, in my medical school, we had this elective that we could take and I was lucky enough to win the lottery. They only took a handful of people out of a big class, and that primary care experience really solidified my desire to be a family doctor.

Swider:  Where was that? Dr. Fromer

Dr. Fromer:   SUNY Downstate, now known as the health science Center at Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York.

Swider:  Well, neat. Well, I know you’re currently the president of Healthcare Initiatives at Turner Impact Capital, and I wanted to give our listeners a sense of what Turner Impact Capital does. I think the business model is so compelling and cool. Could you give us a sense of that?

Dr. Fromer:  Yeah, we are very unique, so it takes a little bit of explaining to look through the lens of how we approach healthcare and making things better and solving some of the big challenges our system, our healthcare system has in our country. First of all, we look at that through that lens and realize we don’t have a healthcare system in America. We have a sick care system and we need a great sick care system. We need to rescue people when they’re sick, no question about it. And we need to be the best in the world at that. And for most part, when people get access, we are great at that, but we’re not great at prevention. We’re not great at keeping people healthy and well. We’re not great at getting access to people, especially in communities that struggle to get healthcare access. Our system is very expensive.

Dr. Fromer: It’s the most expensive in the world by far. And when Turner was started, the founders, the principals who started Turner, particularly Bobby Turner, knew that the real critical legs of the stool that we build our lives on and our communities on really revolve around three things. They revolve around housing, affordable, high quality housing. They revolve around education, affordable, high quality education, and they revolve around healthcare. So those three points, education, housing, healthcare is what Turner is really all about. Within those three things, in order to be able to scale how we fix each of those and the challenges we face, it is our mission and theory that you can only scale and really address these gigantic issues in a model that uses market forces to be able to bring resources and capital to solving and particularly healthcare, I can speak about most widely, to solve the access issue.

So what we do in each of those three verticals in our company is we are the infrastructure component. We are the developer and builder of facilities and infrastructure to empower partners that we have in each of those three areas. In healthcare, we partner with healthcare organizations in education, we partner with charter public school operating companies. We own and operate the housing facilities that we have across the country, but we partner, for instance in healthcare with healthcare organizations who are driven by delivering quality. We build them, we develop and build for them a build to suit solution to empower them to deliver primary care in underserved communities. That’s our target and we can get into what that means, but in its core, at its core, that’s what we do.

Swider:  That’s great, great background. I think one of the things that strikes me so much about that model is, and I’ve listened to interviews with Bobby Turner as well, and he talks about the importance of having a market-based really sustainable model and how that is different. Not necessarily that reliance on government grants or something is a bad thing, but in many of those areas that you described, education, housing, healthcare, many of the developers that are doing that are very reliant on incentives or grants or those types of things that could go away tomorrow if there’s a change in law. Of course in healthcare we’ve got the reimbursement structure, which is always going to be present, but I mean how does that model and sort of the market based approach differ from some of the others that maybe you’ve seen, and obviously your lens is on a healthcare side, but even more broadly.

Dr. Fromer:  Yeah, great question. So I can kind of tell the story through healthcare and it’s really the story that you can spread to the other verticals. We have housing and education and it becomes obvious how we’ve designed the way we operate and how our model and business finance model flows to high quality clinical model. In healthcare, you can substitute in high quality housing, you can substitute in partnering with high quality education providers. What we do is as a partner with a clinical enterprise providing outpatient primary care, we seek to find communities that struggle to get good access to healthcare services and those communities tend to be urban dense, racially and ethnically diverse, low to median socioeconomic status and have been designated either a medically underserved area or a health provider shortage area by the government. And what that then filters out at the bottom, what comes out when we do all that, our clinical organizations that we do deep dives into diligence around looking for their quality and that they look at healthcare and say, the present and future way to do that is a value-based model of reimbursement, not a volume-based model.

Because when you align all those forces of rewarding high quality at reasonable cost, that’s exactly what value is in healthcare. It’s quality divided by cost, and you pay attention as a result. If you’re being rewarded for delivering high value, then as a provider of care that are seeing patients, the organizations that are seeing patients in the facilities that we develop and build for them, they’re paying attention to prevention, they’re paying attention to the importance of primary care. They’re paying attention to being driven by what we call the quadruple aim in healthcare in our country. One, how do the patients do with their health outcomes? We call it two, how satisfied are the patients and their families with the care they’re getting and the way they get it. Patient satisfaction, technically known as patient experience. Three, what’s the population dynamics around the people you’re responsible for seeing as a healthcare provider? So population health dynamics around metrics of key performance indicators. How are you doing with the population you take care of? Then drill down to each patient because of that. How are you doing with metrics around keeping people well, frail patients with chronic problems, keeping them stable, et cetera. Embedded in that obviously is access issues,

Getting to see your providers, how much time do you have with them when you see them, and then the fourth part of the quadruple is the experience of the care team from the doctors in the white coats, the PAs, the nurse practitioners, the staff that supports all of them, the team in the offices, how do they feel at the end of the day, if they’re not feeling great about what they’re doing, recruitment and retention is going to be really difficult. So putting all that together, you have a value-based reimbursement model. We can get into what that means, but that’s what we do. We designed our model to be able to let what I just described in the quadruple aim, thrive to motivate all of those four elements to be great.

Swider: Yeah. Let’s explore that a little bit. Dr. Fromer, what is the business model for the healthcare facilities fund at Turner?

Dr. Fromer:  Yep. We start with the concept that we raise money from investors who of mind, whether it’s an individual high net worth individual or family. A bank could be an endowment pension fund, could be a university endowment, a foundation or whatever the shape and form of the investor looks like. What’s common to all our investors is they care about the same things we care about as a mission to serve the underserved, to pay attention to the outcomes that need to be improved, to give people great access to great healthcare. They want to return on their investment, but they also want to be shown, and we do have to do this with them and based on our operating documents, we show them the impact that their investment is making by pooling all the investments we get for the fund, for my healthcare fund for instance, and then being able to provide up to a hundred percent of the capital needed as a developer builder to create the infrastructure.

That is where the healthcare partners are going to be seeing the patients and taking care of them that that’s the basis of the model. We can provide up to a hundred percent of the capital in return for that. They become our tenant and the landlord tenant relationship where we buy the property that they’re going to see the patients in. We build the building, we hand over the keys and the day we hand over the keys, their rent starts in a long-term lease, usually 15 to 20 years, two five-year options kind of would be pretty average for how the timeline looks in terms of something you said a few minutes ago, making sure it’s sustainable and long-term in the community, the presence will be there, that it’s not a quick turnaround and then patients don’t have access. Again, it’s a long-term relationship for stability and success in the community for that healthcare provider, the basis for how the rent is calculated is very transparently looking at the total budget for the project.

So we would have a healthcare provider in a market. You’re in Indianapolis, so let’s say Indianapolis. We have a healthcare provider that says we want to do primary care. Here’s the general part of the metropolitan service area of Indianapolis that we want to do it in. We go out, our real estate division finds maybe five to 10 properties that look like they would be perfect for what size is needed, whether it’s a ground up or an adaptive reuse project. We do both, but we present those options to the healthcare provider and they pick the one they like the best. We negotiate with whoever owns the property and what’s on that property to buy it. Once we buy it, we then work with our healthcare partner. Either they provide the architecture and design people or we can provide it to them if they want us to, but essentially we design and build to suit the facility all in the cost of the property, the pre-construction cost, the hard and soft cost of construction, whatever that total is is the basis for the rent, and then we give them a purchase option if they want.

I’d say about 75% of the projects we do in healthcare, the entity that we partner with buys exercises, their purchase option. It’s a pre-agreed upon purchase price. It’s not fair market value, so it’s a great deal for them if they want to buy it and own the property and turn their rent receipts into debt payments, mortgage payments, a lot of the organizations, I’m sure we’ll talk about it in a few minutes, are not-for-profit enterprises and healthcare and they have access to low cost debt financing, bond issues and things. So they use that to finance the purchase generally, usually around four years, in three or four years into the operating project operating and they’re seeing patients and they’re at full flow of patients after a few years and that’s when they want to exercise that option. Again, that option is based on, and that prearranged price is based on the total project cost and that’s a transparent, they see every line of the budget to get to that total project cost.

Swider: That’s interesting. And so supposing that the tenant does not exercise the purchase option, I guess then Turner Impact Capital would remain the landlord or do you sell at some point or how does that work? And also well separately, I’m curious who manages the facilities as well.

Dr. Fromer: Yeah, so great question. So these are triple net leases. We remain the owner and landlord. We have a limit on that. We operate as a reit, like a reit, and it was our closed end fund. So nine or 10 years in, we’ve got to return the capital to the investors. So the life cycle of each fund is that if they don’t exercise their purchase option, then we go to the healthcare REIT market for instance, and make the property available and someone buys it and we step out of the transaction at that point. But critically important, as I’m sure you’re kind of thinking about it already, when that person or entity who buys the property from us does that, they inherit everything in that lease, nothing changes for the healthcare operator. All of the terms stay the same. The length of terms stays the same. The rent’s already been put on in writing in the lease document. This lease document, by the way that I’m talking about from the beginning, we’re talking about 75 to a hundred page document. It’s very, very comprehensive, but all of that stays the same. The purchaser inherits that. So their triple net, as I said, 15 to 20 years, two five-year options is kind of standard.

We’re flexible, somewhat interesting. Sometimes people ask, well, do you always own the property? The answer is almost always, we have to have control of the property long-term to guarantee sustainability and permanence in the community for the patients and the impact we want to make. So occasionally there will be a situation where because of who owns the land, a government entity might own the land. There might be things that happened in the past that make the land not for sale, but the owner of the property would be willing to do a long-term ground lease so we can do a long-term ground lease. I’m talking like 50 to a hundred years in lieu of buying it.

Swider: Okay, and who then manages it during that time that you’re the landlord?

Dr. Fromer:  Yes, so we do and that management, again, it’s triple net. So for everyday functions, we have a division of property management that we have people here. I’m looking at them right outside office who are getting calls about what’s happening at the property and making sure everything that needs to be done is done from repairs to maintenance to we’re real hands-on with making sure that the systems in the building are up to snuff, kept high quality. When we buy a property, first and foremost, we look at the infrastructure systems in the building and make sure if it’s a building and often they are that are more than a decade old, for instance, what state is the roof in? We’ll frequently put on a new roof before it’s needed, but knowing that the one that’s on there is going to be needed in a few years, so we’ll replace it at the time we purchase the property. Air conditioning and heating, HVAC systems, things like that. But we have a group of folks who are our property people and they’re working every day fielding calls from our tenants and dealing with property specific issues.

Swider: Sure. So I saw on your website that since inception of this fund, which was in 2017, that Turner’s healthcare funds have developed or invested in 42 of the state-of-the-art community, healthcare facilities all around the country really. I know you mentioned that in some cases early on you will have a partner, a healthcare provider that might tell you, Hey, I want to be in this particular market. But then you said you had furnished them with maybe a few different options for site selection. How do you choose, I mean, I know that’s maybe part of the community impact of this investment in general, but how do you then narrow it?

Dr. Fromer:  Do you mean the sites within a submarket or how do we pick the markets?

Swider: Well, maybe both, I guess maybe, yeah, if you don’t mind, talk about both.

Dr. Fromer:  Sure. So starting with the markets, we look at every city, coast to coast. As I said, these generally tend to end up being urban projects just because of the characteristics that are needed to make it work in a market model, particularly population density.

So we would look at a market and think about what is healthcare like in that market? What is needed? Where are they with the movement from volume to value reimbursement in that market in general. There are characteristics around that that we can investigate and basically we try and match up the markets we want to be in with that set of characteristics of market, population, density, demographics, racial and ethnic diversity, socioeconomic conditions. We go where there’s need and we choose the submarkets within that based upon what the healthcare partner we work with, where they want to be in that market. We don’t speculate in the sense that we won’t go and find locations, markets, and locations and then go to the healthcare providers in that market and say, who’s interested? We respond to a provider organization in a market that says, we need you to build something for us.

Here’s where we want to be. Present us with opportunities, facility opportunities, and that’s pretty much how it unfolds When we kind of zoom in and narrow down to one or maybe two or three locations that a provider might say, those are the ones we want or that’s the one we want. We start to do a real deep dive into both financial and clinical diligence. So we have parallel teams doing diligence on the finances of the clinical provider organization, looking at really extensively at their balance sheets, assets, cash on hand. I mean, there’s just a lot of metrics that we go into On the clinical side, we look at their quality as reported in various local, state and federal reports that they have to file based on the kind of facility they are. We look at their quadruple aim performance essentially, and before we will go thumbs up on a particular project, our investment committee gets a very extensive report on the financial and clinical diligence outcomes, what we’ve learned, and then we have a process for that committee to vote on whether or not we’re going to do that project.

Swider: That makes sense. One thing I noticed was that most of the facilities that are featured on your website are either PACE program of all inclusive care for the elderly facilities, FQHCs, federally qualified health centers, or their Medicare Advantage facilities. Could you give us a sense of each of these programs and why you’re focused on these types of patients or these types of facilities?

Dr. Fromer:  Yeah, outstanding question. I think when we started and we developed a thesis and mission for the fund, we didn’t know it was going to be those kind of facilities. What we did know was we wanted to build for organizations that wanted to take care of patients who were struggling to get access, who were frail, who had chronic problems, who were being rescued at very high costs, typically in the submarkets that we would look at and say, wow, there’s people. Everybody’s using the emergency room for their primary care needs and that’s not going to work. Right? And you end up kind of landing on where are the programs that we have in the country that we can solve the challenges of in terms of access, in terms of quality, in terms of cost and make a difference, really make an impact on key indicators of how people are doing in healthcare with their quadruple aim.

It turns out that, for instance, the PACE program, all inclusive care for the elderly, every project we do has to have a value-based reimbursement component to it by our need and definition. That’s our motivation, and we looked at the landscape and said, wow, one of the most prominent along the spectrum of moving from volume to value big time is pace, because anybody who knows PACE from the GetGo, it’s a combined federal and state program. I think 34 states have PACE now, but when you do a PACE center, the care that’s provided in the clinic part of the building and the services provided in the social impact adult daycare part of the building, that’s what PACE is for people who are not very familiar with it. Imagine a building with both a medical primary care clinic and an adult day health center and then physical therapy. Most of ’em have dental eye care, a lot of social services.

It is an alternative. The pay centers are alternatives to a nursing home for patients who would otherwise need a nursing home if they didn’t have the support of going to the pay center and getting those services. All of that is paid for in a capitated way, global capitation per member per month value-based payment, and that attracted us to that right off the bat. It was like, wow, that is exactly what we want to see. That within a budget, the provider has to get great quadruple aim results and show that they’re making an impact. Inherently in the program, they have to file reports with the government entities that they get licensed by and are regulated by on delivering great care, great outcomes, great access, paces of the manual of what you have to do for the patients is very thick and in essence, they have to provide transportation for the patients.

The PACE operator has to provide transportation from home to the center and back, has to provide a hundred percent of the global healthcare needs of the patient from primary care to specialty care. Everything is included in that monthly capitation they got to provide when they come to the pay center, two meals that day for them, nobody sleeps there. Patients go home every night. It’s a community-based program. So we were attracted because of the characteristics of that, particularly the value-based capitation component, very qualified community health centers. Again, it is an amazing program that America has to give access to all patients who walk through the door. That’s the basis of what they agree to do to become federally qualified and be a community health center. Any patient who walks through the door gets care regardless of their ability to pay. So we have the underserved getting access.

We have an organizational structure in the country that provides care in a setting where there is a prospective payment part of that system that came about when Obamacare was signed into law and a comprehensive nature of providing in these community clinics, primary care services, dental services, right, eyecare services, things that we look to that we think translate into a great value-based proposition for people to get care. And in this case, in many, I would say overwhelmingly in the FQHC world, it’s taxpayers dollars through one way or shape or another that are funding it and getting value for the money that the country puts into it. It’s a fantastic program. There is a big, big need for infrastructure because when you look at the program, a lot of those centers are cramped, they’re too small, they’re stuffed with patients, they’re over capacity and bricks and mortar that’s out there to make do for what patients need and communities need.

There’s a mismatch. So it turns out to be, again, what we want to do, the Medicare Advantage program, if people kind of know the term but maybe not very familiar with how it works, it’s again a value-based payment model part of Medicare. So for patients who choose to be in Medicare Advantage, we see communities that have the population density, that have over patients, over 65 dense population, and the ability of the program in those communities, not the ability, the need to have infrastructure to see those patients in. So the Medicare Advantage program is again, a per member per month fee that the government pays to private insurance plans who then have to build a network of providers for those patients who sign up for that and that payment, and we should talk about this with our remaining time, the level at which the value payment occurs is something that people don’t stop and think about all the time, and they should because you could have a value-based payment per member per month going from the government in Medicare Advantage, for instance, to the health plan. But then how is the health plan paying the providers who see the patients who sign up as members with that plan,

Are they paying them a fee for service for each thing, a volume-based payment, or are they turning that around and after the health plan gets its administrative cost and profit, are they turning it around and paying to the providers a per member per month value based payment or not?

Swider: Yeah, I never thought about that.

Dr. Fromer: Yeah.

Swider: What do you see? I mean, do you see both?

Dr. Fromer:  It is definitely in the country. The footprint is both ways, but we seek to build Medicare Advantage centers for provider organizations to see patients when they get paid, the provider gets paid a capitation payment. That’s what we prefer because we think it really organizes all of the incentives in the right direction. As long as somebody’s paying attention to quality, quality within that per member per month budget, that’s when magic happens. Prevention happens. Efforts are made every day to have the care team create a care plan. Again, it’s frail. Elderly patients in Medicare Advantage, for instance, low income, frail, elderly is who’s the core kind of patient that are in the facilities that we build in these communities and that they track metrics that we ask them. It’s in the lease that they sign with us when we build the center that they have reporting requirements to show us key performance indicator metrics that they are delivering on that quadruple aim.

So we track things like FaceTime with providers, frequency of appointments, metrics around how easy it is to get access either live or on a screen or through other technology, but that they have great access, they get great outcomes, that the patient satisfaction and experience scoring is terrific and that the staff loves to work there. At the end of the day, they feel great about what they did. So you put all that together and it’s a set of metrics like things like how often do patients at a particular facility we’ve built that the patients cared for there, how often do they end up in the hospital and how many bed days per thousand per year, per thousand patients per year do they generate against a standard of excellence? And we looked at that very carefully and thoroughly. How many times as a patient who has to end up in the hospital for something that happened in that Medicare advantage population, how many times after they get discharged do they get readmitted?

So what’s the readmission rate? There’s a standard for that called 30 day all cause readmissions, and what is it for the entity that we built the site for against for that county, for instance, what’s the average, and I’m proud to say that are key performance indicator metrics are they knock the socks off of the competition, let’s put it that way. They all do. Great. So that’s kind of how we ended up in those types of facilities, and I’m really proud to say that when COD hit great example of a metric, the PACE providers that we built facilities for had an average of one third, the number of cases of Covid and one third, the number of deaths that the same population acuity level of patients had in nursing homes. We had one provider who won a national award. They had one 10th the number of cases and deaths. So making a difference, making an impact, changing the lives of people in the communities they live in.

