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Introduction

In the past 30 years, we have assisted over 250 urgent care centers. Through hundreds of hours of discussions with entrepreneurs on how to start urgent care centers, we’ve created a reliable list of mistakes and pitfalls that directly impact success.

We looked at the mistakes we’ve observed and see them as opportunities to learn. We started with a top-ten list, but after 10 minutes of brainstorming, we already had listed more than 20 important mistakes on our list. While these top mistakes represent the perspective of entrepreneurial physicians, many of the same principles apply to urgent care centers started by other business partnerships or hospital systems.

Please note: these are not “rules” for how to start an urgent care center, but general principles to follow in starting urgent care centers. These ideas about the business of starting, developing and establishing urgent care centers are based on our own personal experience and observations. We have seen many successful startup urgent care centers make some of these mistakes and – because each one offered an opportunity to do it better – went forward toward great success.

We hope this list helps guide your journey.