Last week, the Urgent Care Association of America (UCAOA) released its annual Benchmarking Report. In it was the finding that the number of urgent care centers increased 10% in 2016, to 7,357 centers.
Looking through our database, it’s obvious that the majority of that year-over-year growth in urgent care centers was de novo, not from mergers and acquisitions. Here’s how M&A in the urgent care segment has played out since 2010, the year the Affordable Care Act was signed.
Urgent Care Center Deals, 2010 to 2016
| Year | Number of Deals | Total $ Spent |
|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 12 | N/A |
| 2015 | 17 | $1.06 billion |
| 2014 | 9 | $2.2 million |
| 2013 | 2 | N/A |
| 2012 | 10 | $7.8 million |
| 2011 | 4 | N/A |
| 2010 | 2 | $805 million |
| #rowspan#Source: HealthCareMandA.com |
Only two transactions involving urgent care centers were reported in 2010, making for a slow start. By 2012, however, 10 transactions were announced. By 2015, the number rose to 17, and slipped to 12 in 2016.
Other urgent care providers accounted for the majority of acquirers, making up approximately 49% since 2014. Private equity firms and hospitals accounted for 20% each of this pool of acquirers.
With the repeal of the ACA apparently imminent (this is being written on the day Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States), we expect to see more activity in this segment. The UCAOA’s report noted that 96% of the urgent care centers saw more patients in 2015 than 2014, and that 92% kept patient wait-times to 30 minutes or less.
Nine of of 10 centers that responded to the survey expect to see continued growth. If price becomes an even higher priority for consumers seeking health care, they’ll probably be right.