That’s really neat. I’ve listened to some of your other interviews that you’ve given and read about you, and I know that you’ve been a champion and really kind of an early adopter for this value-based care, the model that you’re describing and your work at the A MA and A A FP and elsewhere, taking a little bit more of a real estate spin on that, and I know it’s sort of been a transition over the course of years and decades from volume to value, and I think we’re continue to move down that path, but can you think about how that might drive that value-based care model might drive healthcare facilities investment maybe in a new direction or in a particular way?

Oh, absolutely. So I can give you examples. We’re proud that we were chosen to present how we build to empower prevention in those facilities. We were chosen to provide a session at the national meeting of the Pace Association, national Pace Association a few months ago. Room was packed and it was a panel presentation that we did on how do you innovate in building these facilities that really does make a difference. So a few examples, the whole idea of patient-centered, team-based collaborative care versus the world of volume-based care where there tends to be this kind of jet pilot type model of the doctor zooming into an exam room, tell me what’s wrong. Within eight minutes, hearing an interrupting the patient and trying to get to the diagnosis and recommending something and zooming out to the next patient gives way in a value-based patient-centered team care collaboration process to needs that of how you literally build the bricks and mortar, right?

The spaces that you allot for team meetings to happen, the communication systems, that internal communication systems. Imagine a pace center where there’s a medical clinic and patients come to that center, they’re delivered to the center, they have the transportation and 10 people get off the van and they all have appointments in the clinic that day, but they’re also there and they’re going to be there for about maybe five hours and they’re going to have two meals and they’re going to be in the socialization side of the adult daycare side of the building. Plus they got to do physical therapy at some point. And oh, by the way, it’s the day the dentist comes in and they want to do a prevention cleaning and see the dentist for prophylaxis and oh, by the way, they busted their glasses and they have to go sit by the optometry optical side of what’s in the building.

So building all these components and then tying them all together with things like low voltage systems that pick up and know exactly where the patient is up to the second every second of the day when they’re in the building. So that staff is not walking around wasting time going, where is Mr. Smith? We got to find him. He’s got an appointment and now the team is waiting in the clinic. Putting all that together requires an infrastructure, keeping the visual and auditory parts of the technology. HIPAA compliant requires things to be built a certain way. Confidentiality, security, virtual visits. A lot of places in healthcare will just say, well, anybody with a computer screen can do a virtual visit with a patient or their family. Well, yes, that’s true, but if you really want to do a high quality version of that, it’s got to be done with sound isolation and it’s got to be done with visual isolation so other people can’t see and hear what’s going on, and you got to give the team the ability to do that virtual visit with the patient and or family that requires rooms to be a certain way, sound isolation to be a certain way.

You have flow, you have to design the way the clinic looks and where it is in the building relative to the kitchen and where people are going to eat. And then you start thinking about, well, what about the patients in pace who have a cognitive disorder, mild cognitive disorder or worse, and how do we take care of them so that there’s a therapeutic environment in the building actually starting in the vans that bring them to the building so that we help with addressing their dementia issues, their mild to moderate dementia issues. There’s perimeter control issues that we build into those systems, the technology systems so that wander management is optimized, keeping people safe, but also security of bad actors coming into the building. We keep people safe. So all of that goes into the design elements of the construction from the beginning of the design. I’m kind of really proud to say that of all the developers you’ll find doing healthcare facility development, there aren’t a lot. There are probably less than a few. We being one of them that has a healthcare experienced team in the design process, right,

Swider: Like a clinical,

Dr. Fromer:   Yeah. I mean, me being a physician and my position in the development when I was speaking with the original principles of Turner and they said, we want you to be president of healthcare, and I literally said, are you guys crazy? I don’t know anything about real estate finances and that. They said, you’ll learn and we will surround you with people who know that, but we need the clinical value-based knowledge and excellence that you can bring to it. And we do that from the beginning of the design process. I sit in on those design meetings with the architects right at the get go and the client who’s going to be working in that facility, so form follows function.

Swider:  Yeah. Yeah. That’s a huge value add.

Dr. Fromer:  Yeah.

Swider: With the last couple of minutes we have left, I wanted to ask you, what do you view as some of your biggest challenges and opportunities right now?

Dr. Fromer: Well, anybody who’s involved in real estate, whether it’s healthcare or whatever it is, especially healthcare, there is drama every day, every day. Drama is a challenge, but also strategic drama is a challenge right now, the big challenge strategically is there’s a lot of turmoil happening with funding of programs that are a significant part of the patient population that we take care of in most of our facilities. I’m speaking of Medicare, Medicaid, I’m speaking about federal funding with the new administration, so much has been flying around and up in the air day by day, hour by hour. That turmoil translates to problematic decision making, let’s say in the industry that everybody is kind of stuck. It’s like, what’s going to happen? When’s the smoke going to clear? Well, there’s more smoke every day that’s happening. So that analogy is tragic here in Southern California from the fires that we’ve just had with clearing smoke.

Maybe it is something telling there in the analogy, but that’s a challenge on a day-to-day basis. The biggest challenge is we have, when you build a healthcare facility, for instance, pays an FQHC, a lot of jurisdictions in their zoning laws have nothing in them about things like pace. It’s silent. Is it a medical clinic? Is it an adult daycare center? That’s what their zoning address is. But then you walk in and say, well, we’re going to have both in the same building and they don’t know where to put us to get zoned properly and get permits, and that’s a challenge. I will tell you what is also a challenge on a day-to-day basis, things like parking requirements, big challenge in terms of having fitting jurisdiction requirements ratios for a number of parking spaces for the size of the building. Again, if you look at pace, nobody arrives by car except the staff, but then they ask you how many people are going to be in the building? Well, there’s probably upwards of a hundred or more in a typical pay center in a given day, but all of the patients are arriving, almost all are arriving by the vans

And not vehicles. So how do you approach a jurisdiction and say, because of that, therefore the parking ratio requirements for the medical clinic that’s in the building are very different than a typical doctor’s office, for instance, or a clinic. So we work through all of that every day. I think the biggest challenge strategically is which way the winds are blowing with value-based care. The movement to that and the federal funded and state funded programs of Medicare and Medicaid and how that’s going to change or not, what’s going to happen with regulations around that as well as statutory changes. Those are the things we really struggle with and deal with. Everybody’s got challenges with the cost of healthcare. We think the real strategic future in controlling costs and improving quality is primary care. Access to primary care in communities will make a world of difference for the better and value-based payment to the provider level, not just to the health plan covering the patient level, but value-based payment straight through to the provider level really is the best hope we have for aligning forces to move us towards a well care system and not a sick care system.

Swider: Yeah, I can only imagine that’s been rewarding for you to see as a physician, as a family physician and having really walked that walk over a number of years to see that continue. It’s really cool. Last question and I’ll let you go, but how do you measure success? And I mean that both professionally as well as personally,

Dr. Fromer:  I’ll tell you my favorite anecdote, but it really can be expanded to how we should be measuring success. When I was in training in my family medicine residency, the man who started the program retired after I was in my second year. He was in his seventies. He was a family doc. He had spent his whole life taking care of people when he started the program and people said to him at his retirement dinner, what made you start a family medicine residency after a lifetime of taking care of patients and being well-known, and you could have sat back and gone fishing and blah, blah, blah. And he chuckled and he said, well, it took me 70 years to figure it out, but as a doctor with a white coat on in an exam room, I can help maybe 30 people a day, give or take. But if I can do something that will empower, enable hundreds of other people to become doctors and do a great job, thousands of other people, then I’m helping exponentially more patients, and that has stuck with me my whole life, and he’s right in his way.

It was training doctors to go out and be primary care excellence forces in the community to do that, to be doctors who do that. In my case, we have about 150,000 people in the facilities we’ve already built, and we’re still building more so by proxy, we’re making it possible for those people to get access to great care, and they’re people who are suffering from the disparities of our current system because of where they live, because of how much money is made by their family, because of the color of their skin, their ethnicity. These are disparities that should not exist, but we have them and addressing that. That’s really a driving force and measurement of success. If we can address those disparities and help people get a fair shake for what they’re entitled to, they’re guaranteed by no disparities rate, quality rate access, reasonable cost to whoever’s paying the bill. I mean, that’s what healthcare should be about.

Swider: Yeah. Well, Dr. Fromer, thank you so much. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation and I wish you the best of success and thanks for joining me.

Dr. Fromer:  Thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate it.

 

Growing Health Care Systems through Private Equity, with David Morlock

Growing Health Care Systems through Private Equity, with David Morlock

David Morlock, a managing director at Cain Brothers, shares his unique journey from health care executive to investment banker in this conversation with host Rubin Pusha. Reflecting on Cain’s four decades in the health care investment landscape, David highlights the company’s growing footprint in private equity on the for-profit side. He also discusses non-profit health care models as well as innovative funding structures that can expand services and be profitable.

The podcast is provided for informational purposes only, does not constitute research, legal, regulatory, tax, accounting, or investment advice, and should not be regarded as a recommendation or a solicitation. Cain Brothers, a division of KeyBanc Capital Markets” is a trade name of KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc. Member FINRA/SIPC. KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc. and KeyBank National Association are separate but affiliated companies. Securities products and services are offered by KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc. and its licensed securities representatives. Banking products and services are offered by KeyBank National Association. Credit products are subject to credit approval.

Please read our complete KeyBanc Capital Markets disclosure statement.
Securities products and services: Not FDIC Insured • No Bank Guarantee • May Lose Value

Podcast Participants

Not Your Grandparents’ Health Care – Private Equity Is Changing It, with Gyasi Chisley

Highlighting the Connections Between Health Care and Private Equity

Highlighting the Connections Between Health Care and Private Equity

In the inaugural episode of Deal Rx, host Rubin Pusha of Hall Render welcomes guest Bob Ridlen, vice president of corporate development at Ardent Health, for a discussion about health care and private equity through the lens of Ardent – a system comprising 30 hospitals, about 24,000 employees, and 1,700 providers. Bob shares insights about the complexities of health care deal-making. He and Rubin also cover the current market, noting that the anticipated trend toward de novo growth in 2024 didn’t materialize as much as M&A deals did. “We’re looking at a fair amount of deals,” Bob says, often with sellers who are “coming out of the COVID craziness.”

Rubin rounds out the episode by asking Bob a few personal questions, including the best advice he received from a mentor. Tune in to hear Bob’s answer on that question and more.

Connect and Learn More

Book time with Rubin Pusha III 

☑️ Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube

Podcast Participants

Mid-Year Checkup: Navigating 2024’s Health Care Real Estate Trends

Mid-Year Checkup: Navigating 2024’s Health Care Real Estate Trends

As we reach the midpoint of 2024, it’s time to assess the health care real estate landscape. Did the bold predictions from analysts, brokers and other experts come to fruition? Are the trends aligning with the forecasts, or is it too soon to tell?

Join us for an insightful discussion as Hall Render’s experienced attorneys provide a comprehensive mid-year roundup of health care real estate trends.

Podcast Participants

Addison Bradford

Hall Render Attorney

Danielle Bergner

Hall Render Attorney

Andrew Dick

Hall Render Attorney

Libby Park

Hall Render Attorney

Joel Swider

Hall Render Attorney

Joel Swider: Thanks everybody for tuning in today. I’m Joel Swider with Hall Render, and I’m joined by several of my Hall Render colleagues, including Danielle Bergner, in our Milwaukee office, Libby Park, in our Denver office, Addison Bradford in our Indianapolis office, and Andrew Dick also here in Indy.

So at the beginning of each calendar year we often see brokers, advisors, and other commentators making predictions on what they view will be the top trends for the year in Health Care Real Estate, and, in fact, this year Hall render published our own predictions for 2024.

But now that we’re halfway through the year, we thought it would be interesting to revisit some of those predictions, see which ones have actually materialized and kind of talk through where things might be going. In the second half of the year.

By the way, if anyone listening does have comments or wants to share some other viewpoint, we’d love to hear it. So please do drop us a line with that. Let’s dive in

One of the predictions that we made in Hall render’s 24 forecast was that capital markets might improve slightly, but would mostly kind of continue to move sideways, and we saw a few articles at the end of 23, with the mantra stay alive till 25, essentially saying that 2024 is going to be another slow year in commercial real estate, driven particularly by high interest rates, at least in comparison with the recent past, and banks that are generally less willing to lend for investment properties, at least in the short term.

So on that point, Danielle. Maybe we’ll start with you. I know you do a lot of work on projects that involve health care. Real estate finance. Has this prediction been accurate so far. And where do you see things moving the rest of the year.

Danielle Bergner: Thanks, Joel. Yes, I think it has been accurate. I think the exciting part is really yet to come, and that’s going to come later this year early next, I think that you know, for commercial real estate markets, the bottom is probably pretty near which I actually don’t think is a bad thing. You mentioned stay alive till 25, the more cynical commentators would call that extend and pretend. So what’s been going on the last couple of years with interest rates in particular, you know, remaining pretty stubborn.

A lot of commercial real estate debt that has otherwise come due has been extended. It’s been incapable of being refinanced. Negative returns are persisting. And so what we’re seeing now in the 1st half of 24 are the numbers that are proving that out. And so, you know, we’re still seeing commercial deal volume significantly down in the aggregate. But in the 1st quarter of this year debt actually increased significantly, and you might scratch your head about that. But if you think about it.

It’s because all of the debt that should have matured, you know, in 23 or even 22, is just still sitting there on the books. And so we have this kind of interesting environment where debt is still increasing. Deal flow is down. And this year we have. You know, the big balloon issue. All of this debt at some point is going to come due. And so for some people, for some investors and owners. This is bad news for Banks. This might be bad news but for others, I would say, with capital waiting on the sidelines this might be the opportunity that they’ve been waiting for to capture that upside. I think the big question in terms of predicting just how painful the next year will be, particularly for banks and for pre pandemic investors is, of course, interest rates. Some investors believe we’ll see a rate cut in September which could be the Fed’s final policy decision ahead of the Presidential election in November. And to that I would say we didn’t really need another wildcard on interest rates. But the Presidential election is definitely throwing one. Markets are already assessing the impact of candidate economic policies and cautioning the investment community that they may have to be pricing in a considerable risk of higher inflation. If some of those policies were to be implemented, which could also mean that any reduction in interest rates we see in September could be quite fleeting.

What I’m keeping an eye on is whether we’re going to see a flood of refinance transactions in the 4th quarter of this year, and 1st quarter of next for borrowers and for Banks, who want to capitalize on whatever small interest rate relief we might see out of September.

Joel Swider: Yeah, Danielle, you mentioned, you know, potential interest rate cuts inflation. Andrew or others. I mean, I know you also have been active in this space. What are some of the pressures that health providers are facing right now in trying to finance these new projects? Is it really just the uncertainty that’s kept a lot of people on the sidelines.

Andrew Dick: Sure. Yeah, I I think some of it is the uncertainty. I think. It’s also really hard to source debt right now. And I know Danielle and I were talking about this a few weeks ago, specifically, in certain sectors of the health care real estate industry. We’ll talk about that here a little later today. But what Danielle and I were talking about was trying to source debt for new senior housing communities can be particularly challenging right now. If you don’t have just the right set of facts for the lenders to to review and to underwrite.

So I think it’s really subsector specific. But it is challenging, I would say, across the board based on those that we’re talking with, with health systems, developers and those who place debt. They’re all kind of telling the same story.

Addison Bradford: And I would just add, in my anecdotal experience. You all commented on a lot of the business terms, I think, on the legal terms. We’ve seen even more constriction by lenders to be more or to be more risk adverse, such that, you know deal terms or legal terms that may have worked 10 years ago for ground lease deal, for example, just aren’t working for lenders now. So trying to bridge that gap between lenders and providers is is a challenge at the moment.

Joel Swider: So another prediction that we had made for 24, and others. I think VMG had echoed. This as well, was the continued growth of the ASC sector as well as the behavioral health sector and the specialty hospital sector. I think we started seeing this trend in 2023. And so the prediction was that this trend would continue. Libby, maybe we start with you. I know you’ve done work in all of these spaces, specialty hospitals, behavioral health, and ASCs.

What have you seen of that trend so far this year? Maybe start with ASCs, but where are you seeing that trend?

Libby Park: Thanks, Joel. Yes, I. We have been seeing this continued trend of growth within the ASC sector, and the prediction has remained on point thus far, even amidst the financing challenges that the panelists just highlighted. In the 1st question that you raised Joel, there are a couple of unique factors within the ASC sector that contribute to its continued growth throughout the 1st half of 2024, and it’s expected to continue throughout the remainder of 2024 and onward primarily 2 reasons, the 1st being changes to state certificate of need laws, and the second being technological advancement within the ASC space. On the 1st point we’ve seen a loosening and even repealing of certificate of need laws in multiple states across the Us. And Com. Laws have historically been a major barrier to entry for ASCs. Coming into this space in, for example, the last year or so, South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, and a few other States have largely rolled back their com requirements and a couple of points as state specific. What we’ve seen in connection with these rollbacks in both South Carolina and Tennessee, while there have been repeals and rollbacks of certificate of need requirements, those come with additional State licensing requirements and also requirements to provide that new ASCs provide indigent care or charity care to a certain amount of the population. State specific requirements vary, based on the amount of charity care that certain ASCs must provide, and South Carolina’s, for example, is a percentage of the ASCs. Adjusted gross revenue after 2 years.

Additionally, we’ve seen the State of Mississippi make certain revisions to their health plan, whereby hospitals can become more involved in in the ASC. Space.

In other States, including Georgia and Iowa, are also undergoing certain review and reform of their laws which it’s yet to be seen exactly how the legislature will move on that issue. A second critical factor that’s affecting ASC growth is technology. We’ve seen a real breadth of technological advancements within the ASC space complemented by payers being willing to fund these types of technological advancements. Certain technologies that we’ve seen are robotics to help surgeons perform less invasive procedures, software platforms related to EMR management solutions, scheduling business analytics, AI to support data processing patient wearable devices. And really, the data that we’re seeing is that technology is providing for better health care outcomes and insurers are willing to pay for it. So we think that will continue the growth trend as well.

Joel Swider: Thanks, Libby. Addison, I know you’ve done a lot in the behavioral health space. Where do you see us headed the remainder of the year?

Addison Bradford: Yeah, I think the trend will continue and that there will be increased investment and construction behavioral health facilities.

I think the free reason for that is first, I think the demand still there. I don’t think the supply is caught up with the demand when it comes to behavioral health services around the country. There are still lots of communities throughout the Us.

Where there are behavioral deserts or there just aren’t viable options for most people. So until that kind of supply demand curve levels out, I think we’re going to see you know, more investment in this space. And these projects are going to continue to be possible to because of the State and Federal grant funding that at least I’ve seen specific to behavioral health facilities.
Last month I saw that the State of Texas was investing 1.5 billion dollars in 7 behavioral health facilities, some of which were new build, some of which were rehab but just a huge monetary investment to make those projects viable, and I mean on smaller scales like I saw in last week this State of Washington was investing 7.5 million a lot less than 1.5 billion. But still, you know, significant amount of money in, I think, 5 or 6 of their existing facilities. To make sure that they continue to operate and don’t have to close down and create more kind of behavioral health deserts for their communities. So long as we see that funding and that demand, I I don’t see it slowing down in the interim.

Joel Swider: That it raises an interesting point is there? Do you anticipate that certain States will pull ahead of others in terms of investment. I’m thinking particularly about behavioral health, but I I think there might be other sectors at play here, too, particularly as it pertains to Co. N, or on the flip side of that sort of the grant funding piece. I mean, do you think that we’re going to see significant kind of distinctions between states in that area for development.

