Diagram depicting the conversion of office spaces to outpatient care

Research Project Name

Converting Office Space for Outpatient Care

What We Did

The United States is facing an escalating challenge: a surplus of vacant office space and a growing demand for accessible healthcare services. While office-to-residential conversions have gained momentum in urban real estate, they address only a fraction of available properties. Many office buildings remain underutilized, lacking the necessary conditions for residential transformation. Simultaneously, outpatient care is reshaping the healthcare landscape, driven by consumer preference, policy reform, and advances in medical technology. These parallel trends — urban office vacancy and healthcare decentralization — present a unique opportunity for adaptive reuse. Conversions from office to healthcare use are already happening — but they are often small in scale, carried out as one-off test fits, and rarely tracked systematically. Our healthcare clients are increasingly exploring this reuse model, but lack a comprehensive framework for comparing options at scale. This research addresses that gap by introducing a new assessment tool designed to evaluate office properties for outpatient healthcare conversion across a spectrum of intensity levels. The goal is not only to streamline feasibility studies, but to equip both healthcare providers and real estate developers with a scalable method for aligning building attributes with clinical programs. By unlocking potential in overlooked assets, this tool can support sustainable growth and broaden access to care in urban environments.

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Team

Randy Guillot, Amy Carter, Christine Wang, Flora Zhu, Brooke Rho, Steven Paynter

Year Completed

2025