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Hamilton Espinosa, the national health care leader for DPR Construction, recently blogged about attending “The New Health Care Environment” – a panel event featuring health care owners and experts – in San Francisco last month. He compiled a list of the top 10 things that panelists suggested companies should keep in mind when looking to work on health care projects.

1. Building may be different than it has been in the past.

2. The building industry needs to provide flexible building infrastructure so owners can use buildings for as long as possible (think along the lines of 60 years rather than 25 or 30 years).

3. Health care owners are looking to reuse existing building stock where possible.

4. Value is important to owners (think along the lines of using lean project delivery, or at least offering it as an option).

5. Reform is incentivizing owners to incorporate technology.

6. Providers want to use technology to tailor the experience to patients’ preferences (integration into phones/social media, home care, etc.). This will result in the need for IT infrastructure and potentially more data centers.

7. The trend will be more toward outpatient facilities, with hospitals reserved for the sickest patients.

8. With health care reform, people will get more choices – providers are looking to move to a consumer model.

9. The system is transitioning to wellness care.

10. Hospitals will need to provide evidence-based data to show what treatments are successful.

For more of Espinosa’s blogs about construction and the health care industry, visit the Across DPR blog at www.dpr.com/media/blog.