Addison Bradford: Yeah, I mean, I think likely. I mean, there are a number of state specific regulations and licenses that can dictate. For example, I mean one of the biggest barriers to the ASC. You know, construction of Acs is Co. N laws, which let me went into. So we’re the more. We see states, you know, and it seems to be redder states at the moment that are loosening their restrictions. I think in those states you’re going to see a lot more A/C development.
But you know each stay is a little bit different. So it’s hard to see if there’s, you know, red versus blue States or East Coast versus West Coast, whether you’re going to see more investment. But certainly state policies can affect the amount of development we’re going to see in different areas.

Joel Swider: So next topic, here is health care joint ventures, and health care joint ventures appeared in a number of the 2024 prediction articles. Some talked about them sort of on the fringe, or more or less in passing. Other predictions dealt with JVs more directly. Ankara, for example, had predicted that Hospital JV’s with what they called payers payer providers such as optum would really increase in 2024. Andrew, maybe we start with you. I know you’ve done a lot in the JV. Space is the prominence of health care JVs increasing, decreasing, leveling off. What do what are you seeing in this space?

Andrew Dick: Yeah, I we don’t have a lot of good data on joint ventures, and the term joint venture can mean a lot of different things to different providers. So when we talk about joint ventures, we often think it’s a true partnership, or 2 providers come together and form a new entity, and they own, you know, they split up ownership percentages. But that’s not always the case. Sometimes it’s different providers simply collaborating together, providing different services within the same building. For example, we’re seeing a lot of those type of JV’s in the oncology space right now and it seems like a lot of the big health systems are really interested in growing oncology. JVs, right now. And those can be really complicated. But I would just point our audience to the health facilities management. They had a 2024 construction survey, where they went out to their members, and which are primarily hospitals and health systems, and they surveyed those folks to say, what do you plan on building over the next 3 years? And if you look at that report, there’s some really great information. And the top 3 or 4 types of JV facilities that that health systems are looking to build our behavioral health hospitals inpatient and outpatient, I I should say cancer centers children’s hospitals and rehab hospitals.

We’ve seen that those deals come across our desk quite a bit, and all of those categories. But I just I just think right now we’re seeing a tremendous amount of joint venture activity across the board surgery centers, behavioral health that we talked about inpatient rehab hospitals.

We’re also seeing some really interesting joint ventures between government agencies and nonprofit health care providers and for profit providers coming together trying to figure out how they can better deliver care in certain markets and I think that’s really exciting. So I think there’s a lot of activity right now. I wish I had more data on the number of joint ventures, but just kind of what I’m seeing in the market and what we’re our group is seeing. It’s just an uptick in that kind of activity where providers are looking to come together to really deliver you know better services in these specialty areas.

Joel Swider: Yeah, thanks, Andrew. And one thing returning, I I didn’t notice until just now, but we did have a couple of questions that came in on the ASC topic, which I think is is still relevant for this JV question. But couple questions related to the size of various ASCs being developed, you know. Are they on the smaller side, larger footprint? What’s been sort of the? Are there any parameters? And if so, you know, what are they? And then the second question unrelated to that. But, you know, are we seeing more affiliated hospital network type ASCs or more independent ASC growth? I’ve got some anecdotal evidence on these, but wanted to see if anybody else had had been, seeing that in this space recently.

Libby Park: Hey, there, Joel, I can chime in on those first.st As to the size of ASC space, it depends. I’ve seen varied square footage depending on the location of the ASCs. The resources of the joint venture. Municipal requirements. For example, if space is limited in a highly urban populated area. I’ve seen something around, maybe 1,500 square feet to much larger ASCs in terms of square footage. If the area has the space has the demand and the geography to support it in terms of, if the ASCs we’re seeing are more hospital affiliated or independent providers, that also it depends, for example, in Mississippi the loosening of the certificate of need requirement really provided the opportunity for hospitals to get into the ASC. Space, either independently hospital operated, or connect in connection through joint ventures with physicians.

So it really is kind of a state by State analysis as to what the applicable certificate of need and State law requires, and kind of the demand and operation of ASCs is responding to each State specific law.

Joel Swider: Yeah, that’s been consistent, Libby, with what I’ve seen lately as well on both points. And in particular, I do think there’s a certain footprint that you almost need to have to make the project viable. Now, and I think to your point it probably depends on State law and a number of other factors as to where you draw that line. But I do think there may be some, and I guess it goes back to the financing question, too. Right? And then as to kind of the independent versus hospital affiliated, I’ve seen both as well and so I’m curious to see, you know, to see how that plays out.

Andrew Dick: I have one more comment on that. As I was listening to our group. Talk about challenges raising capital, you don’t, you know, for new projects. You’re not really seeing that in the ASC Space and I think it’s because they’re often a little bit smaller. Then, like a new inpatient facility in terms of you know, the price point may be somewhere between 5 and 10 million dollars, whereas a new behavioral health hospital may be 30 or 40 million dollars.

But the one thing I keep hearing from our clients is, there’s really they’re not having any challenges raising bank debt for those type of smaller ASC projects. And in some cases they’re just bringing all the equity. They’re just bringing their own capital and funding it with cash on hand. And I just find that really interesting, because we’re seeing a lot of construction activity. And it doesn’t seem like some of the challenges we talked about are popping up with new surgery centers. And my, my hunch is that it’s maybe because some of these smaller, local and regional banks are willing to make 3 or 4 million dollar loans, as opposed to, you know, coming up with 20 or 30 million dollars for a new specialty hospital.

Addison Bradford: Andrew, if I could follow up with a question to you on that. It seems like from the deals I’ve worked on, that there’s a lot of, especially with hot specialty hospitals. There’s a lot of education that has to go on with the lender as to like reimbursement. How ultimately these services are paid for. Do you think part of the kind of the more the more investment is ASC a product of just more lender understanding of that that market.

Andrew Dick: You know. That’s an interesting point, Addison. You could be spot on. It may be that that surgery centers have been around long enough, and they’re well, no more. Well known by the lay, you know, underwriter who’s working on these deals. I think. Yeah, that could be the case. I also think it’s just a smaller capital outlay for these banks and they just think, gosh! If I have a health system, and 20 different physicians investing in the surgery center. That seems like a sure bet is is, I think, what’s going on again. I think it’s it could be geography specific.

Joel Swider: So let’s dive into that a little further, because that was another prediction at the start of 24. With respect to capital projects and construction. At the beginning of the year both S & P and Price Waterhouse, PWC. They were essentially, I’ll say, cautiously optimistic. And S. And P. Had said that health providers would likely restart their deferred capital projects. They couldn’t put them off any longer, and would maybe start relying more on debt to support these projects than they have in the recent past PWC noted that private equity firms had a lot of capital on the sidelines, and would essentially be looking for opportunities to invest in 24, and that that might drive new development.

Maybe question for you, Danielle. What have you seen of these predictions? Have they been borne out so far in 24? And what do you see on the horizon in terms of these larger capital projects?

Danielle Bergner: Well, I think capital projects are, you know, largely this year moving forward, but much slower than people would like. I think many are. Still seeing significant delays due to the same combination of challenges that we’ve seen for the last 3, 4 years. Inflationary pressures supply, chain, skill, labor, shortage. But I would say, on the whole, we are seeing more construction, activity, moving forward. The key right now, I really think, is creativity. You know, the traditional health care finance box of using bond proceeds, or cash even to finance capital projects really just isn’t working right now for a variety of reasons, one of which includes the CFOs desire to preserve the balance sheet right which ties into credit rating.

So when you think about creativity, I think you know, like Andrew mentioned hospitals are increasingly looking at JV structures in particular, to capitalize on those private equity dollars. It definitely helps to solve a a significant portion of that of that gap in the budget or another example would be the charitable foundation lease, financing structure which allows hospitals nonprofit hospitals and health systems to finance projects without taking on the debt themselves. And so you know, what I would say is as recently as even a couple of years ago, I would say we weren’t seeing CFOs and project managers and executives as willing to look at financing structures outside the box, and now they are hungry for it. They are wanting to see all of the options, put it all on the table, and figure out how to get some of these projects moving forward. The demand is still there. The challenge is, you know, how to put the capital stack together.

Joel Swider: Thanks, Danielle, so I think this kind of leads us into the next prediction, which was at the end of 23, heading into 24 there were, I guess I’ll call it more of an outlook, because 2 of the 3 major credit rating agencies had issued a negative outlook for, and this was for the nonprofit acute Care hospital sector in 24 S. And P. Had issued a negative outlook, saying that
they saw health care demand remaining strong, but it was going to be weighed down by persistently high labor, persistently high operating costs, and essentially the payer mix would also weigh down the sector. They even said that they could foresee additional downgrades into the future. Fitch. The term they used was that the sector would remain deteriorating in 24, but they said, You know, we’re going to start to see some stratification that hospitals that could attract and retain employed staff rather than having to rely on external contract labor, which is typically more expensive, that those hospitals would be able to recover their deficits much faster. Moody’s was the only one of the 3 that revised its outlook from negative to stable, going into 24, and Moody’s predicted some modest volume increases, but they were expecting that negotiated reimbursement rates would increase and help the cash flow. Margins, I guess, Danielle, you know, continuing on in this vein, as you’ve observed the sector thus far in 24, and I guess particularly the inpatient hospital sector. But I think it’s broader than that. Who’s right? Is it negative? Is it deteriorating? Is it stable? And how does this play into some of the other developments and the creativity that you just touched on.

Danielle Bergner: So, in terms of the agency ratings, I would say that their forecast for this year, are playing out with some fair accuracy. What I’m a little concerned about is the bifurcation of financial recovery that we’re seeing between nonprofit hospitals and systems. What we’re seeing is like, you know, like the agencies predicted, those that could most successfully contain costs would recover more quickly. We’re seeing that the issue, in my view, is those hospitals and systems tend to be the most diversified and well-resourced systems.

In other words, the systems and hospitals, with the greatest level of resources, have been able to rebound on their margins similar to those pre pandemic. But the more modestly resourced hospitals and systems appear to be recovering at a much slower pace. So far this year many ratings have remained more or less unchanged. But 15 have been upgraded and over 30 have been downgraded this year already. Now the silver lining, if there is one, is that by this time last year nearly 60 had been downgraded, which at least suggests some level of sector level financial recovery, albeit extremely slow. So I think you know the agency’s references to persistent challenges. I think that’s exactly right. Of the 15 upgrades. The commentary indicates some mix of improved liquidity, notable improvements, and operating margin healthy payer. Mix other interesting factors that are kind of trending out of the out of the agency ratings is location. The higher growth markets, like Florida or Texas are realizing financial recovery at a much higher rate and more favorable state driven Medicaid payment programs also appear to be in impacting the bottom line in a material way. And then, of course, mergers are definitely, you know, impacting these outcomes going forward. I’ll just leave you with this nugget to think about. But going forward, I think we also have to keep our eye on technology, especially AI, and it’s potential to put even greater distance between nonprofit providers in terms of financial performance. Those that this technology is very expensive. So those hospitals and those systems that can afford to purchase this technology will be able to capitalize on it and those that cannot afford it will not be able to access the full potential of these tools potentially, you know, further, even expanding that divide between, you know the more resource and more modestly resourced hospitals and systems. So it’s not an issue that is being talked about expressly as of yet in rating agencies. But at some point I have to believe that technology is going to start moving the needle on the bottom line for a lot of our clients.

Joel Swider: Yeah, great point. And I know, Libby, you had mentioned that, too, in terms of the ASC sector. Let’s talk a little bit about the kind of some of the pressures that we’re seeing in the sector. So at the outset of 24 there were a number of experts that forecasted a continued struggle to recruit and retain a talented labor force, and that that would be one of, if not the greatest drags on health care performance across a number of sectors, inpatient, acute care, senior living home health. Addison. Maybe we start with you on this. I mean, where are we seeing the health care labor market go, has it leveled off this year?

Addison Bradford: Yeah? I asked. As many of you know, my wife works in nurse recruiting. I asked her this last night, and she just said, no that was it, and I think she’s right, and I’m not just saying that because she’s my wife, and she’s right about everything. But I think, more generally. I mean we we see it all over the place. We see, continued Burnout, among providers, that may, or that has continued since Covid. Now I think some of the burnout isn’t necessarily related to Covid, and it’s more related to staffing levels that are in turn affected by Covid. But you know you’re seeing I feel like strikes in in the news every other week or every week. With nurses and other providers striking because of staffing levels within their hospital systems. And you know, it’s interesting. I’ve also seen an uptick, at least in in the state of Indiana, with an increase in lawsuits, negligence, wrongful death, other types of lawsuits that arise from the failure to staff hospitals and other health care facilities at a certain level. So I don’t think in any way we’re out of the woods yet, and it’s been interesting. I know Libby and I were talking before this, that there’s been, you know, on the senior level side there’s intended there’s been some intent to try to fix some of those staffing issues, Libby. I don’t know if you can speak more to that.

Libby Park: Yeah, absolutely. I can. Thanks Addison. First, though, I second, that your wife is wonderful and incredibly intelligent. Great on the legal front of these types of staffing challenges. CMS. Has absolutely kept a pulse on what’s been going on, and as it relates to the long term care front. I wanted to flag to our attendees that CMS. Published a rule May 10th of this year, that is, was effective just last month, June 21, 2024. Regarding minimum staffing standards for long term care facilities and Medicaid institutional payment. Transparency reporting final rule. That is a mouthful. But in short, the rule requires minimum staffing standards in nursing homes and long term care facilities. The commentary that was included in the Federal Register relating to this Federal rule really echoed what Addison discussed, that
there are staffing shortages which result in or quality of care, staff, burnout, high turnover, which implicates the health outcomes of these types of facilities, and CMS’s goal in promulgating this rule was to hold nursing homes accountable for providing safe and high quality care for nearly 1.2 million residents that are in these Medicare and Medicaid certified long-term care facilities. A few of the key requirements that are included in the rule are an increase in registered nurse staffing requirements. This will require an Rn. To be on site 24 HA day, 7 days a week, with certain limited exceptions, as well as an increase in the hours per day of resident care, which is a combination of direct Rn. Care as well as direct nurses aid care, and the new requirement is 3.4 h per resident day. There are different time frames for implementation of the requirements set forth in the rule depending on geographic locations up to 5 years for rural facilities up to 3 years. For non rural facilities. However, all facilities need to take steps to implement a facility assessment update a general plan which most facilities already have by August 8th of this year. So CMS. Did roll out some aggressive timelines. But the initial deadlines should not be hopefully a large lift for these facilities.

Folks should know that there are also certain exemptions, exemptions in limited circumstances where a workforce may be unavailable, or if a facility is making a good faith effort to hire staff, but just cannot locate them. Other documentation requirements are also needed for the hardship, exemption, but they are available in limited circumstances in terms of estimated cost. Associated with these requirements for increased staffing. CMS. Estimates that approximately 53 million nationally will be needed in year one for implementation, with an escalation of up to 43 billion in year 10, and CMS. Acknowledged in its rule that there is uncertainties about how facilities will bear the cost of meeting these types of requirements, and they suggested a three-pronged approach that either the facilities one reduce their margin or profit to reduce other operational costs, or 3 increase prices charged to payers. So the prediction is that the costs will likely be shared between the facility operations as well as payers. On a final note, CMS. Did also announce that it is launching a new investment campaign of over 75 million 75 million dollars to launch a national nursing, home staffing campaign. And the goal here is really to incentivize nurses to work and nurses aid in the nursing home environment. Things like tuition, reimbursement, enrollment training, finding placements with job services are a few things that are included in CMS’s proposed funding for to support the staffing initiative.

Addison Bradford: Thanks, Libby, that’s helpful. If I could just add 2 more points on. This is, you know. I I think, in terms of looking forward further. I mean the turnover rate. I might think of my nurses last year improved like 2 and I. You know I would wouldn’t be shocked if it was 2 this year, and I think really, until we see a you know more supply of physicians and other providers, I mean, the met school classes are increasing, but they’re increasing very marginally, and our immigration system isn’t going to be reformed. It seems like anytime soon to allow more doctors from outside the country to work in our hospital. So you know, until again that supply keeps up with the May demand. I wouldn’t be surprised at this, we’re talking about the same issues next year.

Andrew Dick: Yeah, I know, I, I have one more thought. I don’t know if others have seen this. But I was listening to a podcast over the weekend that’s hosted by a Michigan hospital, CEO. And he said the State of Michigan tried to impose a similar staffing mandate on inpatient hospitals, and that bill was defeated. But I thought it was interesting that the hospitals are watching for similar legislation and the CEO and the podcast he said. You know we’re having such a trouble. Staffing our hospital, he said. If we’re forced to have minimum staffing standards that, he said, it’s probably going to force us to scale back the number of beds that we actually operate. And it was a really interesting discussion, not getting political. But if if anyone’s interested, it was on the rural health rising podcast really great, podcast hosted by a really dynamic CEO. So I thought that was interesting as well.

Joel Swider: Yeah, Andrew, that’s a great point. I’m Olivia. And you said CMS’s response to, you know, providers who were worried about the cost of these minimum staffing standards. CMS’s response was to reduce their profit. Margins. Right? But it’s like, you know, the Andrew, I think you know a lot of people have decried the sort of stratification in health care where you see some of the more wealthy areas getting the higher acuity and more specialty care while some of the more rural or lower population areas are forced to cut back. And you know, I think there’s an economic reality there. As much as you know, CMS or other regulators would love for everything to to be equal and to have you know, as much staffing as possible. It’s just, you know, not economically feasible in certain communities. And so I think there has to be some consideration for that, my personal view. But let’s talk a little bit about senior living and long term care going into 2024. The deal volume was down, and experts had attributed this to high interest rates, higher cap rates, slower recoveries and occupancy, and generally, like we’ve talked about increased operating costs primarily due to the labor market.

There were several sources that released their own senior living outlooks for 24, and those were mixed. Hilltop had said that the sector would probably move more or less sideways in 24 jll. Had anticipated that occupancy would continue to recover, particularly as the over 75 population grows and the Argentine forecast said that the Western and Southern US would see the most recovery while labor would remain a challenge across the country. Andrew, maybe we stick with you on this question, as you’ve observed, the senior living market so far this year. Who was right, and where are the growth opportunities for the remainder of the year?

Andrew Dick: Yeah, it’s interesting, Joel. I’ll break down this sector in 2 different parts when we tend to talk about senior living. Sometimes you can that includes assisted, living, independent living, and then sometimes skilled nursing is included, that in that industry as well. But I really group assisted living and independent living together and then treat skilled nursing a little differently. We saw a lot of transaction volume in the 1st quarter of this year in the skilled nursing industry. I think, Joel, we featured in one of our updates one of the M. And a reports that covered the skilled nursing industry, and there was a huge spike in transaction volume in the 1st quarter. That that I don’t think anyone was expecting but based on all the data we’ve looked at. That transaction volume was driven by financial distress and skilled nursing industry where some of these smaller skilled nursing communities, or even some of the regional players who were under tremendous financial pressure were either forced to sell or merge with a stronger operator. And so I thought that was an interesting data point that I, personally wasn’t expecting. In the 1st quarter in the assisted living and independent living sector. I think certainly, construction, new construction is way down transaction volume, I would say, is down as well. What we’re really seeing is a repositioning of assets that were built maybe 4 or 5 6 years ago. It seems like what I’m hearing in a number of markets is that there was too much construction, too many beds and some of the operators are really struggling. And so they’re trying to reposition those assets by bringing in new operators or managers to see if they can write the ship and if they can’t they’re going to have to look for an exit strategy. Because, as others talked about on this webinar. Some of their mortgage debt is coming due. It’s maturing, and they’re under tremendous pressure to try to figure out how they can either increase occupancy or increase rent, and that’s really hard in the assisted living and independent living sector from what I’m hearing, and so I’m working with one operator right now who’s going in and helping a number of those underperforming communities really trying to figure out what they can do to get these communities and better financial standing in hopes that if they’re able to do that they can sell them maybe over the next 12 to 24 months. But again, what I’m hearing is, it’s really, really challenging. Right now, it’s hard to refinance the debt that was initially negotiated for some of these communities 5 6 years ago. It’s tough right now. At least that’s what I’m hearing. I’m curious. If others have I’ve heard the same thing, but that’s again of what I’m hearing from folks I’m working with.

