By Healthcare Facilities Today

Money continues to be scarce, yet health care systems need to invest and reinvest in their physical future to meet strategic needs in the market, modernize aging infrastructures and ensure that the organization is delivering the proper standard of care, according to an article on the Health Facilities Management magazine website.

With multiples campuses and operating units, facilities department leaders and chief financial officers (CFOs) usually don't have the funds to meet their many demands. According to the article, portfolio prioritization is one of many important pieces of information health care organizations should evaluate when considering funding projects.

"Strategic master facilities plans should be well-conceived and pass initial muster, but when all of these requests are tallied and laid out by the health system CFO across a multiyear cash map, there still are usually more dollars requested than what the system can spend."

According to the article, tools are available to evaluate master plan projects across a health care system, allowing organizations to create a portfolio of capital projects that prioritizes them.

The first step is to develop multiyear strategic master facility plans that look out five to 10 years for each operating unit and then prepare a portfolio of all the projects. 

Read the article.