By Mark Wizel, Founder, YourMedicalProperty.com.au
A recent report in The Age highlighting that just two of Victoria’s 21 adult mental health services are meeting a key emergency department benchmark should concern all of us.
But it also raises a broader question.
Do we have the physical healthcare infrastructure required to meet the mental health needs of a growing population?
Much of the discussion around Australia’s mental health system understandably focuses on people — psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, counsellors and other healthcare professionals.
They are fundamental to the solution.
But those professionals also need the right places in which to deliver care.
As demand for mental health services continues to grow, the property supporting those services becomes increasingly important. We need to think beyond traditional hospitals and consider the entire ecosystem of facilities required to provide accessible, efficient and appropriate care.
That includes community mental health centres, specialist consulting facilities, outpatient clinics, rehabilitation and recovery environments, step-up and step-down facilities and other models capable of providing care outside already stretched hospital emergency departments.
Property can be part of the solution
At YourMedicalProperty.com.au, we spend a great deal of time speaking with healthcare operators about their property requirements.
One of the consistent challenges is that healthcare property is rarely simple.
A provider may identify an area where demand exists, but then needs to find the right site, negotiate appropriate commercial terms, determine whether the building can accommodate its clinical requirements, obtain approvals, fund substantial fit-out works and ultimately deliver a facility capable of operating efficiently.
That process can consume considerable time and capital — resources healthcare organisations would often prefer to direct towards delivering care.
We believe there is an opportunity for the property industry to work much more collaboratively with mental health providers.
Rather than simply offering a building and expecting an operator to solve everything that follows, property owners and capital partners can work with providers from the beginning to understand their operational requirements and create purpose-built or turnkey property solutions.
That could include identifying appropriate locations, securing sites, funding building upgrades, delivering specialist fit-outs and structuring leases around the long-term requirements of the healthcare provider.
The objective should be simple:
Allow healthcare providers to concentrate their capital, people and energy on delivering healthcare, while property specialists take responsibility for delivering the infrastructure around them.
Speed matters
The latest reporting on Victoria’s mental health system reinforces something else: we cannot assume that traditional infrastructure delivery models will always move quickly enough.
Where there is demonstrated demand for services, the ability to repurpose existing buildings and deliver turnkey healthcare facilities could significantly reduce the time between identifying a need and opening the doors.
There are commercial buildings, former medical facilities and other strategically located properties across metropolitan and regional Australia that may be capable of being repositioned for healthcare use.
With the right operator, property owner, capital and development expertise working together, some of these opportunities can potentially be delivered considerably faster than developing major new facilities from the ground up.
That collaborative model is something I believe the healthcare property sector should be pursuing much more aggressively.
We want to hear from mental health providers
At YourMedicalProperty.com.au, we are actively interested in speaking with mental health organisations looking to expand, relocate or establish new facilities across Australia.
Whether the requirement is for a consulting facility, community mental health centre, larger multidisciplinary operation, rehabilitation environment or another specialist model, we want to understand what providers actually need from their property.
Our role is to help solve the property equation.
That can mean finding the location, sourcing the building, bringing together property owners and capital, coordinating development and fit-out requirements and exploring turnkey solutions that allow providers to become operational with greater speed and efficiency.
Importantly, we want these conversations to start before a provider has necessarily identified a building.
Tell us the geography, size, configuration, clinical requirements and timing you need — and allow us to explore how the property market can respond.
The challenges facing Australia’s mental health system will not be solved by property alone.
But if we want more healthcare services delivered in our communities, then we also need to make it easier and faster for healthcare providers to establish the facilities from which those services are delivered.
The healthcare sector provides the care. Our job is to help provide the property solutions that make that care possible.
Mark Wizel
Founder
YourMedicalProperty.com.au