Danielle Bergner: Andrew. That’s very consistent with what I’m seeing, too, with clients, and just in the market generally, I think the nonprofit operators of independent and assisted living are still able to access. You know, capital resources like HUD financing and tax exempt bond financing, and they’re still able to pencil out new construction or project rehabs. Whatever the case may be, the for profit developers and operators are really struggling. They’re, you know their capital options are extremely limited. I’m seeing very little bank capital with much of an appetite for senior living generally right now. So unless you’re willing to, you know, to access HUD the HUD, you know the HUD financing, which many are not willing to go down that road. I think it’s very difficult right now for anyone other than nonprofit operators to build new.

Andrew Dick: Good points. Danielle.

Joel Swider: Daniel, we had a question that came in, or for really for anybody a moment ago, and since you mentioned that dichotomy between the for profit and the nonprofit operating partners in in these JVs. The question is, you know, we’re seeing. So this this person wrote in saying that you know they’re seeing. An impediment in securing capital for new joint venture assets like behavioral health and erfs, as some JV operating partners are promoting lease guarantee burn offs based on operating profit, and you know the question is, do we foresee a change in this? Or do we? Do we think that nonprofit health system partners understand this additional cost that they’re being burdened with. I don’t know if anybody had thoughts on that, and I think it’s broader than just one particular sector. Any thoughts on kind of these lease guarantees, and the dichotomy between the nonprofit and for-profit partners.

Danielle Bergner: I’ll start, I’m sure Andrew has some thoughts on this, too. He and I had a lot of conversations about these JV guarantees. I would say, this topic is always difficult, and I I have not worked on a health system. JV. Deal where this has not been one of the short list of major business issues. And you know a couple of things that that we think about from the hospitals. Perspective is one is the guarantee pro rata. So are you guaranteeing the entire lease obligation, or just a pro rata share in relation to your JV. Partnership. That’s something we always consider, and then the burn off. I view that more as a business issue with the landlord and my argument with the landlord on that is typically, listen. You effectively have a credit tenant here. And when you know when you see X number of years of operating success, I do think it’s reasonable frankly, for the landlord to entertain burn offs. I don’t think that that’s an unreasonable request in today’s market. I would say we get burn offs more often than not getting them so I I actually don’t think that that should be maybe you’ve had a bad experience with some particularly stubborn landlords. But I haven’t. I haven’t been able to. I’ve never been able to not resolve that issue, I guess. Let me put it that way. The other point I’ll just make quickly is just always be careful about compliance issues with these JV guarantees because there are compliance considerations. And if your JV. Partners are referral sources, for example.

With respect to the portion of the obligations that you’re guaranteeing in relation to the overall benefit, so that’s always A topic for valuation as well.

Andrew Dick: I think Danielle did a great job of summarizing the kind of the issues we think about. Joel. I also think it’s educating the lenders and the investors on these deals, because we’ve seen a number of new players come into the industry who maybe aren’t as familiar with how, as Addison noted earlier even what a specialty hospital is and then understanding the business model. And from what I can tell, in many cases these joint venture specialty hospitals are quite successful financially. Once they get off the ground, which does justify a burn off of the guarantee, it’s just understanding what type of asset you’re investing in or making a loan on and that that takes some education because these are very specialized subsectors of the health care industry.

Joel Swider: Yeah. And I think, too, I mean, the one thing I would add is on the anti kickback statute piece that we often have to deal with is, you know, what’s the value of that guarantee? And making sure that it’s being taken into account in the pro forma so another prediction that all render had included in our outlook for the year was the continued increase in the tightening regulatory environment. In 2023 we had seen the FTC. Homing in on what it viewed was kind of anti-competitive M. And a activity. There were ownership, disclosure, requirements that went into play for sniffs. We talked about minimum staffing. We talked about the State Co. but the prediction, at the time at least, our prediction was that this kind of governmental oversight would continue to tighten the regulatory environment this year. You know, we had a couple comments come in as to the steward health bankruptcy, and whether that will potentially lead to future and increasing scrutiny from regulators. Addison, let’s start with you on this, as you look over the past 6 months of the year in terms of regulatory activity. What kind of a picture do you see?

Addison Bradford: A mixed back for sure. I mean you. You’re absolutely right. And you cited to the you know, some of the initiatives we’ve seen at the Federal level in terms of anti competition in terms of, you know, trying to get rid of non-competes we see certainly an increased focus on private equity and health care, both at the State level and at the Federal level.

But at the same time. You know, as Libby described earlier. There’s been loosening of State coin laws, and you know I mean, the ultimate room is, you know, the lower decision issued by the Supreme Court last month in which, you know, they essentially got rid of chevron deference. Which will, you know? We, we, you know, allow for potentially greater challenges to, you know, Federal regulations. So you know, it’s a really murky picture. Now, that’s only getting murkier because of the different. You know, the Presidential election that’s later this year in the, you know, clear difference and posture. As to the administrative state that the 2 parties are taking.

Joel Swider: Yeah. And Addison, could you? Just for those who aren’t lawyers on the on the line could you talk a little bit about the chevron deference, and what that, what the implications are, or could be for overruling that.

Addison Bradford: Yeah, no problem. So chevron deferences generally statutory interpretation to tool. So if there’s an ambiguous statute the courts are generally going to defer to a Federal role agency’s interpretation of that statute. and so what the Loper decision handed down last month said was that we’re not going to give deference to the agency interpretation, said, We’re, going to you know, look at it under our typical rules. Assess your interpretation whether it is reflective of the ultimate statue so we, you know, it’s been a month, so we don’t have a ton of litigation that’s really fleshed out on that. But again, the kind of deference that CMS and other Federal agencies have been given doesn’t exist anymore, such that there’s greater opportunity without, you know bar another legislation by Congress to challenge those rules.

Joel Swider: So in the last couple of minutes we have left here, Andrew. I know something you and I have talked a lot about is restraints on private equity, and I think it falls into this category of, you know, regulatory oversight. We’ve got at least 4 States now, with some kind of restrictions on private equity investment in health care real estate, particularly Minnesota, Connecticut, California, and Oregon and just a couple weeks ago there were 11 State AGs who signed a joint letter to the DOJ, FTC. And HHS. Basically expressing concern as to what they viewed was the adverse effect of private equity and its effect on consolidation in the health care market, I do think. And we saw a headline recently that the market is still only maybe 3.3 or something percent private equity owned. But there’s certainly been a lot of focus on this area. Could you talk a little bit about that, and how that’s either restraining or that our clients are being aware of that.

Andrew Dick: Yeah, it’s really interesting to watch the States propose legislation in this area.
Some of it is reactionary, like Massachusetts, where they have a bill that passed their State House restricting hospital sale lease backs, and it was really targeted at real Estate Investment Trust, which is awfully narrow and most of the headlines that I’ve read, and the stories I’ve read suggest that that bill was really targeted at what happened with the steward health care sale. Lease back with one of the major REITs. And I’m not sure that’s the right approach, because that seems awfully narrow.

But if you really dig deep. And if you look at what some of the State attorney generals are are really focused on, they’re worried about communities that have one hospital. I know we’re painting a broad brush by saying the regulation of private equity and health care. But what they’re really worried about are these communities that have one hospital? And if that hospital closes it could leave a community without critical health care services, and that can be devastating to a community. And so if you really dig deep. I think that’s really what’s brewing underneath here. But then some of the bills that come out cover even a broader range of health care services that could even include private equity transactions that, for example, roll up of physician practices which have a very different impact on the health care environment. That for most residents of their community. So I just think, we’re going to see more and more activity over the next 12 months, I think. Really driven by the steward. Health, bankruptcy! My hope is that things shake out with Stewart health care in a way that’s positive, and that the owners of the real estate are able to retent those hospitals. But I did talk to someone in Massachusetts a few days ago who said. You know one of their hospitals is in a in a rural community, and it’s going to be really hard to find another operator that’s willing to go in there because the margins and at that hospital weren’t very good, and so I can appreciate why, an attorney general or State legislator is trying to regulate some of the activity. I just think it needs to be thoughtful because there are some private equity providers, many in which that are, that are doing good things. We just need to make sure that we’re being thoughtful about the legislation.

Joel Swider: Well, with that we’ve reached the end of our time, thanks to everyone for tuning in today, and thanks to our panelists, a quick plug if you like this content. We have a weekly briefing that features the top 10 health care real estate stories from the week prior, and we’d love to add you to that list. So just reach out to us. We’re happy to do that.

How Does Real Estate Fit with Transaction Strategy at a Large Health System with Vikas Sunkari of SSM Health

How Does Real Estate Fit with Transaction Strategy at a Large Health System with Vikas Sunkari of SSM Health

Joel Swider sits down with Vikas Sunkari, Senior Managing Counsel at SSM Health, to discuss how a large health system handles the real estate component of M&A transactions large and small. Vikas illustrates the importance of timing, cultural fit, and handling compliance concerns in health care transactions.

Podcast Participants

Joel Swider

Attorney, Hall Render
jswider@hallrender.com

Vikas Sunkari

Senior Managing Counsel, SSM Health
Vikas.Sunkari@ssmhealth.com

Joel Swider: Hello, and welcome to the Healthcare Real Estate Advisor podcast. I’m Joel Swider, and I’m an attorney with Hall Render, the nation’s largest healthcare focused law firm. I’m joined today by Vikas Sunkari, Senior Managing Council at SSM Health. Vikas, thanks for joining me today.

Vikas Sunkari: Thanks for having me.

Joel Swider: SSSM, as we’ll hear in a moment, is a large health system with sophisticated legal and strategy departments. So, today I’m excited to learn more and to share with our audience about how SSM handles its real estate as part of its larger M and A transaction and alignment strategy. To start, Vikas, could you give me a bit more background on SSM as a health system?

Vikas Sunkari: Sure. So, SSM Health is a Catholic nonprofit health system. It was initially founded in 1877 by the Franciscan Sisters of Mary. They came from Germany to St. Louis in 1872. Their initial work was, I think, there was a smallpox epidemic going on in St. Louis. So, they were really focused, then, on serving a very vulnerable community. And that mission persists through today. It’s a large part of our identity, and our mission to serve the communities that we’re in, to be present for our communities and our patients. It’s exemplified in our mission statement, which is, “Through our exceptional healthcare services, we reveal the healing presence of God.” Today, SSM has 40,000 employees, about 11,000 providers, and that’s across 23 hospitals and several medical groups that are regionalized in nature in Missouri, Southern Illinois, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin. So, that’s our health system in a nutshell. There’s probably a lot more to say, but I think that encompasses a high level overview of what we do.

Joel Swider: Yeah. So, Vikas, how long have you been at SSM Health? And what was your path to your current position there?

Vikas Sunkari: Sure. So, I’ve been at SSM for about seven and a half years. When I came to SSM, just immediately prior to that, I was working in the telecommunications industry in an alternative legal role, if you will. There I was doing leasing and land use work for some of the telecommunications carriers, like AT&T, Verizon, companies like that, putting up cell towers and rooftop installations. So, it was real estate work in a sense. That was in Chicago. I was actually, for personal reasons, trying to relocate to St. Louis. I was trying to be close to my now wife. So, when I was looking for other opportunities, I think I wanted a shift back more into a traditional legal role, and I saw that SSM was seeking an attorney specifically to assist with their commercial real estate matters, commercial real estate contracts, leases, and whatnot.

So, to me, that seemed very well aligned with what I was doing and a natural progression to what I was doing in the telecom industry. It was similar nature, but also moving forward into the path of commercial real estate matters, which is something that I was pretty interested in towards the end of law school and through some other job opportunities I had in law school. So, I really was interested in that opportunity and I came on to SSM and jumped right in and have really flourished in that practice area and some others since I’ve been with SSM.

Joel Swider: That’s neat because I could have used your help the other day. I was helping a client review a cell tower access agreement for a hospital building. So, I wish I would’ve had your expertise for that. When you made that move, obviously, you mentioned some geographic reasons, but was there any fork in the road moment? I mean, obviously, there are some parallels for sure on the real estate side, but was there any fork in the road that made you realize that, “I want to move this direction with my career?”

Vikas Sunkari: Yeah, I think there was. So, in my old career, which I really did enjoy it, I really appreciated the organization I worked with, the people I worked with. It was a small business environment, which was nice, but I was getting more into the business side and less into the legal side of things, and I felt like maybe I wasn’t using the skills that I wanted to use. So, seeing this opportunity showed to me, I could maybe use more of the legal side of things. Not to say today, I do work extensively with our business people and still wear some of those hats, but I wanted to shift back more to the traditional legal type role. So, that was a big motivating factor for it.

Joel Swider: Sure. So, Vikas, your title is Senior Managing Council. What are your areas of oversight and expertise within the organization?

Vikas Sunkari: So, I have two counterparts that have the same role as me. We oversee a team of six attorneys who manage transactional work for the entire SSM health system. So, across regions. And our work, among other things, that primarily involves the development, drafting, negotiating of a variety of contracts, mostly physician contracts, whether those are with individual employed physicians or independent contractors or larger medical groups that are hospital based. Also, other clinical service agreements, and then of course real estate arrangements, whether those are leases or timeshares, development matters, construction, purchase and sale of property, among many other types of agreements.

But that really encompasses the bulk of what we do, and obviously a large focus of our work is to ensure compliance with federal healthcare regulations. So, stark and anti-kickback. Throughout that, as well, in addition to actually working on maybe new contracts or changes to contracts, we’re also giving guidance on various either transactional general matters or matters that are specific to a certain contract. If a dispute arises or there’s a question about interpretation, we work with our business people to give them advice and guide them to resolve any particular question or concern they might have.

Joel Swider: Well, thanks for that introduction, Vikas. And just to set out the goals for this particular episode, SSM Health has been involved in a number of large transactions, at least the ones that have made the news in the recent years. I’m sure there have been many other smaller transactions, as well. Things like acquisitions of hospitals, acquisitions of physician groups, and a variety of other partnership and alignment transactions, plus all the day-to-day real estate management activities that are involved with running a health system. And obviously, each of these transactions and scenarios is unique. But our goal today, my goal, is that we can try to uncover some common threads that our audience could apply more broadly when they’re dealing with healthcare transactions in the future. So, to that end, Vikas, could you give me an idea of what are some of the types of acquisitions and transactions that you’ve been involved with in recent years?

Vikas Sunkari: So, I’ve been involved with pretty much all the varieties of acquisitions that SSM will undertake. Those can be as small in scale as those that involve, I’ll give a couple examples. On one end of the spectrum, you have just a simple acquisition of maybe some pieces of equipment from a physician practice, or maybe we’re acquiring medical records, or we’re acquiring both and that practice might be closing. That’s one flavor of acquisition. No real estate considerations in a situation like that. Maybe the next level up is when you’re, similarly, acquiring assets, records, but maybe we’re taking over a lease because the practice is closing. That could be a lease that we’re taking from a third party, or we may be leasing space from a physician who owned a building. I know I’ve done at least one of those where we had to enter into a new lease with that physician.

Then similarly, we have situations where we acquire an entire business or the practice itself, like the going concern of that practice, and we fold them in to one of our medical groups. We employ all their physicians. You might have a situation there where you’re assuming a lease again, or you could be assuming multiple leases, depending on the size of the group. And then, just rising in scale from there. They look the same, but at least in concept, but then you could have larger acquisitions where you’re acquiring a practice or perhaps even another hospital or a large medical group, and then you’re assuming multiple leases and/or acquiring real property that that practice or that other hospital might own, and then the complexity rises from there.

Joel Swider: So, Vikas, in that variety of transactions, I’d like to think through what are some of the biggest challenges that you’ve faced, and how you got through them, how we can learn from that. Maybe starting with the due diligence phase, what are some of the challenges that you face? To the extent there are common threads there, what are some of the challenges that you face in the due diligence phase of a transaction like that?

Vikas Sunkari: So, I think for one, no matter the size, I guess even in a small transaction, we’ve got to figure out what property or what lease could be involved in this acquisition. If we’re acquiring the practice, we’re acquiring the assets of a small practice, do they need us to take over a lease? Or are we trying to take over space that they operate in, is one question. And then, if that is the case, that’s the first questions. Do we have a need to occupy the space that they were in? Do they own that space? Do we have to enter into a lease with the person we’re requiring it from? If not, who is the party that might own the space that we have to enter into a new lease with, or assume the lease that the prior owner of the practice, I should say, held.

And then, along with that, if there’s a third party landlord out there, we’ve got to figure out what is their status. Are they implicated by our stark and anti-kickback? Are they a referral source in themselves? Or they could be a lot of different possibilities. We could be entering into or assuming a lease from a referral source, or it could be a commercial landlord, or it could be one of our large institutional rate type landlords. And the same becomes true even in a large transaction. You’re just doing that at a greater magnitude. Instead of looking at one, you’re looking at possibly 10 or 20, which obviously increases the amount of work you have to do up front to both figure out what’s out there. I think once you figure out what’s out there, the next question is what do our business people who are managing this transaction or managing this acquisition, what do they want to take over?

So, let’s use the example of a larger transaction. If there’s, let’s say, 10 locations, we’ve got to figure out what leases are involved, and then what are the terms of those leases. And by a term, I actually mean the duration. How much time is left? Do we want to assume those leases or not? What compliance obligations do we have? What federal healthcare regulation compliance obligations do we have? Depending on those leases that we do intend to stay with, we have to figure out what our termination rights are in case there’s a different strategy about those spaces. Or maybe when you’re acquiring so many, there may be concerns of, over time, maybe we want to reduce our space or consolidate that space that this group or this other hospital was using with the existing space that we had. So, there’s a lot to wrap your arms around in the situation like that.

And a lot of thinking to be done on the business side of things, which really is a combination of maybe the individuals who are leading the acquisition who could be people looking at it from a strategic standpoint. If they’re not, you’ll want to have your strategic people involved to advise if this fits maybe in their vision. We need to get our facilities, our real estate team involved to figure out how do these properties fit with their goals. And usually, they’re already aligned. I mean, in our case, there’s usually already a cohesive vision about what they want. So, it’s not so much getting the people to talk so much. It’s more about everyone being able to understand what that vision is so we can accomplish it together.

Joel Swider: So, Vikas, you mentioned at the outset dealing with compliance concerns. One question I have on that front is suppose you go through your due diligence and you find, okay, there’s one or more concerns. Let’s say there’re leases. How do you, then, work with the business team to determine is this a risk we’re willing to take? How do we isolate the risk? Maybe it’s something so big that we wouldn’t close if that issue is still open. How do you go through that analysis and the interplay between the legal function and the strategy function?

