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Urgent care is medical care that requires prompt attention but is not life-threatening. It includes illnesses and injuries like dehydration, allergies, sinus infections, fever (without rashes), non-severe headaches, etc.
Urgent care clinics are a critical link between emergency and primary care. They are essentially walk-in clinics that barely require appointments and are dedicated to treating patients as soon as possible.
Currently, more than 10,000 urgent care clinics operate in the United States. As per statistics, the industry revenue has grown at a CAGR of 3.1% over the past five years and is expected to total $46.7 billion in 2024.
One of the primary stimuli behind this development is COVID-19, which brought the significance of on-demand care to the forefront. Also, due to increased awareness about preventive care, cost-effectiveness, and short wait times, the popularity of urgent care has shown an unprecedented spike.
As far as setting up an urgent care clinic is concerned, there could be many reasons why you want to do it. You might want to feed your entrepreneurial spirit, invest in this financially viable market, or simply want to serve the community’s needs.
No matter what the purpose is, knowing the path always makes it easier. In this write-up, we will share insights into how to build an urgent care clinic that actually lives up to your expectations.
The urgent care market is saturated, with so many players entering it. According to the UCA member survey, 89.4% of the U.S. population is within a 20-minute drive of an urgent care facility.
Executing thorough market research will help you stand out in this competitive landscape. It enables you to:
Estimated timeline: 3 to 6 months
Research highlights that firms with a business plan grow 30% faster than those that don’t have one. But what exactly is a business plan?
A business plan is a blueprint, a roadmap, that helps you gather your thoughts and get a holistic picture of business objectives, strategies, challenges, and financial projections.
It familiarizes you with all aspects of running urgent care and lets you uncover hidden insights, such as whether the targeted location or population is up for one more urgent care clinic, whether your startup faces competition from independent clinics, how healthcare providers are likely to respond to your initiative, whether the initial set-up cost matches your estimation and more.
Here’s what you must include while writing your business plan:
Estimated timeline: 1 to 3 months
Decide on the type of business you want to establish, whether a sole proprietorship, partnership, corporation, or limited liability company (LLC). Then, obtain an Employer Identification Number (EIN). This is a unique 9-digit number issued by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which you will need to open a business bank account, apply for business licenses, and file your tax returns.
Estimated timeline: 2 to 3 weeks
To secure funding for your urgent care business, you have multiple options. Below are the most viable ones:
Estimated timeline: 3 to 6 months
More than 70% of urgent care clinics are functioning in suburban areas. But before finalizing the location, you must answer certain questions. Such as:
Also, sidestep crowded zones. For example, New York-Newark-Jersey City NY-NJ-PA has over 484 urgent care clinics while the count in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim CA goes up to 411.
Estimated timeline: 3 to 6 months
To register your urgent care clinic, get in touch with your state secretary or equivalent agency to know about the requirements. In areas with strong Corporate Practice of Medicine (CPOM) laws, you will need to form a PC or PLLC, which must be owned by licensed physicians.
Further, ensure your clinic is registered with the National Provider Identifier (NPI) to facilitate medical billing and compliance. If your clinic offers X-ray services or a pharmacy on-site, you will also need to apply for an X-ray permit or obtain a state pharmacy license.
Estimated time: 2 to 4 months
Networking with local healthcare facilities, primary care, and specialty-focused centers is essential to get referral visits. It provides collaborative care and steady cash flow.
Also, ensure that your clinic and its providers are credentialed with insurance companies by gathering necessary documentation like medical licenses, proof of education and training, board certifications, professional liability insurance, and submitting applications.
Make a list of all the insurers you want to enroll with and negotiate contracts to establish reimbursement rates using data on your practice’s performance and market rates. Don’t forget to register your providers with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services as they make up a significant portion of the patient population.
Estimated timeline: 3 to 6 months.
Ensure that your urgent care facility is equipped with necessary diagnostic and administrative tools, such as ECG machines, EHR systems, surgical instruments, patient monitors, billing and inventory management software, and telemedicine platforms.
Procure personal protective equipment (PPE), housekeeping items, and medications crucial for daily operations and emergency preparedness.
Estimated timeline: 5 to 10 weeks
The quality of urgent care depends on the quality of medical equipment, which in turn relies on the quality of the vendor you partner with. To choose the right vendor with the right set of experience and expertise:
Estimated timeline: 4 to 6 weeks
Ahead of hiring, be clear with the expectations and decide on the hiring process, such as who will take an interview, how many technical and non-technical rounds will be there, what parameters you will evaluate the candidate, and what the CTC range for each profile will be.
Explore your professional network and physician associations. Take advantage of career fairs and conferences to find the candidates that best meet your conditions.
While hiring, nursing practitioners or providers are generally at the tip of our fingers. But you must not forget that supporting staff and front desk administration is equally important and deserves an ample amount of time and consideration in the hiring process.
Estimated timeline: 2 to 4 months
Many times, we tend to believe that we will have a decent number of patient visits as soon as we open the clinic. But this is not the case. Just having a physical clinic presence doesn’t guarantee patient visits, not even the break-even patient count.
Thus, maintaining an online presence is a must to ensure that we at least have a break-even patient count to start with. According to Google, search drives nearly three times as many visitors to hospital sites as non-search visitors.
Here’s what your online presence strategy should look like:
Streamline your urgent care clinic operations and improve patient care effortlessly
