Financial health and profitability are perpetually top of mind for urgent care executives, particularly for new clinics ramping up to the breakeven point.
Multi-site operators are often focused on regional expansion—but what’s the next step for growing your business? If you’ve overexpanded, how can you pull back and drive up profitability? You must understand which business levers you can pull to drive profitability and streamline operations to grow your business.
Factors like patient volume, personnel costs, reimbursement rates, and more can drastically impact your P&L. It's never been more critical to understand the levers we can pull to control profits and losses, and how we utilize technology to strengthen those levers.
“A Level 2 Financial Management course for Urgent Care. Resonated with me and what I’m trying to teach my team. I think it's awesome that you are providing relevant urgent care education for people who don’t even use your product. It was incredibly well done!”
Lori Japp, Vice President of Urgent Care & Employer Solutions, UCHealth
Why is urgent care financial management difficult?
Urgent care is traditionally slow during the summer months. Flu season has passed, kids are out of school with fewer infections, people are traveling and putting off routine care. This year, urgent care is feeling the summer slow even more with COVID testing and vaccination dropping off a cliff over the past few months.
We have all seen massive changes to our industry over the last 3 years. COVID has challenged us to find new creative ways to see and care for our patients. We all continue to face reimbursement challenges within urgent care. All of this is now being compounded by the great resignation and clinical burnout. Squeezing out financial value from a clinic has become more challenging than ever.
Current challenges in the urgent care industry
There’s a seismic shift happening in our industry, and we’re facing challenges on all fronts. This is being driven by the triangulation of forces of patient demand, or consumer expectations, regulatory alignment with patient needs, and the combined impact of COVID.
We see evidence of this at Solv already—a primary brick and mortar UC platform with no consolidated telemed play, no offering of asych chat or other front doors into their clinics, will struggle in the months and years to come. The demand for these services simply does not fit into a brick and mortar environment.
Current challenges in urgent care
- The great resignation: staffing
- Volatility in patient volumes: COVID impact
- Payer contracting challenges
- Shifting patient expectations
- Inflation: all expenses
Dive into urgent care financial health in our latest ebook to identify 8 profitability “levers” you can pull that make the biggest impact, get tactical strategies for utilizing technology to control your P&L, and discover how to create a consistent forecasting formula to drive profitability.
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