Effective Strategies for Driving Profitable Growth and Business Success for Urgent Cares

In today’s challenging and unpredictable economic climate, urgent care operators nationwide are facing increased expenses, stagnant reimbursements, and unreliable revenue streams—making it progressively more difficult to grow their business, protect their bottom line, and remain profitable. 

In order to sustain healthy urgent care operations and continue driving profitable growth for the business, urgent care leaders must assess their revenue streams, service lines, and clinic performance and understand the true costs of their operating expenses. 

Recouping Revenue Owed

Before making any major decisions about the business, clinic leaders should give a thorough analysis of their expense metrics to determine the health of their revenue cycle and identify opportunities for improvement.  

Without realizing it, many urgent care clinics are losing out on money that they are owed due to poor processes, costly missteps during contracting and credentialing, as well as inaccurate coding. For visibility into key revenue inefficiencies, clinic leaders should adopt the habit of running reports on a weekly or monthly cadence that analyze denial / rejection rates and reasons, evaluation and management weights, and contracting / credentialing requirements. Doing so will help contribute to a cleaner billing process by catching mistakes before they appear on the back end of the revenue cycle. 

In addition to running reports to investigate common billing mistakes, it is imperative to implement standardized procedures, and ensure that all clinic staff are provided with the proper guidance and training to effectively correct and reduce mistakes on the front end of the billing process resulting in future revenue loss.  

Service Lines

Historically, urgent care visit volumes fluctuate drastically throughout the year, with the highest number of patient visits per day occurring during peak cold and flu season from November to March. In order to boost the business’ bottom lines, and generate greater revenue streams year-round, many clinics are looking to expand their service lines and optimize existing capabilities. 

Adding additional service lines provides an opportunity to capture more revenue from each patient visit. Additional service lines could include convenience services, such as medication dispensing, cash services such as supplement / IV infusions, or offering on-site specialty services, such as occupational medicine or orthopedic services. To drive higher volumes of patient visits on a consistent basis, it is also essential that clinics are utilizing and improving the acuity of their pre-existing service lines in order to accommodate more complex and demanding patient treatment needs. 

When considering what service lines to add, it is important to keep in mind any potential upfront procurement costs, training requirements, facility preparedness, market needs, revenue potential and the amount of capital investment required to add the service(s) to the clinic’s existing operating expenses.  

Operating Expenses

Labor remains the highest operating cost for urgent cares, and when staffing levels are not adjusted based on visit volumes, labor becomes a significant profitability restrictor. To remain a profitable urgent care center, staff headcount should be reduced whenever possible by cross-training staff so that all responsibilities can be covered with fewer providers and/or staff, making sure everyone is practicing at the top of their license and/or training, offering reduced hours on weekends and holidays, and augmenting full-time clinic staff with a bench of flex staff or PRN providers during periods of lower visit volumes.  

While often overlooked, another substantial area for operating expense reduction is supplies and purchased services. When ordering supplies, be sure to solicit bids from various suppliers to ensure the lowest costs, reduce inventory levels and order frequency, and take advantage of GPOs and rebates whenever possible. Clinics should also be evaluating every purchased service for the cheapest options. For example, opt for shredding services vs. shredding machines, bottled water vs. water filters, etc. With today’s tight operating margins, cutting out unnecessary spending wherever possible is key for improving the business’ bottom line.

Performance Tracking

Beginning to reduce operation costs and boost clinic revenue starts with choosing the right metrics to track. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) provide visibility into an urgent care’s overall financial health and performance, leading to better informed decisions from urgent care owners. Knowing how to calculate, track, measure and adjust processes based on KPIs can help expose blind spots in the clinic’s billing processes and day-to-day operations and provide insight into key areas for meaningful improvement. 

To thrive in the face of economic uncertainty, it is crucial for urgent care leaders to focus their efforts on reducing expenses, increasing revenue potential, and creating new growth opportunities that will continue driving profitability.

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