Dive Brief:
- Urgent care provider CityMD is expanding its footprint in on Long Island with the purchase of STAT Health, a competitor with 12 walk-in urgent care clinics in Nassau and Suffolk Counties.
- CityMD also said it plans to buy FirstMed Intermediate Medical Care, a single urgent care center in Queens, N.Y.
- Once both deals are completed, CityMD will have a total of 100 locations in New York, New Jersey and Seattle, Washington. Terms of the two deals were not disclosed.
Dive Insight:
CityMD has seen 43% growth over the past year, the company said in a release.
Competition is heating up in the low-acuity healthcare space as insurers push patients to lower-cost outpatient settings.
An alliance between Walgreens Boots Alliance and MedExpress, UnitedHealth Group’s urgent care arm, has expanded to 15 locations, Forbes reported. The idea of linking primary care to drugstores is one that CVS Health has also embraced. The retailer is looking to pilot primary care clinics after it wraps up its $69 billion purchase of Aetna.
In December, UnitedHealth’s service arm Optum announced it was purchasing DaVita Medical Group for $4.9 billion. DaVita serves about 1.7 million patients annually through about 300 medical clinics offering primary and specialty care.
Health systems are also building out their outpatient business. HCA Holdings has said it plans to add around 200 outpatient facilities in coming years, including 15 to 20 urgent care centers in 2018.