CHICAGO-Health care facilities tie up 40% of their costs in real estate and facility management, yet only a small fraction have centralized their approach to real estate activities, according to a new study by Jones Lang LaSalle. Most medical agencies still handle all property decisions at individual building levels, increasing costs across the board, according to JLL’s Healthcare Solutions group.

Locally based JLL surveyed 40 health care systems that generate about $140 billion of the $1.3 trillion of US health care spending, and found that only seven of the firms strategically manage property assets. However, of the systems surveyed, those seven firms had an average operating profit of 3.9%, while those that didn’t had an average operating loss of 0.3%, according to the survey. The properties surveyed are mostly east of the Mississippi River, and run from Beaumont Health System in Michigan to Broward Health System in Miami.

Peter Bulgarelli, COO of the JLL group, tells GlobeSt.com that the health care sector is far behind corporate America when it comes to operating buildings efficiently. “Corporations really started centralizing in the 1980s,” he says. “Health care firms, however, typically have allowed hospitals to run independently. Having only 20% switch to strategic operations is a very low number when compared to other businesses.”