Vikas Sunkari: So, I think it’s helpful to think about what the downside could be or what risk we’re really talking about assuming, and that’s that we could be acquiring a non-compliant lease. And I’ve seen it happen at least in cases where maybe the prior landlord-tenant relationship didn’t have the same stark or anti-kick back implications. So, I think upfront, let’s say, we were acquiring a practice or acquiring another hospital and then they had a lease, either as a landlord or tenant, with a referral source. And the first thing we’d want to see is is this lease in itself compliant? Or is the rent fair market value? That’s going to be probably the biggest thing to be paying attention for.

And if it’s not, or we aren’t able to obtain that confirmation, we have to let our business people know, before we make this assignment effective, ideally if that implication came up or that there was a concern about being compliant, we’d want to make sure we get our new fair market value opinion, for example, initiated to either support the rate or to give us, I guess, a negotiation point to say, “Look, we’re going to acquire this practice, we’re going to assume this lease with X landlord, and we need to make sure that the terms are compliant with stark and anti-kickback because of the nature of our organization and what our risk tolerance is,” and making sure that we can do that timely before the acquisition closes or before we would actually assume that lease.

And also, we got pushback, I’m sure at times. I don’t have a particular instance to think of, but people are usually used to thinking, “We’ve always done it this way.” And when you bring a new party in, we have to communicate we have a different tolerance for risk or have a different set of obligations. The prior parties may not have had to comply with stark or anti-kickback, for example. So, we have to really communicate that and get the timing right, especially, I know we’re going to probably talk more about that shortly, but the timing is an interesting factor of it because, let’s say, if it’s a small transaction, if you run into some real estate issues or some real estate FMV issues for example, since it’s such a big part of the transaction and it might be a smaller transaction, you have more leverage to, I guess, get that issue resolved before the acquisition closes, for example.

In a very large acquisition, the real estate’s only part of it. So, you’re really under pressure to get this piece resolved so it doesn’t delay the larger acquisition, which could have a lot of other moving parts. Real estate’s just one part of it, and you don’t want to jeopardize other aspects of it or hold up the rest of the deal to resolve this one component of it. But it’s still crucial, obviously, to get these in hand because you don’t want to end up with a bunch of compliance issues after you close either.

Joel Swider: Well, yeah, that’s a great point, Vikas. And let’s dive into that a little bit more because you mentioned the timing. Let’s say that we’ve gotten through our due diligence phase, everybody’s good to go, we’ve got the green light, and there’s a lot to be done between that time and the lead up to closing. What lessons learned or challenges are you facing during that period?

Vikas Sunkari: So, I think it’s a lot to essentially be done, and you can break it out into a couple different areas. So, one, you’ve got your due diligence of what leases are out there, what are our requirements in order to assume those leases if we choose to. And if, let’s say for example, there’s 10 leases, three of them are with referral sources. Then, we’ve got to make sure that we get all of our compliance matters in hand before the closed date. For the other ones, we just want to make sure they get signed by the closed date. And then, on top of that, you may have other real estate matters, like acquiring property, and then that adds another level of timing concerns. So, if there is an acquisition of property involved, then we’ll have to be doing our title work and our survey work and trying to make sure that aligns with the larger acquisitions close date.

So, we’ve got to really pay attention to the timelines and make sure that people are communicating not only from our business people and our real estate people talking to the other parties or, I guess, the other parties on the real estate side, as well as the larger transaction side, to make sure we can get all of our documentation in hand and complete all of our steps in advance. So, like I mentioned earlier, let’s take the example of if there’s an acquisition of land. I mean, in a pure purchase or just purchase or sale of land, if there’s some title issues that come up, the parties might say, “We’re not able to cure those.”

And then, the purchaser has the ability to walk away, and they can make a informed choice if they want to do that, weigh out the risks, and either decide to proceed or not. You lose that leverage in a larger transaction. You don’t have as much flexibility to say, “Should we walk away from this deal?” Of course, if there’s a major issue, it’s got to be dealt with, but you have less of that leverage to say, “Well, I’m walking away from it,” whether you’re using that as a negotiation tactic or if it’s the actual intention.

Joel Swider: Yeah, that’s a great point. The distinction that you raise between the pure real estate transaction versus real estate as a small part of a larger transaction, I can see how that would change some of your remedies or the leverage that you might have to get them to cure things. What other aspects, Vikas, should we be thinking about in terms of whether it’s a large or small M and A transaction? What other themes or challenges do you see cropping up time and again?

Vikas Sunkari: So, this hasn’t quite come up, but I could see how it would come up, for example. So, let’s say there’s an acquisition, and there’s a lease that the acquiring party would be assuming. It could be with a landlord that they already have a relationship with, especially if it’s a large breed type landlord. There’d be a question there of does the lease that is being assigned, or that we’re assuming, does it sync up with the deal terms we have with that landlord? If you’ve got a negotiated lease or template that you work with with a larger landlord, then you wouldn’t maybe want to assume another party’s lease. You might want to rewrite that lease on your template, for example. So, that’s a consideration. And also in a situation like that, come to think of it, if the rents inconsistent, that would pose an issue.

Maybe it’s paying rent at a nearby location that’s been negotiated. It’s been vetted either by fair market value or broker’s value opinion, for example. We want to make sure those are consistent for a number of reasons. Another consideration is that you could be acquiring a lease that is essentially with another one of your system’s entities. So, if you’ve got now intercompany leases, there’s a question of are they needed? In our case, we like to maintain intercompany leases because it’s a good way of for the parties to understand what’s out there. Just a good best practice. But we’ll want to make sure that those are captured, especially if you’ve got, let’s say, one entity is nonprofit, the other’s for profit. You definitely want to make sure that you have the lease in hand there. So, that’s another consideration. I mean, in other cases, though, maybe there’s an intercompany relationship that’s now being formed, and a lease is no longer necessary. So, that’s a step to validate. Let’s see.

Joel Swider: What about employment agreements, Vikas? Because I feel like, in the last couple transactions I’ve worked on, we’ve had some issues there in terms of timing. And, well, we need a go-live date of January 1st, but the parties aren’t ready to move on the asset acquisition side yet. Have you come upon any issues like that?

Vikas Sunkari: Yeah, yeah. And I think, luckily, we’ve gotten the timing lined up, but that often can be actually in a smaller transaction, for example, determinative of the deadline, if you will. X physician needs to start, or the practice we’re acquiring, that physician needs to become our employee on a certain date both because, well, I guess the initial step is that there’s certain paperwork. I think IRS paperwork that needs to be filed and other state paperwork that needs to be pretty precisely filed to change the employment status of that person. We’ve got onboarding concerns. There’s certain requirements, I guess, when someone would have to file their paperwork to show that they’re an employee, I think you can push that out. I don’t think you can pull it in. You can’t backdate an I-9, I believe. So, that can have a pretty strong effect on what is our timeline. And it’s also a matter for that practice’s patients, for example.

If they’re going to come over and join one of our medical groups, they’ve got to let their patients know, they’ve got to send a communication out, and you don’t want to change that date a whole bunch because some of the steps that are needed to complete the deal are lagging or haven’t been addressed. So, I guess another thing that comes up with employment arrangements, too, that was recently was brought to my attention was wanting to make sure that the terms of the employment agreement, if there are some, if there’s one or multiple, we want to make sure that those terms are compliant with fair market value on their own, and that goodwill from the acquisition isn’t being transferred through the employment agreement. Let’s say you acquired some assets, that all syncs up with your fair market value opinion, but if you give them an extra couple of thousand dollars and their employment agreement, that would feel a little problematic. It would be transferring the value that should have been captured in the asset acquisition that maybe wasn’t warranted and putting it in different buckets. So, that’s something to be mindful of, too.

Joel Swider: So, Vikas, these transactions, I know you may not be able to speak specifics on a given transaction, but a lot of these I could see being issues that arise on a large transaction, say. Are there meaningful distinctions between a large transaction and a small transaction? Or are they really equally complex, just different purchase price? How do you compare those to the extent that you’re staffing. For example, on your team, you say, “Well here are the expertise that the various attorneys and business leads that we need to be involved.” Is it largely the same? Or would it differ?

Vikas Sunkari: I think it’s pretty similar in concept. There’s a lot of the same moving parts depending on the size of the transaction. I mean, I think in a small one, you’ve got to account for the real estate, the employment matters, the equipment that might be involved. You’ve got to get a lot of the same type of paperwork or contract or bill of sale. You’ve got to get all these same types of documents involved. But just the scale of it. How many of those are you having to do? If you acquire a small practitioner, you’re doing one or two employment agreements. If you’re acquiring another system, you might be doing hundreds of employment agreements, and that’s a heavy lift.

So, I guess there could be other concerns depending on the size of the transaction that are just necessarily going to be more complex. With a larger health system, like there may be third party agreements, for example. If you’re acquiring another large practice or another hospital, they might have other arrangements with other medical groups or other healthcare entities or other businesses that are, maybe, not necessarily healthcare. I guess whether they’re providing or receiving the services. You’ll see that more in a larger transaction, certainly, than you will in a smaller one just because a larger entity’s going to have a lot more third party arrangements that they’re offering to various parties.

Joel Swider: So, Vikas, last question at a macro level, and then I’d like to get into some quick lightning round. But taking a step back and just broadly speaking, how would you say SSM Health is able to leverage its real estate as part of its growth strategy?

Vikas Sunkari: So, I guess it depends. I mean, we’re always trying to get access for our patients. That lines up with that mission and what we’re all about. So, the real estate, if we can acquire a practice, whether that’s because that person wants to close up or they want to become part of us, that allows us to maybe take over space that they’re in or assume the space that they’re in and provide greater access in certain areas. We’ve been able to do that. Again, we operate in multiple areas. Some of our regions are more metropolitan areas. For example, I mean, I’m here in St. Louis and a lot of our reach in St. Louis is in the metropolitan area. But in other regions we’re in more rural areas, so that can have a pretty significant impact. I would say it’s maybe less about growth and more about that access. I think that’s the crucial part of it, and that’s what you hear people within the organization talking about and really valuing, being able to provide services to more people.

Joel Swider: Well, Vikas, lightning round. A few questions about you personally. What’s a fun fact from your childhood?

Vikas Sunkari: I thought about this, and I thought about what would be interesting. And I just looked around the room that I’m in, and I came up with something good, which is that I used to actually be a pretty diligent comic book collector. Not so much these days, but I still have a bunch of them from when I was young and trying to get my son into it a little bit. But we might have to wait a couple of years for that.

Joel Swider: Nice. Any great values that you don’t want anyone touching because they’re worth so much money?

Vikas Sunkari: No, nothing like that. I used to have stuff like that, and I didn’t have the good sense to keep any of it. So, nothing too valuable.

Joel Swider: What’s your biggest struggle right now, whether personally or professionally? What is it that you’re working on?

Vikas Sunkari: So, I guess one struggle is probably just there’s a lot that I’ve got to manage for the breadth of what my role is, both as a manager and as counsel to my organization. So, keeping everything prioritized, getting what needs to get done the most efficiently. But I think my biggest struggle personally, I think, is I have a pretty good work-life balance and that’s very fortunate for that. I’m very grateful for that. So, with that, it’s not necessarily a bad thing, but my struggle, I think, is trying to be a really thoughtful parent. I think it’s something that I’m always trying to learn, and my kids are getting older and I’ve got to grow with them and learn what they need and just try to give them what they need from a both mental and emotional standpoint. Just be there for them and learn with them and spend time with them. So, not necessarily a struggle, but something that I put forth a lot of effort into to try and be on top of.

Joel Swider: Yeah. Well, when you figure it out let me know because I agree. It is very, challenging.

Vikas Sunkari: I’m guessing it’s going to take about 50 more years.

Joel Swider: Right. So, Vikas, what’s your favorite way to self-educate?

Vikas Sunkari: So, when it comes to just maybe non-legal or just general topics, I mean, I guess lately, because I think so much of my job involves reading over things, I tend to listen to stuff more. So, I’ll learn more about history and whatnot or other things that interest me through podcasts, or listening to something is probably the best medium for that. When it comes, though, to learning more about what I need to do for work, what I need to do professionally, obviously attending CLEs or other programs. Maybe not so much CLEs, I guess more seminars that come up my way are a really good way to learn, a really good way to hear what’s going on out there. But also, on a more specific level, I think learning from more experienced attorneys has been the best way for me to learn.

When I first started off at SSM, I didn’t know a whole lot, and I have a good example of maybe the best way for me to learn in that. I think the first time I had to really deal with a real estate purchase, I didn’t quite know all the steps, and I bought a book. And I don’t think I even read through it. My father-in-law is a real estate attorney incidentally, and I ended up talking to him about it, and that was a lot more insightful to me than the book was. And then, since then, on the same note, I’ve worked with outside counsel a lot to have them walk me through things, whether it was, maybe, a general matter or giving me the framework to walk through something, or if it was actually a specific transaction. Maybe, at first, rely more on them.

And then, over time, I’ve been able to take the driver’s seat more on those. And also learning from peers, like yourself. I mean, I’ve brought up a lot of interesting and unique fact patterns your way to get your advice on, and that’s been really helpful for me to learn and also to share some knowledge with the rest of my team. And then, lastly, I think learning by doing. Sometimes, there’s really no other way just to put yourself out there, and sometimes you’ll make mistakes. But then, I mean, there’s plenty of times I think I’ve done things improperly, and I’ve had to fix them, or teach myself how to do them correctly. And it’s not always pleasant in the moment, but after the fact, you can look back and see that something that seemed completely foreign a couple of years ago is now very familiar.

Joel Swider: Vikas, since you started at SSM Health seven and a half years ago or so, what has been the biggest shift that you’ve seen during that time?

Vikas Sunkari: I guess the shift is maybe investigating, maybe, different types of arrangements. You see, maybe, more telemedicine, for example, more creative ways of partnering with healthcare providers or medical groups. I think that’s really stood out a bit. Maybe moving away from less traditional models, and then the whole emphasis on it is to have, again, a bigger reach to provide better healthcare to more people the best way possible. So, I think that’s one shift I think I’ve noticed. It’s still ever evolving, I think

Joel Swider: I noticed, by the way, I think it was just last week, SSM Health was honored as one of the top places to work in healthcare by Becker’s. So, congrats. One thing that I learned recently about SSM is that there is, I guess, I don’t know if it’s a policy or an approach to non-violent and inclusive language. I was wondering if you could give me any more insight on that.

Vikas Sunkari: Yeah. So, I think that was a policy that’s been in place for quite a while, and it was initiated by one of the former CEOs who was part of the Franciscan Sisters of Mary. It’s always been really important, I think. People really take it seriously, and I think, in everyday practice, it’s as simple as maybe not using certain words that could have a violent connotation. Even if they’re not something we typically think of as violent, certain expressions, “Kill two birds of one stone.” I mean, we try not to use examples like that even though they might feel innocuous. If you maybe don’t say that, you don’t say other things that could come off inappropriate, or maybe sends a certain message. So, I think, on one end, you have that from a simple everyday mindset, but it really flows into how people treat each other.

There’s a lot of respect within the organization for people at all levels of the organization. So, people in my experience, seem to treat each other with a lot of respect, very courteous. Even if maybe you’re dealing with difficult situation, I think there’s a culture of understanding. I’m sure we’ve all worked at places where people maybe thrive or are put in an environment where there’s yelling and you’re under pressure a lot, and I think our organization, really one of our big benefits is that doesn’t fit within our mission and it’s not how people treat each other. And I’ve seen that people get the same outcomes because we’re united in our overall mission. So, for me, I think I’ve noticed a pretty big benefit of it because I think the language aspect just builds it. It’s a way to build into just a general more overarching culture of respect.

Joel Swider: Vikas, last question. What’s your favorite strategy or work tool that helps you be the most productive?

Vikas Sunkari: So, I always make lists, and I do them a lot of different ways. But sometimes if I’m feeling really overwhelmed, I just make a list of here’s what needs to happen today, or here’s what needs to happen this week. And the practice of even doing that is a big stress reliever and a guiding tool to say these are the things that need to be focused on first. And then, I can just continually do that. So, I’ve got a couple, well, not a couple, but I’ve got an ever-evolving to-do list that really helps me stay on top of all the different things I’ve got to be mindful of.

Joel Swider: Well, Vikas, if people want to connect with you, what’s the best way to do that?

Vikas Sunkari: So, you can find me on LinkedIn at Vikas Sunkari. I’m at SSM Health, and then my email is just Vikas.Sunkari@SSMHealth. So, people can reach out to me there.

Joel Swider: Perfect. Well, thanks Vikas, for joining me. And thanks to our audience for tuning in. If you’re interested in signing up for Hall Render’s weekly healthcare real estate news briefing, and our other articles and content on healthcare real estate, please send me an email at jswider@hallrender.com.

Preparing for the End of Stark Law Blanket Waivers: Insights and Strategies for Health Care Providers

Preparing for the End of Stark Law Blanket Waivers: Insights and Strategies for Healthcare Providers

Hall Render attorneys Alyssa James, Erin Drummy and Joe Wolfe discuss the upcoming end of the declared federal public health emergency (PHE) on May 11, 2023, and its impact on Stark Law blanket waivers and physician arrangements. The blanket waivers were initially issued in March 2020 to help hospitals and health systems with physician contracting and compensation models, staffing issues, and scaling up response to the public health emergency. The blanket waivers provided flexibility to health care providers in ensuring compliance with the Stark Law while addressing the needs of patients for COVID-19 related purposes. The waivers were used to stabilize physician compensation, secure necessary space and equipment, and provide additional items or services to referring physicians. The podcast discusses ways hospitals and health care systems, physician groups and other providers used the waivers over the past three years, and it provides recommendations and considerations to ensure Stark compliance post-PHE.

Podcast Participants

Alyssa James

Attorney, Hall Render
ajames@hallrender.com

Erin Drummy

Attorney, Hall Render
edrummy@hallrender.com

Joe Wolfe

Attorney, Hall Render
jwolfe@hallrender.com

Alyssa James: Hello and welcome to Hall Render’s Practical Solutions Podcast in Healthcare regulatory update. I’m your host Alyssa James, and I’m a shareholder with Hall Render, the largest healthcare focused law firm in the country. Today, we’re here to discuss the upcoming end of the declared federal Public Health Emergency (PHE) that ends on May 11th, 2023, and the impact that it will have on the Stark Law Blanket Waivers and physician arrangements that have relied on those Waivers. So let’s dive right in. Joe, can you briefly tell us about what the end of the PHE and related Blanket Waivers means for healthcare organizations and providers?

Joe Wolfe: Thanks, Alyssa. It’s nice to be able to talk through this now that the Public Health Emergency is coming to an end. The Waivers were initially issued back in March of 2020. They were always set to expire at the end of the declared Public Health Emergency, and they were really helpful for hospitals and health systems and other providers back then. If you recall, there were lots of challenging times around physician contracting, physician compensation models and staffing issues back then. There was a lot of scaling up in response to the public health emergency. So the Waivers were issued again back in March of 2020. They were set up so they could be relied upon for financial arrangements that relate to a COVID-19 purpose and  our arrangements we were analyzing under the Waivers were physician services arrangements where we were pulling together emergency coverage and maybe you weren’t able to get in line the documentation to support fair market value.

