The newly founded healthcare real estate development services provider, Redcon Medical Parks (RMP), announces the launch of its flagship project Alburouj Medical District, Invest-Gate reports.
“Today’s medical office is no longer just a real estate deal,” says Chairman of Redcon Group Tarek El Gammal. “Building a medical facility is very different than constructing any other sort of building. There are many eventualities that those medical facilities need to take into account.”
He adds that “it is a very demanding area that requires contractors’ and developers’ experience and knowledge for it to succeed,” explaining the need behind the establishment of RMP to provide specialized expertise in the area of healthcare real estate.
With the new project, RMP is providing expertise in program management, development and construction, and facility management for the project on behalf of Alburouj. The first phase of the Medical District is expected to be completed by 2020.
Development of the medical park’s first phase is underway, starting with a -11,000- square- meter- fully-finished building, set to accommodate small to medium-sized polyclinics, flexible layout independent clinics, pharmacy, wellness center, gym, diagnostic center and lab, along with a lineup of restaurants and coffee shops.
The 100 polyclinics are planned to serve patients, as well as, practitioners already living within the project’s 30 kilometer radius.
The new building is part of a larger, campus-wide project, with a built up area of 33,000 square meters that involves construction of three further buildings, of which one is a hospital. The other two buildings include specialized medical centers, polyclinics, and clinics; in addition to a diverse range of amenities ranging from proper parking space to coffee shops and restaurants.
Speaking on the requirements and standards for medical office buildings Medical Director and Founder of RMP Sherif Mourad explains, “The traditional medical office building, designed to accommodate unrelated tenant groups in apartment houses, may be hard-pressed to accommodate emerging treatment requirements by patients and physicians alike.”
He elaborates that the traditional medical office buildings typically lack appropriate spaces for affiliated, interdisciplinary physician groups, and they are often inconvenient. Patients must travel to the medical office building, which may or may not be near a hospital but far from home, and then make further stops for imaging, lab work, therapy, or pharmacy services.
All these trends are forcing building teams and their clients to consider new styles of non-hospital facilities aimed at attracting patients, improving wellness, and saving money.
“Market analysis and community demand are factors that drive the services offered within an outpatient center such as Alburouj Medical District,” says MEA managing director of Accsight Islam Anan.
“Often, care can be more efficiently provided by co-locating diagnostic services with clinics,” he adds. Those findings are a result of an extensive survey done for RMP on the needs of patients and their healthcare providers east of Cairo.
The survey, according to Founder and Chairman of RMP Hazem Ashry, has provided valuable insight “of our patient and physician requirements, which were the baseline for the design, configuration, and amenities of the healthcare facilities in Alburouj Medical District.”
Ashry elaborates on the reasoning behind and the need for a qualified service provider in healthcare real estate, listing a number of integral factors, prime among them in today’s economy being cost.
According to Ashry, as cost pressures increase, health care facilities find themselves in increasing competition for both patients and staff.
“Architecture,” he says, “is often recognized as an important tool in attracting and retaining the best doctors and the most patients.” Consumer decisions are based on cost, accessibility, quality of service, and quality of medical care. An aesthetically pleasing facility is a key aspect of the perceived quality of care.
However, he explains that healthcare is a labor-intensive industry, and much of that labor is highly skilled.
“Since 60 to 75% of hospital expenses are labor costs, a design that increases operational productivity or efficiency and reduces staffing needs can have a major impact on the bottom line. Likewise, operations and maintenance costs over the typical 50-year- life cycle of a hospital contribute up to 80% to the equation, so anything designers can do to facilitate maintenance and reduce total life-cycle cost will have tremendous returns on a relatively small up-front investment.”