In 2017, my wife and I had a kid on the way. I was scared s**tless. It was the start of my fourth year in residency, I was on a resident salary, my wife was going out on maternity leave with no maternity pay, and we were adding one more mouth to feed. I was honestly unsure of how we were going to make it.
Then I got hired to work as needed at a local privately owned urgent care.
Prior to starting, I had little knowledge of the urgent care field and the associated business. The two years I spent working for the urgent care gave me an inside look from not only a physician standpoint but also a business standpoint.
And I’ve been in love with the business ever since.
The first thing you need to understand, is that Urgent Cares are a business and they are a well paying one. The average urgent care according to the American Academy of Urgent Care Medicine (AAUCM) sees 60-80 patients per day. That can equate to on average $1.7 million dollars in revenue annually. For a physician owner, thats a pretty size-able number.
However the location, payer mix, size, staffing, etc, can all cause dramatic variations in your revenue. Thus having a keen understanding of the potential neighborhood is a huge leg up on the competition.
The number of urgent care centers are on the rise in the US. In fact as of 2019 there are 9,616 urgent care centers and to be honest there is not enough of them.
More and more patients are using the ER as their source of primary care. In fact, “younger generations (44% of Generation Z, 33% of Generation X, and 41% of millennials) are more likely than baby boomers (23%) to have used the emergency room for routine medical care.”As a result, the ER is less used for what it was intended for, i.e. EMERGENCIES. This is where urgent care centers fill a need.
Have a simple laceration? Visit an urgent care.
Need a vaccination or sports physical? Visit an urgent care.
Can’t get an appointment for your doctor soon? Visit an urgent care.
Urgent cares can’t solve every issue in health care but they can sure fill a need and cover some of the gaps.
As a physician working in a urgent care, it gives you an opportunity to be connected to your community.
As a business owner of an urgent care it allows you to help a community with an asset that is needed.
However urgent cares aren’t needed in every neighborhood. I’ve worked in centers that were in great suburban areas to not so great city areas. The ones that do the best in my opinion have the following characteristics:
- Employees that buy in and are from that area.
- Location of the urgent care is close to a main road in a working, blue collar type neighborhood.
- Has a large shopping center or popular retail location near.
- Owners who want to be business owners and work on the business.
- Being efficient NOT cheap in size, equipment, and personnel.
- Having staff that care and not treat every patient like a paycheck.
One of my (no longer) secret goals is to own a large network of urgent care centers. Who knows if I will accomplish it, but I think I think if I do it correctly I can build something that positively benefits the communities around me and helps me get closer to my generational wealth goal.
As always if you have questions or concerns regarding creating an emergency fund, investing, real estate, insurance, or planning for the future, don’t be afraid to speak with qualified financial advisor. Smart Asset has a great tool to find an advisor in your area or feel free to email me (contact@surgifi.com) to help you on your path to financial independence.
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