One of the Waivers included payments to physicians above or below fair market value for personally performed services. For example, there were some Waiver concepts around space and equipment rentals and rental charges for equipment or office space above and below FMV at that time, there was some Waiver of the medical staff incidental benefits occurrence cap around non-monetary compensation, some discussion of loans. If you recall, the Waiver document back then gave a number of examples. I think there were around 20 of them of specific arrangements that could fall within the scope of these Waivers. It gave healthcare providers some flexibility to look to the Waivers, rely upon them if they needed to, and then they needed to document their use of those safeguards contemporaneously. As we even thought about it back then, it was always a novel concept. We didn’t know how long they were going to stay in place, but they also had remained untested.

We encouraged our clients that if they’re going to rely on those Waivers to get something in the record, definitely before the public health emergency came to an end. So fast-forward to now, the Waivers, it was recently announced that they’re going to end on May 11th, so coming up very soon. So that’s a little background in the Waivers. I saw clients mostly relying on them for the stabilization of physician compensation plans, saw them use them in some coverage situations where maybe there was a hospital-based coverage arrangement where the financial model didn’t work as anticipated. I also saw it used in the lease context, especially where physicians were leasing space from a healthcare entity and needed to build in some flexibility in that area. So that’s a little bit of background on the Waivers.

Alyssa James: Thanks, Joe. Now that we have that background and lay of the land – Erin, can you share some ways that you’ve seen clients use the Waivers and have worked with clients to utilize the Waivers over the past three years that they’ve been available?

Erin Drummy: Sure. So at the time that the pandemic was beginning and certainly at the height of the pandemic with the lockdowns and the restrictions on elective procedures, I was actually serving as general counsel for a large national physician group. We, like many other healthcare providers, were experiencing revenue challenges associated with the restraints on elective procedures. Even thereafter, patients were not particularly excited about leaving their home and coming to the doctor’s office for routine elective or preventative services. So one of the early uses of the Waivers that I personally was involved with and am aware of other providers utilizing as well, is seeking rental abatements from landlords and hospital/health system landlords where Stark was implicated.  I think there were a number of providers that were seeking these types of abatements or rental relief and rental reduction to ensure that they could continue to operate even in light of these revenue challenges.

We also saw a desire by hospitals and health systems to provide telehealth equipment to physicians and physician practices at no charge or at a reduced charge. Again, looking to secure services for patients who are reluctant or unable to leave their home to seek medical services. Many hospital and health system clients reached out to ask for advice related to providing items for additional medical staff incidental benefits and other non-monetary items to their referring physicians. Sometimes these were items or services directly related to PPE, things of that nature. Other times it was comfort. Additional meals or having some additional amenities for providers who were spending many, many hours in the hospitals taking care of patients.

One of the other Waiver uses that we’re aware of pertains to the physician owned hospitals. As you likely know, the Stark Law places restrictions on the total number of beds, operating rooms, and procedure rooms that a physician-owned hospital can have, and it can’t expand beyond that number without an exception granted by CMS. But during the public health emergency, there was a Blanket Waiver that permitted a temporary expansion of beds to meet inpatient hospital needs. Then finally, I would note that in the physician group side, the in-office ancillary services exception, there was a Waiver that permitted some additional flexibility around the location requirements for that exception. We’re aware of clients who were looking to provide items or services via mail or in other locations that may or may not have met the location requirements for same building or centralized building under the in-office exception.

Alyssa James: Thanks, Erin. I know a lot of clients that I worked with, particularly early on in the pandemic, seemed to center around either decreases in services due to surgery cancellations and elective surgery terminations and things like that, but wanting to make physicians whole from a RVU and compensation standpoint as well as instances where, depending on the specialty, you also had physicians doing a lot of extra work and extra hours that depending on their compensation model in their original arrangement, they may or may not have gotten adequate credit for.

So many were wanting to increase compensation for that work and having the Waivers to rely on for situations where maybe that additional compensation could have exceeded fair market value, or even just having the comfort of the Waiver without having to go out and seek a new opinion at times when things were moving so quickly. I know a lot of clients were really appreciative of that flexibility and having those opportunities. So along those lines, Joe, can you tell us a little bit more about what you think providers and healthcare organizations that have utilized any of these Blanket Waivers in the past should be doing now to prepare for the termination of the Public Health Emergency and how they can pivot or evaluate any changes they need to make to their arrangements?

Joe Wolfe: Sure, Alyssa. I think first of all, it’s important to think, and Erin and Alyssa, you already described some situations where you went through the regulatory analysis back then, and if we all go back in time, I don’t think it was a free for all back then. There were situations that healthcare organizations were encountering and they were doing the analysis and they were deciding whether they needed to rely on the Waiver. So I think it’s important to know that this isn’t starting. Right now, getting a sense of what occurred isn’t maybe as heavy a lift as we might think because there already is going to be a record back there in time when you made that decision. A lot of strong analysis was developed back as the pandemic unfolded. As healthcare organizations think about winding down and reassessing again, understanding that what occurred in the past is important to go back and start to think about and review that internal documentation to analyze the timing, what actions were taken, how the disbursements of compensation were handled.

It’s likely you relied on an existing exception or safe harbor. Maybe you didn’t even need to look to the Waivers. Maybe you were able to get comfortable looking to Stark or the Anti-kickback Statute. Maybe that’s already reflected in the record. If you go back, you also may have the luxury now of saying, “Look, it also fit in line with the Waivers as well.” If you did rely on a Waiver, I think it’s important to have in the record how that aligned with the COVID-19 purpose. There were six of them identified in the guidance. Ideally, you’d want your arrangement and what actions you took to fit within one of the defined Waivers or one of the actual examples that the government gave. Of course, many won’t, but I think to the extent your documentation reflects that the actions you took were framed and aligned with those Waiver concepts, the better off you’re going to be.

Then you want to make sure you’ve developed some separate documentation that described the COVID-19 purpose and the scope of the arrangement. There wasn’t one way to do it back then. Like I said, maybe you have something in the record that you can point to. Maybe you developed an amendment and that amendment captures this. Maybe there’s a log. I’ve heard of organizations that developed a COVID log that just identifies in sequence, the actions they took. But outlining what actions you took over time, I think is important. Now that the Public Health Emergency is coming to an end, you still have time to develop that documentation.

You should be thinking about what to do with existing arrangements where you’re still relying on the Waiver. Does it make sense to wind that down? Does it make sense to pivot into some other rationale or regulatory analysis to support staying in that arrangement? You just want to be clear with everyone on the team, your legal team and your compliance team, just where is your defensibility sitting with where you were and if you’re going to stay in that arrangement going forward, what defensibility are you going to rely on? Those are just some thoughts, Alyssa.

Alyssa James: Great. Thanks, Joe. Erin, what have you seen or thought through with respect to … I know there were blanket Waivers that applied specifically to physician owned hospitals and their ability to temporarily expand their number of beds or their footprint in response to the pandemic. What are folks doing in that space to make sure they get back in compliance with the moratorium on expansion, absent the Waivers?

Erin Drummy: Sure. So I think this one, this is an important one because the risk is significant. As I noted, the exception for ownership in a physician hospital requires that the hospital not have expanded its number of beds beyond a certain threshold. So if during the pandemic, the hospital was relying on the Waivers to do so, to convert beds from observation rooms to inpatient beds or otherwise. It will be very important to have those beds switched back and taken off your license if that’s required. It will vary a bit state-to-state in terms of what the process is, but we certainly want to make sure that’s done prior to the end of the PHE so that there’s no violation, which could potentially implicate all of the referrals by your physician owners. So I think this is an important one, and given that it may take some interaction with the state to adjust the license, I think this is one that we would recommend folks get moving on.

There are, in addition to the unwind provisions that Joe mentioned, there are some individual Waiver abilities or flexibilities. CMS has provided a process by which providers can request a Waiver under an ongoing Waiver post PHE. So that may be something for providers to consider if there is something that’s not a easily able to be unwound or if there’s some other justification for something that might satisfy CMSs requirements to permit an ongoing Waiver. That may be something else that parties want to consider. Specific to physician-owned hospitals, there is an exception process that CMS has for those entities. Again, that may be an avenue to consider, but given the timing, I think it’s important to start thinking about, can we convert these beds back to observation status or are there other things that we can do to get ourselves back to pre-pandemic bed counts in order not to violate Stark?

Alyssa James: Absolutely.  That approval process from CMS for possible expansion of physician owned hospitals can be lengthy. So certainly not something that’s going to be in place before the end of the PHE, but something that folks could look to pursue on a parallel track while temporarily, at least for the time being, reducing those numbers back down. So Erin and Joe, what can providers do now if they’re not ready to revert certain arrangements back to their pre Waiver status? I know we’ve touched on this a little bit already, but are there any new or creative options available that provide some flexibility for certain types of arrangements and instances where maybe providers have modified or entered into new arrangements with physicians that they don’t want to end just because the PHE is terminating?

Erin Drummy: Well, one potential option there, Alyssa, relates to a new exception. Hall Render worked with Congress to get a new exception to Stark passed for physician wellness programs. It’s a fairly broad exception that’s available to entities with a formal medical staff. They’re able to offer certain mental health or behavioral health improvements or maintenance programs to physicians in a geographic area that are designed to improve, maintain or prevent mental health issues, including suicide prevention, substance abuse disorders, and things of that nature. I think during the course of the pandemic, we’ve heard a lot about burnout by healthcare providers. I think these mental health concerns can be ongoing. Just because the Public Health Eemergency is ending, these concerns are not. So this is one area where CMS has established a process for a provider to establish via policy, a bona fide program to help prevent and avoid and treat these issues that are being encountered by their medical staff.

This has to be substantive. There’s got to be an evidence-based basis for the program. It’s got to be administered by a qualified healthcare professional. The board needs to approve this. So there are some structural and procedural requirements in order to put one of these programs in place, but that may be an area where providers could consider codifying or formalizing some of the things that they’ve been doing during the pandemic with under the protection of the other blanket Waivers with this new exception. The new exception is available for programs that went into effect beginning at the end of December of 2022. So again, it’s a fairly new program.

Joe Wolfe: Yeah. I would add that I think that’s a great example Erin just gave. Also, there’s some other new opportunities under some recent rule changes. Via the Stark overhaul, the government gave us a new exception for limited remuneration arrangements. Arrangements  at or below $5,000 would not be a Stark violation if you have a services arrangement, even if the remuneration is not documented as long as that services arrangement met the “big three.” Meaning that it does not exceed fair market value, is commercially reasonable and doesn’t take into account the volume or value of referrals. So this is a really helpful exception if we do have situations like we had during the pandemic where you need to ramp up coverage very quickly for emergency situation, and as long as that doesn’t exceed $5,700 under inflation now, that’s going to be a protected arrangement. So that’s an area where I think healthcare organizations could put in place some type of a policy or an expectation that if they do get in an emergency situation, they could look to this limited remuneration exception to help protect that.

As I mentioned earlier, just an offshoot of that. I mentioned earlier some of the exceptions or the Waivers that were issued got into arrangements being above or below fair market value for professional services. I think the government was trying to say, “Look, you could have an emergency situation here where you have to get coverage in place quickly, and maybe that’s going to push the limits of fair market value.” The government also came out in the most recent rule making and said, “With respect to fair market value, that extenuating circumstances are relevant for determining fair market value.”

I do think that some of that commentary that the government came out with around the rule change would play right into the pandemic. If you have an emergency coverage situation, you do have to pay higher rates to get that coverage in place. I think you’ll have some protection potentially under the fair market value standard as well. So those are just the limited remuneration exception and the greater flexibility around fair market value, which I think are two areas that will be helpful if they have to revert to arrangements to pre Waiver status, Alyssa.

Alyssa James: Oh, I think those are both really good call-outs of some new flexibilities that came about while we were in the midst of the pandemic. So things that didn’t necessarily exist, or options that didn’t exist pre-pandemic that hopefully continue some of that flexibility that providers have had during the PHE. Another framework that I think could be useful for some providers is the establishment or expansion of value-based enterprises/value-based arrangements where they can partner with physicians and other organizations to effectuate some of those value-based purposes. But I think a lot of the COVID related arrangements or expansions of arrangements for COVID purposes are things that could very easily dovetail into that value-based framework on a go forward basis. Those exceptions under Stark and Safe Harbors under AKS give providers a lot of flexibility they may not have with some of the other Stark Law exceptions.

So there’s a lot of resources on the Hall Render website about value-based arrangements so that anyone who’s interested in those can look to set those up with or without a lot of downside financial risk to the physicians. There are some monitoring and things like that that are required that may take a little bit to get in place and to effectuate, but I think all of those options discuss the wellness exception, limited remuneration and value-based exceptions hopefully will give providers continued flexibility even after the Waivers are no longer available. Joe, Erin, any final thoughts for our audience today with respect to the end of the PHE and its impact on these blanket Waivers?

Joe Wolfe: I just think doing the analysis sooner rather than later is going to be important. So conduct an audit, it’s likely your compliance team may be made up of people that weren’t even part of the team at the beginning of the pandemic. So do that audit. Contemporaneous documentation is the best situation to be in. But I think even having documentation now before the public health emergency is over is critical because you’re not going to want to be developing a record down the road when you have some type of an enforcement type action. So doing it now, it’s the right time to unpack this while you still have the opportunity. But we wish all … We know that everyone had the best of intentions during the public health emergency and they had to move quickly and now as an opportunity in the next few weeks to get these audits in place and to get the documentation solidified.

Erin Drummy: I would echo Joe’s comment around the timing. These things always take longer than you might think they would in terms of getting an updated fair market value in place and getting documentation signed if there’s an arrangement that’s not documented in compliance with a Stark Law that needs to be post pandemic. So I think thinking about identifying those arrangements and getting all of the I’s dotted and T’s crossed in terms of the supporting documentation amendments agreements in place so that you’re well suited to have an arrangement that fully complies with the law as of May 11th.

Alyssa James: I think those are all really good takeaways for the audience. Thank you all for joining us today. If you’d like to learn more about the Stark Law Blanket Waiver termination or other fraud and abuse and compliance issues more generally, please visit our website at hallrender.com or feel free to reach out to Erin Drummy, Joe Wolfe, or myself, Alyssa James or your regular Hall Render attorney. Please remember that the views expressed in this podcast are those of the participants only and do not constitute legal advice. Thanks.

Inside Baseball: 2023 Political Draft Picks

Inside Baseball: 2023 Political Draft Picks

On this episode, John and Andrew discuss the latest legislative and regulatory news from Washington and conduct a “political draft” of events they believe will take place in 2023.

Podcast Participants

John Williams

Hall Render
jwilliams@hallrender.com 

Andrew Coats

Hall Render
acoats@hallrender.com 

John Williams: Hello again, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Inside Baseball, a look at healthcare, politics, and policy in Washington, part of Hall Render’s Practical Solutions podcast series. I am John Williams, managing partner of Hall Render’s Washington, D.C., office. As always, I am joined by my colleague and D.C. cohort, Andrew Coats. Andrew, how are you?

Andrew Coats: Doing good. How we doing?

John Williams: We’re doing all right. We’re doing all right. Not sure what I can say about Congress in that regard. I mean, they’re continuing to do what I can only refer to as a slow roll into the first session of the 118th.

Andrew Coats: One of the slower starts to a Congress that I can remember.

John Williams: Yeah, it has been. It has been really slow. And speaking of slow, I’m going to touch base on some of that stuff real quick, but we have something rather exciting in store for the podcast later. You want to tell everybody about it?

Andrew Coats: So everyone… Not everyone, but a lot of people do fantasy sports, and you draft players that you think will have a good year in whatever league. We’re going to do a fantasy draft for D.C., and by this I mean there’s going to be a healthcare focus, but also just we’re going to draft items that we think you’re going to be reading about or hearing about in 2023. How we score this, I don’t know. There’s no first-based way, but I think it’s a fun way to kind of hit on some of the big issues that we’re going to be hearing about this year. And we’ll look back at the end of the year and see who had the better team.

John Williams: Or at least a way to fill up this podcast since there’s not too much to talk about, at least as far as Capitol Hill is concerned. And I’ll sort of do some housekeeping on that side real quick before we dive into the draft. When I say it’s slow, I mean slow as in the Senate has passed one bill that makes technical corrections to the Controlled Substances Act and nothing else. They’re really moving slowly over there. I mean, they’re doing confirmations for judges and executive-branch positions, but nothing really on the legislative front. The House has passed 28 bills. Only three of them are even related to healthcare. And those three deal with either ending the vaccine mandate or the public health emergency, so not much legislative productivity.

The Senate HELP committee did hold a hearing on workforce shortages. It was the first HELP hearing for the new chairman, Bernie Sanders, and ranking member, Bill Cassidy. That may result in some legislation down the road, but really nothing for now. On the administrative executive-branch side of things, I do want to note for everybody that the DEA released a long-awaited proposed rule on prescribing controlled substances via telehealth. That does not seem to have made anyone very happy. They did it after 6:00 PM via a press release, which is essentially an agency’s way of hoping nobody’s going to notice for a few days. Normally, that stuff goes to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which then publishes it in the Federal Register. Everybody gets notice that it’s at OIRA. We got nothing but a press release. It has reached the Federal Register and been published.

So the gist there is that they’re not adopting what has been in place during the pandemic as far as the prescription of controlled substances via telemedicine. During the pandemic, DEA-registered practitioners could issue prescriptions for controlled substances without conducting an in-person medical evaluation if they met certain conditions. Under these new rules, there is some flexibility, in that telemedicine prescriptions would be authorized when a qualifying telemedicine referral has been made by another practitioner. So there is that flexibility that didn’t exist before. But under the new rule, when you don’t have a prior in-person exam or a qualified referral that I just mentioned, prescriptions are limited to 30 days, a 30-day supply. You have to search the state Prescription Drug Monitoring Program. The prescriber must be licensed in the originating and the distant site location. So wherever the doc is, he’s got to be licensed. And whatever state the patient’s in, the doc has to be licensed.

No Schedule II drugs or opioids can be prescribed except subject to the 30-day supply limit up above, unless you’re talking about buprenorphine, which is for opioid-use disorder. And they’re giving everybody a six-month grace period to comply. So there’s more on that on Hall Render’s website under our resources tab if you would like more information on that proposed rule.

Andrew Coats: Real quick on just the workforce shortages HELP hearing, I tracked that. I thought it was interesting. I wanted to see kind of how Bernie and Cassidy would get along in their first meeting. But it was, I think, just worth noting, Bernie talked about kind of legislation that was needed regarding workforce shortages this year from the Senate. And he mentioned expanding the GME program, which actually I think that’s finance committee. He mentioned that as a must-do and expanding the Teaching Health Center Program as well as nursing shortages and emergency medical services.

John Williams: That’ll be interesting because there were 200 new GME slots in the omnibus last December. A hundred of those went to psychiatry. So it’ll just be interesting because some people will argue, well, we already did that in December, but-

Andrew Coats: Right.

John Williams: It’s certainly something that… I agree with you. It’s certainly something that needs to be addressed. I had a chance to talk to Bill Cassidy a couple of weekends ago, and we touched on this, and he also noted that that’s something he’s looking forward to working with Chairman Sanders on.

Andrew Coats: Right. And Cassidy did mention the government doesn’t have to do everything, and he talked about how they need to address physician burnout, which he thinks is partly due to overregulation by the government. So there’s certainly differences there between the two of them, but also some areas that they can work on.

John Williams: Exactly. Okay. So with those housekeeping items out of the way, we thought we’d have a little fun in the prognostication department. Andrew, do you want to tee this up?

Andrew Coats: Yeah, absolutely. We put together about eight different items, and between the two of us, we’re going to draft those items, which we think will be newsworthy this year. John, I think we did a coin flip beforehand, and you won the toss. So you get the first pick of our 2023 Fantasy D.C. things draft.

