Medical Office Momentum: How Healthcare Real Estate is Shaping the Future of Work

Walk into almost any healthcare campus today and you’ll notice something striking: the waiting rooms feel fuller, the outpatient centers busier, and the back-office wings smaller.

It’s not your imagination. Healthcare real estate is in the midst of a profound shift, one that reveals a great deal about the future of how we all work.

Outpatient Growth: The New Front Door of Healthcare

For decades, the “center” of healthcare was the hospital. Now, it’s increasingly the outpatient clinic. With aging populations, rising costs, and patients demanding convenience, health systems are moving care out of large campuses and into smaller, distributed sites closer to where people live.

The ripple effect on real estate is massive. Medical office absorption hit nearly 19 million square feet in late 2024, according to the NAI James E. Hanson Report 2025 Medical Office Report, one of the strongest showings in recent memory. Behind those numbers are real stories: a pediatric group expanding into suburban communities, or a cancer care center opening a satellite clinic to cut patient travel time in half.

This isn’t just about square footage. It’s about accessibility, dignity, and delivering care where it matters most.

Shrinking Admin Space, Rising Pressure

While patient-facing spaces are growing, back-office footprints are shrinking. Administrative offices have declined by more than a third since 2019. Healthcare leaders are asking: Do we really need everyone in the office every day?

The answer is increasingly no. Hybrid schedules, shared workspaces, and digital coordination are the new norm.

Now IT and facilities teams are left juggling space, schedules, and compliance in an environment that tolerates no downtime. In healthcare, the stakes are higher than in most industries because inefficiency isn’t just costly, it affects care.

Why This Matters for Leaders Looking Ahead

Here’s the thought that sticks with us: healthcare’s real estate story is really a people story.

Every square foot not used efficiently is a missed opportunity to serve patients better, give caregivers relief, or redirect funds to innovation instead of rent. At a time when margins are razor-thin and burnout is rampant, space must work harder than ever.

Healthcare is teaching us a lesson every industry can learn from: the workplace is more than just a meeting space, it’s how we enable what matters most. In tech, it’s collaboration. In finance, it’s trust. In healthcare, it’s human care.

That’s where tools like Dojo come in. We’re not just helping healthcare systems manage desks or rooms; we’re enabling them to:

• Align staff schedules with patient flow

• Track utilization in real time, without IT drowning in data pulls

• Automate the small but critical workflows that free teams to focus on care, not logistics

The medical office building may look like another square on a leasing report, but in reality, it’s the frontline of patient experience. The way we manage these spaces will determine how effectively we deliver on that promise.

At Dojo, we believe the future of healthcare real estate is about alignment between people, place, and purpose. And that lesson applies beyond healthcare: we want to help companies in every industry optimize their alignment to create workplaces that are true experiences for employees, patients, and beyond.