As treatment costs in traditional hospital settings continue to escalate, health care providers are increasingly shifting to smaller facilities for both inpatient and outpatient care — including "hospital-at-home" care. Meanwhile, many traditional hospital facilities are being repurposed for specialized care, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal.

For all types of facilities, health care providers are increasingly using telemedicine, as well as data analytics to improve their delivery of care, as well as enhance preventative medicine.

In many locales including rural markets, providers are building free-standing emergency rooms and "microhospitals," or neighborhood hospitals that typically include emergency rooms and beds for short-stay recovery. Nearly all (92 percent) of patients who come to the microhospitals are treated and sent home in an average of 90 minutes, and 8 percent are admitted overnight for care such as intravenous-medication administration, according to Craig Goguen, CEO of Houston-based Emerus Holdings Inc., which partners with big health systems to open microhospitals.