John Williams: Very good. Well, I will go first and not defer, and my first selection is Ron DeSantis is running for President. I know, surprising. But he will not announce until after Memorial Day. So I’m walking out on a really big limb with that one. I know. He’s got a book that’s come out this week, apparently doing very well, at least as far as Amazon’s concerned. He’s been making visits to other states. He’s doing all the things that you’re supposed to do when you’re preparing to run for President. So, DeSantis running for President, but not announcing until after Memorial Day.

Andrew Coats: Why do you think after Memorial Day? Any reasoning behind that?

John Williams: Well, because he’s really in no rush. It doesn’t, at least, seem like it. The legislative session in Tallahassee is, I think, getting close to finishing up. And I know that he’s going to want to… Or at least he plans to highlight a lot of the legislative accomplishments he will have had in that session of the general assembly down there. So I think he’s waiting until that’s wrapped up. And frankly, I don’t know if there’s anything in it for him to announce sooner rather than later, unless Trump-

Andrew Coats: I agree. When you have a national kind of name and platform that he does… I mean, I guess you could say the local politics of Iowa and New Hampshire, you want to get up there and start locking down votes and donors. But he has such a big platform. It’s not like Nikki Haley to John Sununu, someone who’s not known that needs to get out in front and get people to recognize them.

John Williams: Well, and somebody else had an article, I think it was maybe The Washington Post, talked about this weekend summit he had down in Miami a couple of weekends ago, where he had all these big-dollar donors in the Republican Party fly down there and spend the weekend meeting with him and his political team, and a lot of people down there at that event who have previously supported Trump. So he’s courting the donors. He’s releasing the book. He’s making the visits. I found it interesting that he’s… Instead of going to Iowa or New Hampshire, he’s been to New York and Illinois. So a little bit out-of-the-box strategy there early, where most people running for President, their first trips are usually to Iowa or New Hampshire or some early primary state. So yeah, so running for President, not announcing until after Memorial Day.

Andrew Coats: Little history note. You know who announced really early, and this has always been kind of the case study of why you announce early, was Jimmy Carter announced a month after the ’74 midterms. His famous kind of stump speech on that was he told his mom he’s running for President, and she always said, “President of what?” But that’s always been regarded as why you get in. But of course, Carter wasn’t really known then, right? So he had to get out there and get up and get to those states early on.

John Williams: Did not know that. Did not know that.

Andrew Coats: A little Jimmy Carter history for you.

John Williams: There you go. All right, your turn.

Andrew Coats: All right. So I’m looking across the board here, and with my first pick, I’m going to take Kevin McCarthy’s 2023 playbook. I think be prepared to read a lot of, if you’re a Politico or Bloomberg reader, a lot of headlines mentioning McCarthy’s playbook. And of course, this is true with all Speakers of the House, right? We’re all eyes on Kevin McCarthy. But it raises a good point. What are McCarthy’s top goals for this year? And I think we’re starting to see that slowly trickle out. But like any Speaker of the House, probably your number-one job is maintaining the majority, right? That’s how you’re ultimately going to be measured, is if your party stays in power after the next election. So his main job, it’s a little bit under the radar, but it’s flying around the country with his most vulnerable members, a lot of the freshman members who are… That’s the easiest time to beat an incumbent, is their first term before their name gets known. So to get out there and travel and raise money with them.

Oversight is going to be huge in this Congress. I mean, this Congress is shaping up to be a massive oversight Congress, and I don’t just mean from your former committee, government reform, but it seems like all the committees are dipping their toe in the oversight water. And the plan just seems to be investigate everything right now and tie up the White House with having to respond to these investigations and hearings and subpoenas and kind of control the message, as opposed to the White House getting to dictate what the messages are.

So, we’re already seeing the big ones that are all over cable news, the handling of COVID, the Twitter censoring, the train derailment in Ohio. Those are the big ones that the administration wants to avoid, but then you have the more kind of in-the-weeds investigations going on. So waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in federal agencies, federal regulations and the burdens they create on Americans, everything down to even like hospital CEO compensation is going to be a big item this year for a number of the different House committees. So we’re starting to see that play out already.

John Williams: Yeah, you mentioned my former committee, Oversight. Well, it used to be called Government Reform and Oversight, and now I think it’s just called Oversight and Reform. Its chairman, Jamie Comer of Kentucky, I know earlier this year mentioned that how hospitals spent their provider relief fund monies is something that they were going to look at. So I think that fits… I think you’re right. That fits within that more niche area of oversight so that they’re not just looking at Hunter Biden’s laptop. They’re actually going to look at what they view as more substantive policy-related oversight and how those agencies… The same thing with PPP. They’re going to look at the PPP loan stuff. So yeah, I think you’re right.

And McCarthy overall with what, a four-vote, a five-vote majority, yeah, that playbook’s going to come in handy because it just takes one person getting sick. I mean, you see it in the Senate right now with Senator Fetterman of Pennsylvania having had a stroke and now unfortunately suffering from depression and being admitted to the hospital. The reality is it puts the Democrats in the Senate down a vote, and nobody’s sure when he’s going to be coming back. So that significantly changes the voting dynamics there. And McCarthy’s got the same problem really in the House with his narrow majority.

Andrew Coats: I certainly hope the best for Senator Fetterman.

John Williams: Yep.

Andrew Coats: Never like to see that, but it’s going to bring Kamala Harris back up to the Hill quite a bit to break ties in the Senate with the closer margin. And to your point on McCarthy kind of holding his party in line, he has to maintain the fringe element of the House, these members who grab a lot of headlines. I think we saw a certain member from Georgia calling for a national divorce last week. And let’s be honest. Every Congress has these members, and this goes back to the days when we were on the Hill, right?

John Williams: Right.

Andrew Coats: But the problem is or McCarthy’s problem is he really called in a favor to get the gavel with this group.

John Williams: Made a lot of promises. Yep.

Andrew Coats: Yep. I liken it to… One of my favorite movies is Goodfellas, and that scene when the restaurant owner goes to Paulie and asks to partner with him in running his restaurant, and there’s that moment when Paulie looks at him and says, “Yeah, that’s not even a fair deal.” It’s kind of similar to the Speaker vote, where I think one of the House members, maybe it was Chip Roy, I’m not sure which one, said they finally agreed to McCarthy, to vote for McCarthy as Speaker when they couldn’t think of anything else to ask for. So…

John Williams: That’s true.

Andrew Coats: How will the far right treat this Congress? Will it be similar to the restaurant in Goodfellas, which essentially burned down, right? I think that’s going to be interesting and see how McCarthy deals with that. And then he also has the debt-ceiling fight coming, whether that gets raised or lifted. I think that comes to a head as early as July and September at the latest. So you’re going to have this stare-down between the White House and McCarthy. Republicans never win on these.

John Williams: No. Well, you’re going to have a stare-down between McCarthy and the people in the caucus that you’re talking about.

Andrew Coats: Right.

John Williams: You’re going to have that stare-down first before he even gets to negotiate with Schumer or the White House.

Andrew Coats: Exactly. So be prepared to read a lot about extraordinary measures and the federal government on the brink between now and then. In the past, it’s always worked its way out. It’s worked itself out somehow, but that’s certainly going to be in the news. That’s kind of an overview of his playbook, so I shift back to you with your second pick.

John Williams: Well, my second pick in our draft is the highly entertaining DSH cuts fix.

Andrew Coats: Ooh.

John Williams: Yeah. Disproportionate share hospitals. If everyone will recall, there’s about $8 billion in ACA-related DSH cuts that have been postponed ever since the ACA passed. Folks will remember that part of the structure of the ACA is that because everyone was going to do Medicaid expansion in the states, that states didn’t need as much Medicaid funding. So there’s $8 billion in Medicaid cuts that can be made. Well, we all know how that worked out in states that chose not to expand Medicaid. So in order to prevent these cuts from taking place, Congress has passed legislation sort of kicking that can down the road for so many years at a time, and the last postponement expires at the end of this fiscal year, so September 30th. And the cuts will then start again on October 1st if Congress doesn’t do anything.

It is my pick that Congress will pass legislation to postpone the DSH cuts again. That will be obviously a healthcare bill, which means that, given the political dynamics and the makeup on the Hill and divided government, it might be the only healthcare-related bill that passes this year. And if that’s the case, then we may see more items in that bill than just the DSH cuts fix. But that is my second pick for our draft, is the DSH cuts fix.

Andrew Coats: Yeah. I like that pick because, as you mentioned, there’s not a lot of healthcare vehicles moving this year, and that’s going to be the one that everyone kind of tries to get a hook into. So we’ll see if Congress keeps that clean or what it does with it. But there certainly will be a lot of news items, and that will be mentioned in no shortage of meetings up on the Hill this coming year. With my second pick, and I really like this pick. I feel like I’m getting a good value pick here. I’m going to go with Biden getting challenged in a primary. And we haven’t seen… It’s been a long time. We haven’t seen a sitting president get challenged since the pre-internet days. But if President Biden does get challenged, and I’m talking about a major candidate, not-

John Williams: So not Marianne Williamson, because she’s already announced that she’s challenging him. So you’re saying that Marianne Williamson is not a serious candidate?

Andrew Coats: I guess I am.

John Williams: Not that I disagree with you, but…

Andrew Coats: But if a bigger name… Think back when Eugene McCarthy challenged Johnson, someone of that ilk.

John Williams: Oh, yeah. Well, you mentioned Carter, right? I mean Ted Kennedy, right?

Andrew Coats: Oh, in 1980.

John Williams: Yeah.

Andrew Coats: He challenged Carter, and that really weakened him. And I think Kennedy, he was clearly… He wasn’t going to win that primary, but he wouldn’t pull out of the race.

John Williams: No. He went all the way to the convention and gave that famous speech. Yeah.

Andrew Coats: Exactly. And the final moment… Back when this was just you had the major networks showing the convention. The final moment of that convention was Carter’s acceptance speech and Kennedy up on the stage, and they didn’t join… They didn’t do the political kind of hands of unity.

John Williams: Right, right.

Andrew Coats: So that’s another example. Ford got challenged by Reagan in ’76.

John Williams: Indeed. Sure did. Does the challenge against Biden come from the progressive Bernie Sanders/AOC wing, or does it come from, I guess, the more moderate wing?

Andrew Coats: You’re right. You’d think it would be the progressive wing. But at the same time, President Biden has been a fairly progressive president in the policies he’s pushing and the White House are pushing. And I would think… If I’m in the White House advising President Biden and he wants to run again, I’d be saying, “You may want to start shifting to the center here sooner than later and start running on some issues that can grab more moderate voters.” So I don’t know where that challenger would come from, but I do know if you’re the White House, you certainly want to do what you can to sort of weaken potential challengers that would be a threat.

John Williams: Well, and I think they’ve done that systematically by the way that they’ve changed up the primary system so that they’re not going to Iowa. They’re not going to do that. They’re going to go to the states where Biden is strongest, right? South Carolina. Right out of the gate, they’re going to go to states where they know he’s not at risk of losing.

Andrew Coats: Yeah, no, I completely agree with that. And I think you look back at when there were a lot of challenges to sitting presidents, and that was what? The late ’60s, ’70s, Watergate, Vietnam, just a general sense of government overreach. And we’re in a very similar… There’s different reasons, but there’s a lot of anti-Washington sentiment right now. So I think this is something we could see. And if it were to happen, I think it’s bad news obviously for President Biden and national Democrats in 2024.

John Williams: Very good. Well, I guess we’re what, to my third pick?

Andrew Coats: Third pick.

John Williams: All right. Well, and my third pick in our fantasy, I guess, draft or whatever we’re calling this, I am going to tee up the ever… Oh, I don’t even know what the right word for it is. It’s certainly not entertaining, but it is interesting, I think, is a workplace violence regulation. The administration… And every administration does this. They put out a regulatory agenda at least twice a year, and it lists all of the regulations that are either in the process of being finished or mid-draft or whatever. But it also lists the regulations that are in the pre-writing phase. So this agenda is what we look to to get a sense of what might be coming up on the regulatory front coming out of HHS. And this one actually is not an HHS rule. It is a Department of Labor rule called the Prevention of Workplace Violence in Healthcare and Social Assistance.

It’s in the pre-rule stage. It’s being handled by OSHA. So it is a DOL, again, a DOL rule. OSHA published a request for information way back in 2016, where they solicited information mostly from healthcare employers, workers, other healthcare subject-matter experts on the impact of violence and prevention strategies and anything else along those lines that would be useful to the agency, to OSHA. There was a broad coalition of labor unions, the nurses’ unions, that petitioned OSHA to do something, to set some sort of standard along those lines. OSHA recognized the need to do that. Of course, 2016, 2017, we’re talking about when we had a change of administration, right? So that went on the back burner during the Trump years, and now it looks like it’s come back.

The House of Representatives during the last Congress when Democrats were in the majority, they did pass a workplace violence rule that was never taken up by the Senate. That rule would’ve given OSHA a significant amount of regulatory authority in this area. For that reason, it was strongly opposed by the American Hospital Association, the Chamber of Commerce, other business groups, I guess, if you will, and a lot of healthcare or hospital-related groups opposed it too. So this may be the administration’s attempt to jumpstart that again. So sometime this year, I think we are going to see a proposed rule on workplace violence come out of OSHA.

Andrew Coats: Yeah, it’s interesting the timing with Marty Walsh just leaving DOL as secretary and taking another position. So we’ll see what the new labor secretary that they… if they can get the nominee in confirmed, if it has to wait for them to kind of go through the confirmation process, which could be controversial from the sounds of it. So that’s definitely going to be in the news and something to watch. It’s a good third-round pick.

John Williams: Thank you.

Andrew Coats: With my third pick, I’m going to go with a subject you hear a bit about, and it’s really kind of ratcheted back up in the news of late, and that’s congressional earmarks. Now, recall in what, two years ago, the Democrats ended a 10-year moratorium on federal earmarks. And earmarks are, they’re basically small grants to projects in congressional districts or states. And by small, I mean in the $100,000 to $4 million range. The thinking is you attach these projects to annual spending bills to ensure bipartisan buy-in, so bills are passing with not just party-line votes.

John Williams: Yeah, let’s call it greasing the wheel, right? That’s greasing the legislative process. Let’s just call it what it is.

Andrew Coats: Yeah. The optics have never been good really for either party here, but particularly for Republicans. The bridge to nowhere, right? Google earmarks, and you come up… One of the first hits is the Heritage Report that calls into question… This is recent. This is 2022. 1.6 million for the equitable growth of the shellfish industry in Rhode Island, or 4.2 million for sheep experiment station infrastructure improvements in Idaho, and 3 million for the Mahatma Gandhi Museum in Houston.

So we’re starting to see these get brought back up again and bandied about in the news. But at the same time, the members that bring these up know that if it’s Congress not giving out the grants, then it’s going to be unelected bureaucrats and the agencies doing it. So it’s an interesting kind of dichotomy here. I think one of the wow moments, and we often will send each other texts or headlines, was late last year, and I forget if you sent it to me or I sent it to you. But it was House Republicans voting to keep earmarks in place for this Congress and by a big margin. It was over a hundred votes. So I’m playing a little bit of a long game here, but I’m predicting by fall, you’re going to continue to see earmark bashing in the Congress, especially in the House.

John Williams: Well, yeah, yeah, earmark bashing in the House. And we just learned in the last 24 hours that there are certain types of earmarks that House Republicans are just not going to do. And the House Appropriations Committee has announced that there are certain accounts, they refer to them… you can think of them as agencies, in general, that they’re not going to do earmarks for this year. And one of those is the Labor HHS appropriations bill. They’re not going to do earmarks. So whether it’s… Take a pick of an agency under HHS, whether it’s SAMHSA or-

Andrew Coats: HRSA.

John Williams: … CMS or HRSA or whoever it, HRSA and SAMHSA being good examples of agencies that have been responsible for distributing earmarks that were approved by Congress in the past. Well, House Republicans said last night that “We’re not doing them. We’re not going to do Labor HHS earmarks.” So hospitals, health systems, a lot of folks in the healthcare space that were hoping to get the House of Representatives to… or their congressperson to put in an earmark request for them are going to be out of luck this year. So yeah, you’re right. The bashing is going to continue.

Andrew Coats: What’s interesting is under that Heritage Report, the next link was a Brookings Report. Now, Heritage being the conservative think tank, Brookings being the more liberal. They talked about that while Democrats sought more earmarks in 2021, 2022, the Republicans actually asked for more money. So I think they eliminated the defense account. They eliminated, as you mentioned, the HHS account. By doing that, that may be a way of controlling the spending that comes out.

John Williams: Yep, yep. I think you’re right.

Andrew Coats: All right. Last pick.

John Williams: Okay. For my last pick in our political draft, I’m actually going to go with the relationship between Bernie Sanders and Bill Cassidy will be more amicable than folks might have anticipated. The interesting thing about that committee is that if Republicans would’ve gone by seniority, then Rand Paul would’ve been next in line to be the highest-ranking Republican instead of Bill Cassidy. And the idea of Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders being responsible for running a committee together would’ve been just the height of political theater. That would’ve been must-watch TV as far as political geeks like me are concerned. But there would’ve been areas too where they would’ve worked together, I think. They would’ve both enjoyed bashing drug companies together.

But I do think that Cassidy and Sanders are going to work better together than people think. And I have a little bit of insight on this, in that I was able to talk to Dr. Bill Cassidy about this a couple weekends ago and asked him about his relationship with Sanders, and he said that he gets along with Sanders pretty well. There’s not a lot of animosity there. There are going to be certainly things that they don’t agree upon. Dr. Bill, being a doctor, certainly wants to decrease the regulatory burden on physicians so they can spend more time practicing instead of doing paperwork and complying with regulations. I’m not sure there’s a regulation Bernie ever saw that he didn’t like.

But there is other areas where I think there is room to work together. We talked about workforce shortage being one of those earlier, but also in behavioral health. Behavioral health is a huge issue for Bill Cassidy for personal family reasons, and I know that’s also been one that’s been a big issue for Bernie Sanders as well. And Cassidy is a member of what’s known in the Senate as the Gang of Eight. It’s these eight Republicans that have a history of working across the aisle on bipartisan legislation to get bipartisan legislation through the Senate. So I think you’re going to see a better working relationship between Cassidy and Sanders than I think a lot of people had anticipated.

Andrew Coats: Yeah, I agree. And both these members are not afraid to jump in the water on any healthcare-related issue. So there’s going to be no shortage of headlines and news coming out of that committee and action coming out of the HELP committee on healthcare.

John Williams: Indeed.

Andrew Coats: All right.

John Williams: All right. Last one.

Andrew Coats: The last one. And with every fantasy draft, you need a good sleeper, and I think there’s no better sleeper than what I’m going to take in the fourth and final pick: nonpartisan advisory commissions and panels. And by this I’m talking about MedPAC and MACPAC. Now, who is MedPAC? MedPAC is the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, which was created by Congress in 1997. It advises Congress on issues impacting Medicare, particularly Medicare reimbursement. For over a decade now, John, you and I, we’ve written newsletters and D.C. updates, and for the large part, this decade has been filled with a lot of healthcare news, whether it’s passage of the ACA, the attempts to repeal the ACA, COVID, all the massive spending to deal with COVID. There’s been no shortage of news. But one constant is always, in the healthcare world, there’s always reports coming out of MedPAC and MACPAC. MACPAC is kind of the sister to MedPAC in that it deals with Medicaid.

