Back in the day, you probably would have been right to assume that the closest urgent care center was founded, owned, and run by a physician. Many other practices (primary care, pediatric…) would have been the same. Well, times have changed in a big way. The mavericks who simply wanted to find a better, more sensible way of practicing medicine and wound up creating a new industry are now employees of national and regional health systems
and academic medical centers, along with most of their peers in other practice settings—in such numbers that self-employed physicians are now a minority in the United States. According to a study released by the Physicians Advocacy Institute, the trend is not only continuing but picking up speed (perhaps due to the shaky economic circumstances brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic). See the graph below for more details.
