HCA buys two dozen urgent-care centers from Fresenius Medical Care

HCA Healthcare purchased 24 MedSpring urgent-care centers from Fresenius Medical Care, the investor-owned hospital chain announced Tuesday.

The urgent-care centers will operate under HCA’s Medical City Healthcare division and be rebranded as CareNow Urgent Care. The acquisition adds eight centers to CareNow’s 37 North Texas locations. In 2018, CareNow and Medical City Children’s Urgent Care clinics served about 10% of the Dallas-Fort Worth population, with more than 770,000 patient visits, HCA said.

“Like many of our communities across the country, Austin, Dallas and Houston are experiencing significant growth, and increasingly people want to be able to access healthcare services closer to where they live and work,” HCA CEO Sam Hazen said in prepared remarks. “The addition of these urgent-care centers will complement our already robust healthcare networks and help us provide more convenient access for our patients.”

Medical City Healthcare has invested more than $1.7 billion over four years in access points, including CareNow urgent-care locations, infrastructure and new technology, HCA said.

With the addition, CareNow will operate 160 urgent-care centers across the country. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Investors have targeted urgent care and medical offices, particularly in rapidly growing markets, as the industry pushes for more convenient, affordable care.

The number of U.S. urgent-care centers swelled to 8,774 as of November 2018, up 8% from 8,125 in 2017, according to the Urgent Care Association’s annual report. The number of Medicare and Medicaid patients seeking services at urgent-care centers continues to grow, accounting for nearly 27% of all visits in 2018.

“This acquisition creates more access to the quality healthcare services our community needs, when and where they need them,” Erol Akdamar, president of Medical City Healthcare, said in prepared remarks.

HCA Healthcare reported net income of $3.79 billion on revenue of $46.68 billion in 2018, up from $2.22 billion in net income on revenue of $43.61 billion in 2017.

Same-facility inpatient admissions increased 2.5% during 2018 while same-facility outpatient surgeries rose 1.8%. Outpatient revenue as a percentage of patient revenue remained relatively flat at 38.2%.

The gap between U.S. hospitals’ outpatient and inpatient revenue continued to shrink in 2017, according to the American Hospital Association.

https://www.modernhealthcare.com/operations/hca-buys-two-dozen-urgent-care-centers-fresenius-medical-care