Just as rival Humana exits the market, UnitedHealth Group is growing its portfolio of retail health clinics, in another step towards insurer-owned healthcare delivery.
UHG's Optum subsidiary is buying MedExpress, a national walk-in clinic chain with 141 locations in 11 states, for an undisclosed sum.
"MedExpress has set the highest standards of care quality, convenience and compassion for patients in the communities it serves," said Optum CEO Larry Renfro. Optum, which already has 9 Optum Clinics, is looking to MedExpress with help "expanding this progressive and successful approach."
MedExpress was founded in 2001 by a group of emergency care physicians in West Virginia who were frustrated with the chaotic state of ER care for both patients and clinicians--docs shuffling from the most critical cases of heart attacks, strokes and trauma, while people with minor but urgent complaints, injuries or infections waited hours, then got a big bill.
Founder and current CEO Frank Alderman, MD, opened the first MedExpress clinic in Morgantown in 2001, and the company has been growing ever since. The 141 full-service "neighborhood medical centers," in Florida, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, are open 12 hours-a-day seven days a week for urgent care, wellness and preventive care, basic labs and occupational services.
"Partnering with a health services innovator like Optum will help MedExpress further realize our focus on improving the health of the communities we serve," said Alderman.
For UHG, the acquisition is a big step in a foray into convenient care, a growing $15 billion sector, with services targeting both the lower-income spectrum and the high-end in competitive markets like Texas.
In 2012, UnitedHealth Group's Optum acquired a more traditional provider, the 2,300-physician group Monarch HealthCare in Irvine, California, as Optum was increasingly serving hospitals and health systems with population health, revenue cycle and practice management services.
Last year, UHG opened the first Optum Clinic, in Houston. Today, six more are located in Texas, one in Kansas and one in Nevada. Staffed by PAs and NPs, the Optum Clinics offer a fairly wide array of basic primary care: annual physicals, well-woman exams, weight loss help, lab and x-rays, and care for back pain, fractures and sprains, as well as diseases like asthma or hypertension. They also offer cosmetic services: wrinkle relaxers, chemical peels and facials.
While the Optum Clinics take insurance from UHG's competitors, like some other walk-in clinic chains they also offer membership options: $19 a year for unlimited blood pressure checks, immunization screenings, annual head-to-toe skin checks and hearing tests with a discount on hearing aids. There's also a $39 "Optum Beauty membership" with an annual "skin and aesthetic consultation for the face and neck," a "VIP invitation to medical spa events and skin care seminars," and discounts on cosmetic and skin treatments.
It's a booming time for retail clinics--with more than 1,500 walk-in clinics around the country at CVS stores, Walmarts, Walgreens and free-standing strip mall locations operated by regional and national chains as well as some local hospital systems. Though Humana may have recently exited the space with a $1 billion flip of the Concentra chain, UHG looks like its going to keep going.
Incorporating MedExpress into Optum creates an opportunity to "integrate Optum care management and clinical programs with MedExpress' services, simplifying patient access to health resources and treatment options in their community," the company said. UnitedHealthcare's membership is the largest in the country, at some 40 million, with 2 million of them in Medicaid plans and more than 500,000 in new exchange plans across 23 states--including several with MedExpress clinics, among them Florida and Pennsylvania.
"We have tuned our medical management and consumer engagement techniques to address the needs and experiences of these consumers, leveraging the in-market personal care approach we use today with dedicated on-the-ground resources embedded within the communities," UHG CEO Stephen Hemsley told investors earlier this year.