Medical Services While You Shop? Coming to a Mall Near You

August 4th, 2016

By Joy Daughtery Dickinson, Executive Editor

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Want a movie with your mammogram? Dinner with your dialysis? Cookies after your colonoscopy?

Such combinations are being seen across the country as healthcare providers are offering convenient locations and parking for their patients, as well as obtaining lower rents for themselves, by moving into shopping malls and strip malls, according to Bloomberg news.

Consider these examples:

• Vanderbilt University Medical Group has taken over the entire second level of 100 Oaks Mall in Nashville, TN. Patients check in at the clinic and are given a pager that is used to contact them while they shop.
• UCLA Health operates a medical office at the Village at Westfield Topanga, which is described as a “high-end mall” in Woodland Hills, CA.
• Prime Healthcare has an ambulatory care facility at the Plymouth Meeting Mall near Philadelphia.
• Cedars-Sinai Health System plans to add doctors’ offices at The Runway at Playa Vista in Los Angeles.

Such projects aren’t without their challenges, however. In some cases, other tenants at the malls had been promised that the owners wouldn’t rent space to a doctor’s office or dialysis center, so their leases might have to be renegotiated. Another challenge is that your patients need to know your brand so they recognize your facility whether it’s the traditional hospital campus or an “outlet” at the mall.

Despite the obstacles, such arrangements are the “wave of the future,” according to observers. Here’s to smooth sailing into arrangements that benefit the malls as well as the medical providers.(To keep up with hospital-related breaking news as it happens, follow us on Twitter @HospitalReport.)