These are important, these reports that come out, and they come out… They meet monthly or bimonthly, and they have annual and semi-annual reports. They’re important, and it’s really how healthcare policy is made. John, you and I have both been congressional staffers, and you don’t just learn things by sitting inside of Longworth and Rayburn and Cannon. You have to read these reports and find out what nonpartisan experts are advising Congress on in regards to Medicare payment. And I think in the first year without major healthcare policy news coming out of D.C., get ready to hear a lot more about these MedPAC reports. They’re highly technical. They’re in the weeds. Hence, the sleeper nature of my pick. But it’s a very much underrated facet of healthcare policy.

John Williams: You’re right. It is certainly in the weeds over there. They’ve got some pretty deep policy expertise. People that get appointed at MACPAC or MedPAC, they’re typically from outside of Washington. These commission members are hospital CEOs or physicians or people who work in their day jobs in healthcare, and they’re certainly subject-matter experts. And then you’ve got the staff at these commissions who are also really good subject-matter experts on this stuff. So yeah, I think you’re right. I think they’re going to get a lot more attention just because there’s not going to be a ton happening on the Hill, so people are going to be focused… At least folks in the D.C. healthcare media who need stuff to write about are going to be looking to these commissions a lot more.

The interesting part I’ve always found is that… Take MedPAC, for example. They make all these recommendations to Congress on what Congress should do on Medicare policy, and that’s what they’re charged with doing. That’s what Congress asked them to do. That’s why they exist. Yet, you see all these recommendations that they make to Congress all the time that Congress doesn’t pay attention to. I mean, they pay attention to some of them, but a lot of them they don’t, but…

Andrew Coats: Yeah.

John Williams: I think we’ll just have to wait and see what they come up with that’s new, but I think they’re definitely going to get some more attention. You’re right. Well-

Andrew Coats: So that does it.

John Williams: Yeah, I guess we’ll have to see how it all plays out, as always. And however it all plays out, we’ll be there to tell you about it here on Inside Baseball. So thank you for joining us on this edition. As always, if you’d like to receive more information about what Andrew and I do or how we provide federal advocacy services to our clients, please visit our website at hallrender.com or reach out to me at jwilliams@hallrender.com or Andrew at acoats@hallrender.com. And one last disclaimer: Please remember, the views expressed in this podcast are those of me and Andrew only and do not constitute legal advice. So long, everybody.

 

Building an Online Marketplace for Healthcare Real Estate Buyers and Sellers

Building an Online Marketplace for Healthcare Real Estate Buyers and Sellers

Andrew Dick sits down the Yoni Kirschner, the founder of 1Konnection, an online marketplace for buyers and sellers of health care real estate assets.

Podcast Participants

Andrew Dick

Attorney, Hall Render
adick@hallrender.com 

Yoni Kirschner

Founder, 1Konnection
www.1konnection.com

Andrew Dick: Hello, and welcome to the Healthcare Real Estate Advisor podcast. I’m Andrew Dick, an attorney at Hall Render, the largest healthcare focused law firm in the country. Today we’re talking to Yoni Kirschner. He is the founder of 1Konnection, which is a senior housing marketplace, a bit of a unique marketplace for buyers and sellers, which we’re going to talk about a little bit later. We’re going to talk about his background, and how he decided to come up with this idea, and then launch a company. So Yoni, thanks for joining me.

Yoni Kirschner: It’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

Andrew Dick: You bet. So let’s talk about your background. What did you do after high school? Did you go to college? What did your education look like? And then what did you do as your first job?

Yoni Kirschner: Oh, first job, that starts way before the end of high school. But no, I’ve been working ever since I was probably 12 years old is when I really had my first job. It was in waitering. Starting out in high school, I was really always trying to do something more outside of school, since I was never really too fond of school, and I never really excelled too well at that. Did okay, but got by, and always found a way to get by. Throughout high school, did waitering and then went to college at the University of Illinois at Champaign. While I was there, actually started my first business called Chicago Kosher Dinner, which was a kosher food delivery service at downtown Chicago. Kind of like Grubhub, before Grubhub since that was probably like 2011. Then as I was there, I was doing door-to-door sales, selling roofing and siding, getting up on 30-foot roofs, checking up hail, and wind damage, and all that fun stuff.

And then after I graduated from college, getting a degree in consumer economics and finance, I really didn’t know what I wanted to do probably as most people coming out of college. And I ended up getting connected to someone who worked at this company called Omnicare Pharmacy. I hadn’t heard of it. Apparently, my aunt even worked there, I had no idea. And I got a job offer from there doing sales. And the day I actually signed my contract with them was the day they got purchased by CVS Health. So immediately went into working for a Fortune 5 company, which was pretty interesting.

Andrew Dick: And so talk about that role. It sounds like you were pretty successful in your sales role and hit a number of milestones working for that company. Talk about that just for a little bit.

Yoni Kirschner: Yeah, definitely. So it was funny, one of my first weeks there was a national sales conference, and someone came up and introduced themselves to me. It was like a VP or exec at the company. And they’re like, “Hey, nice to meet you. What territory do you have?” And I told them, Chicago and the Chicagoland area, and they laughed, and they said, “Good luck with that.” And for me, I always find motivation in someone telling me I can’t do something or something’s impossible to do. And that, just right off the bat, I was like, “All right, here we go. Let’s get after it.” And in the first year I was there, I ended up being one of the top five sales rep in the country, selling pharmacy services, nursing home-owners, and operators across the country.

And then I got promoted to one of the youngest regional sales managers in the country, won one of 15 awards that were given out at the National Sales Conference for collaboration across the entire company. I was always someone that was really focused on, I’m not just here to do something for myself, but I’m here to help others win, because why would I pass up on the opportunity? It doesn’t always need to be for me, but if there’s an opportunity to help someone else, why not get after, and why not do that for someone that can actually be beneficial? So that was kind of my year and a half, two years at Omnicare CVS Health. It’s pretty exciting.

Andrew Dick: And so after that, you worked for another pharmacy company. Talk about that. What kind of work?

Yoni Kirschner: Yeah, so it was similar. I’m not someone that likes being limited in many ways since I’m someone that always strives to be the best version of myself. So, while I was at CVS Health, being at such a large company, there’s obviously a lot of red tape that goes into being with someone that’s so big. And I felt like I had kind of maxed out for where I was in my life kind of early on, 22, 23. My potential there, and I was stopping my personal growth and professional growth. So I went to a smaller pharmacy to be their head of sales. I doubled them in a year after they hadn’t really grown in four, selling over $8 million in new business in one year. And from there, I felt like I had kind of accomplished this next cycle of really proving out that I could sell at a higher dollar value, and these more complex sales, and really complete that flow of doing those types of sales for a company, and growing it.

Andrew Dick: Got it. And then you came up with an idea and-

Yoni Kirschner: I came up with an idea.

Andrew Dick: Talk about that, because even though you were selling to skilled nursing operators, your current company is a little bit outside of what you were doing.

Yoni Kirschner: Yeah, it definitely was. It was pretty funny. I kept going to larger conferences. As I got to that role within the smaller pharmacy where I was more high up, I obviously had more of a national reach on the capability to establish national relationships. So as I was going through that and going to larger conferences, I network with all the owners and operators of senior housing and healthcare real estate. Then he’d always ask me, “Hey, Yoni, do you know anyone selling a nursing home in New York?” Or whoever it was, right? X, Y, or Z doesn’t really make a difference. And I said, “Huh, why the hell are they asking me? I have nothing to do with this type of sales. Maybe there’s something here.” That kind of started the journey of 1Konnection.

Andrew Dick: And so, talk about 1Konnection, because it’s a very interesting platform. There are a number of different sales platforms for real estate in general. But this is a very focused online marketplace for buyers and sellers of senior housing. Talk about the vision and how it works.

Yoni Kirschner: Yeah. So before I even get into that, I think there’s a few key things I realized that really led to the foundation of 1Konnection. When you look at our industry as a whole, as I’m sure you’ve experienced and many other vendors in the industry, and even myself as a pharmacy sales rep, the only way I was successful at selling pharmacy services was because I was so persistent. The number of meetings that I had where people literally just met with me because they said You wouldn’t stop calling us, was astounding, and it was a lot. And these are multimillion dollar decisions. And when I was going through that process, I realized that why are these people meeting with me just because I’m persistent with a decision like this that actually affects the quality of people’s lives?

And the reason was, because these decision makers in our industry are so, I guess, overcome with 30 times a day. They get new vendors reaching out for something, whatever it is. And their main focus is improving the quality of lives of their residents and their patients. And they don’t have time to deal with vendors and make these educated purchasing decisions. So really, the whole concept of 1Konnection was to build this online marketplace for decision makers in our industry, to have them gain the capability and empower them with access and resources to make the best decisions for them with transparency that doesn’t exist. And right now, if you look at our industry, the same way I was successful in pharmacy sales, it’s all offline. It’s all word-of-mouth networking. But you look outside of healthcare and senior housing, and there’s so many other industries that have been more technology adapt, and more innovative, and actually utilizing that technology to improve the greater outcomes of the industries.

And I think senior housing and healthcare real estate, even though there’s so much technology and innovation between products and services, I think the industry as a whole is still lacking from innovation and technology. So when you look at 1Konnection, and what we set out to do, and what it was like to found it, the concept was if we can get everyone in one place, empower them with the tools and resources they need to be successful, that can actually create this greater ecosystem of success, improving the quality of care for residents, and also decreasing cost for the decision makers and actually creating this greater value for everyone in healthcare. So I know that long-winded answer to not actually, but…

Andrew Dick: No, that background was helpful. But talk about who is the target market for 1Konnection? Is it just senior housing? Does it go beyond that? Talk about the type of buyer and seller, and how it works. Go into a little bit more detail.

Yoni Kirschner: Yeah. So it goes beyond just senior housing, it’s healthcare, real estate. It’s really everything that encompasses that. The second thing I found to go back one step and I’ll come back with you, was that these deals have to be done confidential. You’re dealing with people’s lives and they can’t be listed on a real marketplace. So if we’re able to aggregate everyone by giving them access to what they wanted, which are these senior housing acquisition deals for buying and selling nursing homes, senior housing, answering that question, they came to me with, “Do you know anyone buying or selling?” We have the capability to build out this ecosystem of vendors that really supports their needs. So now instead of the vendors chasing after them like I was, they actually have the power to choose the vendors at the time they need them. And so the way we did that, the first step was let’s get everyone on the same page by giving them access to these deals.

So we created this acquisition marketplace for buyers and sellers, brokers of senior housing, healthcare, real estate, whether it’s assisted livings, we’re just getting into medical office building and starting to explore that since that really completes the whole thing. But behavioral health, everything from A to Z within healthcare, which at the end of the day, you would end up having the need for some sort of vendors for quality of services, for residents, or patients. So that’s kind of where we’re at today, is connecting these buyers, sellers, and brokers for these acquisition opportunities. And as we’ve been doing that, we’ve been seeing kind of this hypothesis, if you’d like to call it, or experiment of this ecosystem of vendors building itself naturally. We have owners and operators of senior housing, healthcare real estate saying, “Hey, 1Konnection, do you guys have vendors for X, Y, or Z?” And we have vendors coming and saying, “Hey, instead of pounding on doors endlessly and just networking to the people we need, you guys have access to everyone we need, and who they are, and what they need. Can you start making those introductions?”

So as we look at the greater vision of 1Konnection and where we’re going, it’s really to build out those next stages, and create this one-stop shop marketplace for decision makers in the industry, really giving them the resources they need to make the best decisions possible from acquisitions to operations.

Andrew Dick: Okay. So let’s take an example. We have an owner of an assisted living facility interested in selling. You’re right, it’s important to be discreet about the opportunity. What would they do? Would they create an account on 1Konnection, and describe their property, upload some photos? How does that work?

Yoni Kirschner: Yeah, so a lot of times the owners come to us with brokers representing them, which is great. We love working with brokers, since it just makes a little more… It makes the process a little more simple, because obviously, if you bring in the more educated parties, they know what to do and how to do it from the start, which obviously increases certainty of execution. So an assisted living owner might have a broker representing to them. They come to the platform, they give us high level overviews of the business, and we kind of operate like a matchmaker, like a Tinder or a dating app, if anyone knows those types of references. But it’s really, we keep these opportunities confidential, which is the core piece of this. It’s really more of a matchmaking platform, algorithm involved.

They give us a high level overview. We kind of put in certain fields as vague, and we match that up. Then if we have a buyer come in, the buyer comes in, enters their buying criteria. They give us company profile background, so we actually can start improving the quality of buyers. And then we match that to the potential buyers. We say, “Hey, buyers, we found you a new opportunity. Are you interested?” And we get them connected. And that’s kind of how we’ve been working to date. And as we look at the next stages, actually in the next few weeks, we’re launching an app and full platform from the feedback we got in the past year. And this is really a platform to empower the users. So how do we surround the technology and tools that actually helps them increase efficiency to get more deals done faster?

Andrew Dick: So let’s go back to our example, the assisted living facility owner operator, they have a broker. How does 1Konnection get paid? How does the broker get paid in the deal? Because I think that those are the questions that come up.

Yoni Kirschner: Yeah. So as of today, we take a 1% platform fee. Up to 1% on the buy side, so we don’t take anything from the brokers. It’s really based on a sliding scale. Since we’re not a broker, we’re just a marketplace like any other, so there’s success fees involved. And as we look at building out this next stage of value for users. And as you look at what the opportunity is here, if we could help, whether it’s a vendor or a broker get more deals done, because they have more capacity, they now have more resources, they don’t have to be spread so thin and how they’re spending their time, because they have technology empowering them, then we’re also increasing the value for them. They’re getting more money in their pockets. So we’ll look at with this next stage of evolution, what’s the right way to monetize to keep everyone utilizing the platform. And also help continue driving deal velocity for the industry.

Andrew Dick: Interesting. So talk about… I mean, be even more granular. Is this marketplace for all types of buyers and sellers? Or are you focused on smaller owner operators, or institutional owner operators? I mean talk about who is this focused on. Or is it cover the gamut?

Yoni Kirschner: Yeah, so it’s been interesting. It’s been a pretty long journey to get here. And you kind of see in startups who the early adopters are, and it’s really the people that are smaller to mid-size people, that are more willing to take chance, take risks. And then at the end of the day, after you prove it out with those people, then the larger institutional players who do things the way they’ve always done them, now start to say, “Huh, what’s going on over there? Looks like something might be happening.” And then they start to come. So when we started building 1Konnection, it was really the small and medium sized players. Over the past year, we’ve actually got some of the largest industry brokers on the platform. We went from kind of maybe a 50 million a year in total deal volume in 2020, to last year we had over two and a half billion dollars, and total deals come through the platform.

And we grew from 1000 to 6,000 users pretty quickly in just a year for just someone having an idea of being a pretty bootstrap team. So it’s really for everyone across the gamut, whether they’re owner operators at a small mom and pop, I’ve had those conversations, or some of the largest players in the industry. But the core audience, if you think about our industry as a whole, the largest players, and I think why they are the kind of the latter adopters, is those people already have access to everything they would need. And not just that, but they also have the resources to manage all of that. The people that really need marketplaces are the people that don’t have access. It’s the people that aren’t on the same playing field. They don’t have teams that can go do acquisitions or optimize operations. So it’s really for the small to medium players to start that don’t have access, that don’t have the resources, that don’t have the time to be as efficient as the people that have it mailed down to the team.

Andrew Dick: Very interesting. And congratulations on the growth, that’s tremendous over just a short period of time. Talk about the team, Yoni. I mean, I know that you started out really on your own, founding the company with this idea, have grown the business. Talk about what the 1Konnection Team is today. What does it look like?

Yoni Kirschner: Yeah, we’re pretty scrappy. Right now, it’s myself, head of sales customer success. And we’ve got a small outsource development team that we’ve been managing that’s actually been over in Ukraine since the start of everything going on. But we’ve been pretty scrappy. What I really try to do, I think, as an entrepreneur, is be pretty self-aware, and surround myself when in areas of weaknesses, or areas of people, areas of opportunity where I can bring in someone that’s more strategic, has more experience to supplement our growth. So it’s really been about finding some of these core pieces, whether they be advisors, or just friends, or whatever it might be, and consultants and surrounding us with a larger team of people that are highly skilled in what they do.

Andrew Dick: As we wrap up here, let’s talk about a couple things. Where do you see 1Konnection going in 2023? You’ve had tremendous growth as we talked about. Any key goals this year or milestones that you’re looking forward to?

Yoni Kirschner: Definitely. I think what we did last year with no established brand, no marketing was pretty incredible, really proved out here that there is a need for this. And people ask me, “Does anyone actually look for nursing homes or assisted livings online? And are these vendors interested?” And we saw that with over 500 vendors on our wait list, and thousands of owner operators signing up, and thousands of deals coming through the platform, there is a need. And that was really the goal of 2022. Is there something here? And with that growth we established, yes, the goals of 2023 are really to optimize now. Now we have everyone we’ve seen what works, what doesn’t work. Now let’s focus on improving quality and taking this to the next level to make all of this value that we’ve seen is potentially there come to reality and fruition.

So I think our goal is for 2023 are pretty simple. It’s to increase deal velocity right on the acquisition side and start getting into helping those vendors and the owner operators connect, whether it’s on the acquisitions or the vendor procurement of the actual operations, really starting to prove out this ecosystem and answering that next question of, “Hey, is there a greater marketplace here for the entire industry?” Because if you could lock in that piece, you have the opportunity to really revolutionize senior care and healthcare as a whole. Not just within the US but potentially globally, greater than 2023, four or five years down the line for the entire industry as a whole, which is a large opportunity to help a lot of people.

Andrew Dick: Well, I love the vision. I get excited about high growth companies like yours. How about providing some advice to folks who are getting into the healthcare real estate industry? I mean, you were working in a different area of healthcare, stumbled into healthcare real estate. What advice do you have someone who’s new to the industry, and what would you tell them to do?

Yoni Kirschner: Yeah, I think one of the most shocking things that I’ve found is, I’ve been selling stuff my whole life. Kind of like I mentioned. When it came to 1Konnection, the willingness of people around you to help like yourself, you were with me from the start. You always offered, “Hey, if there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.” I think it’s, don’t be afraid to ask the people around you for help. There’s so many people in the industry, and while some of it might be skewed by these outliers, I think when you’re talking about the industry as a whole, we’re all here for the same reason. And that’s because we believe in the industry. We want to improve the quality of lives, and we want to help the people around us, because that truly has an effect on real people. And I think a lot of people are bought in on doing that and willing to help each other get there.

So don’t be afraid to ask the people in our industry for help. Everyone will help. Not everyone, never say everyone. But people are willing to help. And that can make a huge difference in getting involved in the industry and kind of help take you from start to something.

Andrew Dick: Well, this has been a great discussion. Yoni, tell the audience where they can learn more about you in 1Konnection.

Yoni Kirschner: Yeah, LinkedIn. Or you can’t visit us@www.1Konnection.com. It’s the number one, in Konnection with the K. We’ve got an exciting launch coming up next week, so come check us out. We’d love to have you on there and happy to connect with you guys if you reach out directly.

Andrew Dick: Well, thanks to our audience for listening to the podcast on your Apple or Android device. Please subscribe to the podcast and leave us feedback. We also publish a healthcare real estate weekly update. If you’d like to subscribe to that, please go to my LinkedIn page and there is a link to subscribe.