By Eric Hoffman and Rhonda Rasmussen, Contributing Writers

Over the past decade, the focus of healthcare development in the United States has shifted from all-in-one-place hospital buildings to campus-style centers with hospital-adjacent and off-campus models that distribute services across multiple buildings and locations. This increased engagement by healthcare systems in real estate has coincided with a better understanding of the importance of patient, family and staff experience in satisfaction and treatment outcomes.

Now, healthcare providers are combining those two trends by leveraging their real estate experience to take a more active role in the care journey outside hospitals. Some healthcare systems are taking that practice one step further, partnering with hotels to provide rooms for families, outpatient services for patients and full-service recovery and inpatient care space.

After all, a patient’s experience with a provider does not begin in the waiting room but rather as soon as they choose to seek care. While these care journeys usually happen relatively quickly and often begin close to the patient’s home, treatment for many medical conditions can require patients to travel farther and be away from home for an extended period. This kind of medical tourism opens opportunities for healthcare systems to find new ways to cater to patients and families, while partnering with local hotels to put hospitality into hospitals.

The high stakes of long stays 

For patients leaving the comfort of home for an extended medical stay, having family nearby can help bring stability and normalcy, which in turn can positively impact the way they respond to treatments and recover from medical procedures. In the past, hospitals have provided patients and their families with a list of nearby hotels or referred them to nonprofits like Ronald McDonald House Charities.

While some more enterprising hospitals might partner with local hotels to buy out a set number of rooms and offer them to patient families at a reduced cost, there is opportunity to expand the hotel-hospital relationship in a way that provides patients with crucial support and hospitals with an additional stream of revenue.

While restaurant chains like Panera have created branding specifically for their in-hospital locations, lodging operators have failed to create dedicated brands or properties for the healthcare market. Until recently, operators were skeptical that hospitals could support occupancy the same way a conference center or entertainment venue can. While hotel operators are starting to see the light, health systems are driving the blurring of lines between hospitals and hospitality.

For example, Orlando Health in Florida is courting operators to build hotels on land it owns adjacent to its main campus. But a potential complication for hotel brands is that hospitals cannot just put up patients and their families in standard business travel accommodations.

Generally, health systems are looking for two kinds of lodging: extended stay and luxury. Extended stay hotels offer home-away-from-home amenities, like in-room kitchenettes, separate bedrooms and outdoor grills. Such rooms are a helpful option for patients who might not need to be in-patient at the hospital but still need to be close to their medical team as they recover.

Luxury accommodations are intended for guests having outpatient, elective or cosmetic surgeries who want to recover in upscale surroundings with amenities like full-service spas and top-tier dining. Just as hotels aspire to be an elevated, aspirational take on a comfortable home environment, patient spaces now are also expected to have all the comforts of home and then some.

Gone are the days of harsh fluorescent lighting and beige wallpaper. Today’s hospital rooms must provide a finer level of design to nurture, sooth and calm patients and families. Some hotel-inspired design tactics include such features as high-touch luxury finishes and fabrics, convertible furniture to accommodate patient family and friends within the room, upgraded bathroom fixtures, adjustable lighting and the latest technologies.

Since the pandemic, demand also has increased for travel for the purpose of health and wellness, and we are seeing a rise in facilities designed to cater to patients and guests of residential wellness retreats and medical spas. These facilities are often primarily focused on preventive care and offer specialty and targeted services across a range of goals, including weight loss, fitness, longevity, immunity, mental health, sleep clinics, work-life balance and anti-aging. As a result of this trend, many hospitals now focus more on providing preventive care as an extension of acute care.

While many providers are finding creative new ways to be involved throughout a patient’s care journey, that does not mean partnering with a hotel is the right move for every hospital.

The sweet spot for ‘hospi–tels’

Most hospitals are set up to provide the local population with acute care like emergency surgeries and childbirth. For facilities focused on acute care, it is less likely that patients will travel from far away and stay in the hospital for more than a few days, so partnering with a hotel does not make sense. Instead, providers at the center of this trend are typically large health systems that offer specialty care, which can necessitate hospital stays of a month or more and warrant the need for a new approach: medical residence hotels.

Related: How the Hospitality Industry is Influencing Senior Care Facilities

These specialty facilities — so-called hospit-tels — focus on conditions like cancer, heart disease and organ failure. They tend to be in large urban cores where there are existing options for hotel partnerships or in suburban settings where it is more likely a hospital will work with an operator to develop lodging that caters to its patients.

Regardless of whether the medical residence hotel is an existing building or newly constructed, the design must account for patients' special needs. For example, corridors and room doorways might need to be widened to accommodate wheelchairs and gurneys, elevators must be expanded, and the standard hotel gym might be replaced with a rehabilitation area. Electrical systems also might need to be upgraded, and new data and plumbing lines might need to be installed.

The requirements for creating a medical residence hotel are complex, and no single approach exists that applies to every project. Hotels know hospitality, and hospitals know healthcare, so the first step in any partnership between the two should be to call in an expert or build a team who understands both parties. 

An eye toward the future

The overlap between hotels and hospitals began decades ago, when the latter looked to the former for interior décor inspiration. Since then, medical centers have transformed from drab and dreary to bright and welcoming. Over time, hospitals have incorporated many ideas pioneered by hotels, like more comfortable furniture, streamlined check-in and warmer lighting.

Some hospitals have even incorporated spa-like amenities in patient rooms and communal areas, such as fitness centers, meditation areas and healing gardens. Patients and hotel guests benefit from technologies like contactless check-in, recordkeeping and digital interactions for patients and their families to navigate important paperwork, scheduling and more.

Today, the hospitality and healthcare industries are going through another period of transition, this time driven by smart building technology like sensors, process automation and centralized facility management systems. Advances in medical technology have shortened patient stays. Conditions that a decade ago required a week-long hospital stay now take just a few days followed by outpatient recovery with more rigorous follow-up.

Technology such as patient monitoring and predictive analytics also now allow a patient’s medical team to closely watch patients' health stats from afar, which cuts down on the need for hospital stays. Data is fueling these solutions, and hotels and health systems see plenty of opportunities to leverage data to create a better experience for their customers.

Whatever the future holds, it seems certain that health systems will continue to need off-site lodging, and hotels will continue to develop innovative approaches to strengthen their partnerships and provide a better service for patients and the friends and family who come to support them. 

Eric Hoffman is vice president and national healthcare sector lead at PMA. Rhonda Rasmussen is a hospitality project director with the firm.