Glossary

Ambulatory Care Strategy

Also known as: outpatient migration strategy, site-of-care shift

A health system's strategic shift of services traditionally delivered in a hospital setting -- primary care, imaging, outpatient surgery, urgent care -- into lower-cost, more accessible ambulatory (outpatient) settings, a primary demand driver for off-campus medical office and outpatient real estate.

Ambulatory strategy is driven by reimbursement policy favoring outpatient settings (many procedures reimburse at lower total cost, and sometimes higher facility margin, in an ambulatory surgery center or outpatient clinic than in a hospital), by consumer preference for convenience and shorter wait times, and by health systems' own capital efficiency calculus, since an ambulatory facility costs far less to build and staff than inpatient hospital capacity. For MOB and healthcare real estate investors, understanding a given market's ambulatory care strategy -- which service lines a health system is pushing outpatient, and where geographically -- is directly predictive of where new off-campus and outpatient-anchored demand will concentrate, making health-system strategic plans a genuine leading indicator for site selection and leasing demand in this asset class.