CityMD–Summit Merger: Can One Company Be All Things to All Patients?

In announcing their plans to merge, CityMD and Summit Medical Group say they envision creating a single organization that would offer patients a “seamless experience across a full spectrum of high-quality primary, specialty, and urgent care.” It would be premature to assume they’ll succeed or fail in that attempt, but what is undeniable is that the resulting organization will be a very large one. CityMD has become nearly ubiquitous in the New York City metropolitan area, and Summit already works with more than 900 providers in over 80 locations, scattered throughout much of the same geographic areas. That scale is likely to offer certain advantages, both clinically and economically—for example, by curbing out-of-network emergency room utilization. The potential risk lies in complicating what had been a straightforward (and successful) urgent care business in CityMD.