Questions for Dr. Stern
About Your Urgent Care Center
79. I am planning to open an urgent care center in a downtown metropolitan city in Missouri. My first question is how I should approach the subject of EMR and coding and how to look at the costs and benefits involved. I want to hit the ground running when we open. Can you help me?
Downtown urgent care centers are very tricky. There are very few successful downtown urgent care centers in the USA. We operate a center in the Loop in Chicago, which opened about 18 months ago. Our center is now running in the high 30s for patient volume, but we don’t consider a center successful until it averages over 50 patients a day. By this criterion, there may not be a single successful downtown urgent care center in the USA. We had a few tricks up our sleeves, and even so it was our most difficult startup of our 10 urgent care centers. Expenses are higher and growth in patient volume is significantly slower.
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 (used in over 750 urgent care centers) for marketing, charting, coding, billing, occupational medicine protocols and collections.
- NMN Consultants: has consulted more than 100 startup urgent care centers. Offers 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 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 have done one joint-venture clinic and are actively developing a framework for (but are not yet offering) franchising opportunities.
With over 750 urgent care centers in 49 states, Practice Velocity now serves more urgent care centers for charting and coding than all other systems combined.
Our Guarantee: Practice Velocity will exceed your expectations with the:
- fastest charting,
- easiest implementation, and
- most return on investment (usually over $10 increased revenue per patient).
Thirty-Day Trial: Try PiVoTs for charting and coding for 30-days. If we don’t deliver, simply stop using the product and you don’t pay a thing. No questions asked.
We would be delighted to host your team for a full-day tour of our headquarters. 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:
- Challenges of downtown urgent care
- Reception
- Marketing
- Site selection
- Added services
- Occupational medicine
- Patient flow
- Whatever else you wish to review
To schedule a demo or phone call or to schedule a tour of our headquarters, call 888-357-4209 and ask for Dana (ext. 2051).
