Baylor Scott and White Health made a significant move into the urgent care market by announcing a partnership with NextCare, one of the nation’s largest independent urgent care providers. The partnership will add 41 urgent care centers to BSWH’s network and give the state’s largest nonprofit health system a presence in new markets such as Abilene, San Antonio, and Houston.
The move will make BSWH one of the state’s largest providers of urgent care services. The 41 Texas NextCare locations will add to the eight BSWH-branded urgent care centers that operate today. NexCare currently has 14 North Texas locations, with an additional location on the way in Terrell. Baylor is the latest system in the region to make an aggressive move into retail urgent care, part of a larger trend in healthcare for health systems to establish lower-cost outposts closer to where people live.
Medical City Healthcare’s parent company HCA Healthcare purchased 24 MedSpring urgent care locations from Fresenius Medical Care in 2019, adding eight to its CareNow network in North Texas, which now has 49 locations in DFW and is the largest provider of urgent care in the region. In May, Medical City’s parent company HCA Healthcare announced it was buying 41 Texas urgent care centers from FastMed across the state.
In 2020, Texas Health Resources launched its first foray into the urgent care space by opening 20 Texas Health Breeze Urgent Care clinics throughout North Texas. These centers have an onsite pharmacy, transparent pricing, and a concierge service. The centers employ a flat fee that covers the visit and any medication, and patients can have a telehealth visit with a pharmacist via a kiosk at the clinic after the appointment to ask questions about their medication. Afterward, they can pick up the prescription from the clinic. There are now more than two dozen Breeze locations in North Texas.
Arizona-based NextCare is one of the nation’s largest providers of urgent care services, with over 170 clinics in 12 states that see millions of patients yearly. “We are excited to partner with Baylor Scott & White Health, the premier healthcare system in Texas, to bring even more access points to patients in need. By joining forces, Baylor Scott & White Health and NextCare will accelerate their goal of providing customer-centric, high-quality healthcare to as many Texans as possible,” said Derek Newell, CEO of NextCare.
The increasing cost of emergency room care, convenience, and lack of adequate primary care providers has led to a boom in urgent care centers, especially since the pandemic when they became critical in diagnosing and treating COVID-19. According to the Urgent Care Association, patient volume at urgent care clinics is up 60 percent since 2019, and a record 11,150 urgent care centers have opened around the United States. Urgent care clinics are growing at 7 percent per year. With primary care shortages expected to worsen before they improve, urgent care centers will continue to be a critical part of the healthcare system for patients who cannot find or afford care elsewhere.
The NextCare partnership will mean that BSWH will have care sites in the Houston and San Antonio areas, markets previously untouched by the system. Because urgent care is often the first option for many patients, it has become a lucrative entry point for patients to be plugged into health systems’ other offerings and service lines.
The partnership isn’t Baylor’s first interaction with the Houston market. In 2018, BSWH announced that it would merge with Houston-area hospital behemoth Memorial Hermann, but the deal fell through when the two sides couldn’t agree to terms. Up to that point, the two systems had not had much overlapping territory, but with NextCare sites in Houston and San Antonio, there will be more direct competition between the systems.
BSWH’s move is also part of the trend of consolidation in healthcare, where independent operators in all service lines are being bought up by health systems, private equity groups, and insurance companies. Research has consistently shown that healthcare consolidation has led to higher prices paid by insurance companies.
The partnership will allow users of BSWH’s award-winning health app to access urgent care in addition to BSWH’s other providers while expanding BSWH’s reach to new markets and giving the system access to NextCare’s occupational health and virtual care offerings in addition to its urgent care services.
“We are dedicated to providing customers with as much choice as possible when seeking care,” said Pete McCanna, CEO of Baylor Scott & White Health. “Through this venture, the NextCare sites across the state will be integrated into our ecosystem of offerings, which already includes 24/7 virtual care available to all Texans via MyBSWHealth.com.”
As for the new name of the centers, a release from BSWH says that the two organizations will work in the coming months “to explore branding, digital integration and other enhancements to serve customers better.”
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