Questions for Dr. Stern
About Your Urgent Care Center
139. I manage a surgery center in NY. We own the building that the ASC occupies, and will soon have a vacancy in the one of the suites in our building (@ 2441 sq ft). Rather than try to fill the vacancy, I thought it might be better to consider opening an UCC. We are located in a suburban area that offers few options in the way of urgent care. Locals have the choice of a hospital ED or traveling to an UCC in an adjacent community. I feel that opening an UCC would be a great investment for our physician owners, but we obviously have lots of questions. What services could you provide and what are your fees?
Thanks for contacting Practice Velocity. It sounds as though you may have a good idea. As far as feasibility and advisability, I would start with the following questions:
- Traffic counts, if you are on the corner of Westfall and Lac de Ville, we would want the intersection traffic number
- Urgent Care Signage: What is available? Urgent Care is very different from ASC marketing/sales, as the number one issue for urgent care marketing is the amount of signage (must have good signage on the road for success) and the traffic counts (local, not commuting) that see that sign.
- Distance from the nearest UCC
- Population within 3 & 5 miles and within 10-minute drive.
- Personnel: You will need a dedicated leader with a vision for the success of the urgent care. It should not be a side interest of your current leaders. Urgent care is too unique and failure is often a result of leaders not having a laser-beam focus on the success of the center.
Practice Velocity is involved in helping urgent care centers in several ways. Let me review several of our affiliated businesses (all owned by the same three urgent care physicians):
- Practice Velocity: software solutions for marketing, charting, automated coding, billing, occupational medicine protocols and collections.
- NMN Consultants: has consulted more than 100 startup urgent care centers. Consulting services include pro-forma help, purchasing advice, floor plan review, and a checklist of over 1,500 items to complete in the startup of an urgent care center.
- PV Billing® : with over 50 billers, we provide full-service billing services and managed care contracting and credentialing for urgent care centers in many states.
- Physicians Immediate Care: We have operated urgent care centers for over twenty years, and our twelve-clinic network is the foundation and launching pad for all of our other businesses. We will be opening two additional centers circa June, 2008. We have done one joint-venture clinic and are actively developing a framework for (but are not yet offering) franchising opportunities.
We would be delighted to host your team for a full-day tour of our urgent care centers and software company. Feel free to call and schedule a visit to our urgent care headquarters (only one hour from O’Hare Airport). Over 300 urgent care professionals took advantage of tours of our urgent care operations last year. During the tour, we outline our entire operation, including:
- Reception
- Marketing
- Site selection
- Added services
- Occupational medicine
- Patient flow
- Whatever else you wish to review
We would be delighted to serve you in your new endeavor. To schedule a web demo or phone call or to schedule a tour of our headquarters, call 888-357-4209 and ask for Dana (ext. 2051).
