How many patients per day or month are needed keep an urgent care clinic afloat?

It generally takes between 25-30 average visits per day to reach profitability in urgent care. The key variables in what number of patients are needed include:

• Expenses (rent, wages, benefits, etc)
• Collection percentages (contracted rates; payor mix; visit mix, e.g., drug screens, physicals, illnesses, procedures, etc)
• Revenue cycle management (how efficiently are billings collected)

If your expenses are too high and/or your contracted rates are too low, you may never reach profitability with any number of visits. If your expenses are low and your contracted rates are high, you might be able to break even at 20 patients per day.

Practice Velocity is involved in helping urgent care centers in several ways. Let me review several of our affiliated businesses (all owned by the same three urgent care physicians):

• Practice Velocity: software solutions for marketing, charting, automated coding, billing, occupational medicine protocols and collections.
• Urgent Care Consultants: has performed as a consultant to over 50 startup urgent care centers. Consulting services include pro-forma help, purchasing advice, floor plan review, and a checklist of over 1,500 items to complete in the startup of an urgent care center.
• PV Billing® : with over 125 billers, we provide full-service billing services and managed care contracting and credentialing for urgent care centers in many states.
• Physicians Immediate Care: We have operated urgent care centers for over twenty years, and our twelve-clinic network is the foundation and launching pad for all of our other businesses. We will be opening two additional centers circa June, 2008. We have done one joint-venture clinic and are actively developing a framework for (but are not yet offering) franchising opportunities.

We would be delighted to host your team for a full-day tour of our urgent care centers and software company.  Feel free to call and schedule a visit to our urgent care headquarters (only one hour from O’Hare Airport).  Over 300 urgent care professionals took advantage of tours of our urgent care operations last year.  During the tour, we outline our entire operation, including:

• Reception
• Marketing
• Site selection
• Added services
• Occupational medicine
• Patient flow
• Whatever else you wish to review

We would be delighted to serve you in your new endeavor. To schedule a web demo or phone call or to schedule a tour of our headquarters, call 815-713-2600.