Questions for Dr. Stern
About Your Urgent Care Center
21. What matrices (for example: demographics, economics, or infrastructure) are available to assess whether or not a community will support an urgent care practice in Southern California?
There are no systematic studies on this issue. Generally, you need the following (my personal educated guesses) to ensure success for an urgent care center.
- Catchment area of ≥50,000 people
- 2 McDonalds per center
- 1 Wal-Mart per center
- Avoid communities composed of the extremely rich and the very poor. Everyone else uses urgent care centers quite freely.
- The more rural, the better, assuming the above criteria are met. Note: downtown urgent care centers rarely thrive.
- Primary care physician shortage.
- No local access to urgent care.
- Very long waits in local EDs.
Feel free to call my assistant to set up a 30-minute phone call to discuss any particular community demographics.
