How to Start an Urgent Care Center:
Keep Expenses Low
Mistake #1: Wasting money on unnecessary expenses.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that you have to have the best of everything when starting your urgent care center. Paul Graham states this well in his article, "How to Start a Startup." In this article, which is derived from a talk at the Harvard Computer Society, Graham notes that a startup business needs to do three things:
- Have a good idea, and it does not have to be earth-shattering. No problem here: an urgent care center is becoming a simple necessity any community of any reasonable size.
- Add good people to your team. Your startup urgent care center will never be better than the people on your team.
- Don't waste good money. Urgent care centers are not immune to failure, and the fastest way to fail is to run out of money.
When you start an urgent care center, you can easily waste an extra $300,000 or more on unnecessarily expensive items that not even established urgent care centers deem necessary. Unnecessary expenses that we have seen include:
- buying top-of-the-line furniture
- buying an MRI or CT scanner (Early on, time share leases often make more sense)
- hiring nationally famous architects (Yes, we have seen this)
- hanging expensive artwork
- purchasing a $250,000+ completely integrated electronic medical record
- purchasing a $100,000+ practice management system with all the bells and whistles for a hospital system
- investing in the fastest and most expensive digital x-ray equipment
- hiring only registered nurses to staff your urgent care center
- buying only brand new (and avoiding new or refurbished) equipment
- and many other exorbitant expenses in starting a new urgent care center
These expenses rarely make a significant difference in the care of patients, and they are very unlikely to produce anywhere near $100,000 of annual revenue. Overspending is a big mistake in starting an urgent care center, as new urgent care centers usually underestimate the amount of investment that will be needed in the startup urgent care center. You will need this money to put out fires later on, so don't burn it up before you start.
One simple way to reduce costs is to buy refurbished equipment. One vendor, MainResource.com, offers refurbished Comdial, Executone, Inter-Tel, Isoetec, Premier and Toshiba business phones and systems with a one-year warranty. Repair and technical support services are also available. Contact Main Resource, Inc. at 800-397-8417 or phones@mainresource.com. (Note: This example is for illustrative and educational use only. Practice Velocity is not affiliated with and does not endorse this vendor. By using this information, user releases Practice Velocity, LLC from any liability arising from the use of this vendor.)
Yes, we have seen gorgeous state-of-the-art urgent care centers spending money "like there is no tomorrow" succeed. How do they succeed? They have been lucky enough to do many other things right, AND they discover that they need to tighten their belts and start watching their pennies. Unfortunately, we have seen other startups observe their success and try to emulate them. These centers often make several other serious mistakes, so they rapidly run out of money.
There are many places on the Internet that you might consider looking for medical, computer, or office supplies for your startup urgent care center. Some places you might want to investigate might include:
PV: Urgent Care Software - More startup and existing urgent care centers use Practice Velocity Urgent Care Software Solutions for their complete revenue cycle management than any other software system. Why? Because Practice Velocity offers the only solutions originally conceived, invented and developed in urgent care centers. The three principal owners are urgent care physicians who still work in their nine urgent care centers. Urgent care centers use PV solutions for patient registration, charting, medical coding (E/M, CPT, ICD-9, HCPCS), charge entry, electronic billing, and electronic remittance.
Urgent Care Group Purchasing - National Med Network joins hundreds of urgent care centers together to get the best prices on medical supplies.
Keep Systems Computing - Custom-built PCs, including system configuration, firewall installation, and computer repair services.
