Another system leans into urgent care expansion: 5 notes

Cleveland-based University Hospitals is leaning into "retail healthcare" by expanding its urgent care centers to 36 retail centers across northern Ohio by 2026, cleveland.com reported Nov. 3.

Retail healthcare focuses on moving urgent cares out of medical buildings and putting them in hassle-free locations near where people work, shop and live.

"When you really looked at our market, we didn't have a lot of urgent cares," Rick Cicero, UH vice president for strategy and partnerships, told the news outlet. "We knew we had to create an urgent care that met the needs and wants of the community."

Here are five things to know:

1. UH started building urgent cares in 2023 and opened its 21st urgent care center in October. It plans to expand into six more counties in the next two years.

2. UH is building new urgent cares and is moving existing centers out of medical buildings and into retail centers. Patient volumes are up 20% for seven of the urgent care locations since they were moved out of medical buildings. UH is also choosing locations that are near primary care facilities to allow for easier follow-up care.

3. The new urgent care offices will have UH's name, but are owned by a venture called University of Hospitals Urgent Care. 

4. UH's urgent care centers will soon match the number of centers operated by Cleveland Clinic.

5. UH is part of a growing national trend to expand urgent care and express clinics. The trend addresses the needs of younger people, many of whom do not have a primary care physician and often turn to urgent care for medical needs. About 56% of Gen Z and 45% of millennials said they visited an urgent care more than three times in the past 12 months, according to the Urgent Care Association, a trade group for the industry.

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