Practice Management
MultiCare has formally taken over 16 urgent care locations previously owned and operated the The Ensign Group. The deal includes 14 existing Immediate Clinic Seattle centers, all located in the in the Seattle area, plus two more that are under development. Coming on the heels of its sale of Integrity Urgent Care locations in Colorado earlier this year, the MultiCare transaction effectively has Ensign exiting the urgent care arena altogether. MultiCare, on the other hand, …
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Duane Reade may still seem like it really does have a pharmacy on every corner of New York City, but none of those drugstores is going to house a clinic anymore. The company says it will close all its retail pharmacy clinics before New Year’s Day. The New York City Department of Health says the move is not likely to have dramatic impact because “the vast majority of primary care visits occur in non-retail clinic …
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Uber drivers and their families in the Portland, OR area stand to benefit from a new partnership among the on-demand car service company, Legacy Health, and GoHealth Urgent Care. Their arrangement marks a step forward in the way “gig economy” companies can arrange access to care for on-demand workforces. Services available to drivers and their families include $0 out-of-pocket flu shots, sports physicals, and free wellness classes. The program also offers diabetes and heart health …
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New data published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine definitively show that retail clinics located near hospitals do nothing to reduce the number of visits to the emergency room. Proponents of drugstore, grocery, and “big box store” clinics have suggested in the past that offering walk-in care in a retail setting would keep patients with low-acuity complaints out of the ED, but apparently many patients don’t see it that way. The Annals report focused on …
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Emory Healthcare has found the urgent care marketplace hospitable and is taking on new partners to secure a more prominent seat at the table. The Atlanta-based company is inviting Peachtree Immediate Care and SmartCare Urgent Care into its Emory Health Network. Once Peachtree’s 16 locations and SmartCare’s four clinics are fully on board, Emory will be able to offer urgent care at 60 locations throughout Atlanta. The locations will share an EMR to facilitate smooth …
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Ensign Group has sold its Seattle area urgent care centers to MultiCare Health System, a nonprofit healthcare group, for an undisclosed sum. The deal includes 14 existing clinics, along with two more under development. Ensign says it made the move to devote more of its resources to what it considers its own core strengths in subacute care, as well as skilled nursing, physical therapy, hospice, and other services. MultiCare already has 17 urgent care locations …
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LCMC Health, a nonprofit healthcare system that operates hospitals in the New Orleans area, says it’s going to create a network of seven urgent care clinics in the same area starting next spring. Over the course of 18 months, LCMC plans to buy an undetermined number of existing locations and build the rest in new locations. LCMC is working with Baton Rouge-based Premier Health on this project. Premier Health owns 40 urgent care clinics, many …
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Hospital ownership of physician practices—including urgent care centers—has jumped a whopping 86% in just 4 years, according to new data from the Physicians Advocacy Institute. That means one out of every four practices is now owned by a hospital, overall. For hospitals, owning practices not physically connected to their facility allows them to keep patients “in the family” even when they’re not on campus, which also allows them to keep fees in-house as well of …
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More and more communities—big and small, urban and suburban—are seeing their choices for immediate medical care multiply at a rapid pace, thanks largely to the continued growth of urgent care centers. While that level of competition helps ensure that all the players in the market bring their A game to every encounter, the sheer number of options bolsters one of the key benefits that brings patients to urgent care in the first place: when there …
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They’re popping up in Boulder, Vancouver, the Twin Cities, and a scant few other locations around the country, but the question for many people—certainly the patients who may (or may not) be inclined to visit them—remains, what is an “urgency” center? As the name implies, urgency centers are intended to be a hybrid of emergency rooms and urgent care centers, without getting caught up in the controversies surrounding freestanding emergency rooms (mainly as they pertain …
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