For Greenville, S.C.-based Prisma Health, urgent care has become a larger part of its growth strategy. The system is acquiring 36 urgent care centers across South Carolina from Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Novant Health, a deal expected to close Nov. 1 that brings roughly 500 employees.
The acquisition will significantly expand an urgent care footprint Prisma has been building for about four years. Clarence Sevillian, executive vice president and COO, said the system has grown from four urgent care centers to 31 during that time, with the added sites expected to help ease pressure on emergency departments, bring new patients into Prisma’s network and connect them with primary care.
The 36 acquired sites, formerly operating under the Doctors Care brand, will become Prisma Health Urgent Care. Financial terms were not disclosed.
“The reason we decided to move forward is that we constantly stress within our organization, as part of our mission: How do we continue to build trust with the patients we come into contact with every single day?” Mr. Sevillian said. “That trust means a lot of different things. One of those is providing access to timely care, not having to wait a long, extended period of time to see a primary care physician. It’s also adjusting to what we’re seeing as a trend with our younger generations of wanting access now. They’re sometimes using urgent care as a primary care platform.”
In an interview with Becker’s, Mr. Sevillian discussed what Prisma expects from the added sites, how it plans to connect new patients to its broader network and how it will judge the acquisition a year from now.
Prisma runs its urgent care centers in partnership with WellStreet, which handles day-to-day management under a management agreement. Mr. Sevillian serves on the board as Prisma’s representative for approving acquisitions and authorized WellStreet to pursue the Novant deal.
Rising emergency department volume is one reason Prisma is expanding urgent care. Mr. Sevillian said visits are rising across Prisma’s facilities as its communities grow, and the system sees urgent care as an option for patients who may be overusing its EDs.
“We’re now going into a flu season, and quite honestly, our emergency departments are going to get jammed,” he said. “We’re creating another access point for our patients to go to for immediate care. That helps decongest what’s happening in our emergency departments right now, so we don’t have boarders in our emergency departments.”
Mr. Sevillian also described urgent care as a way to provide care closer to where patients live, reducing transportation barriers, while reaching patients who have not previously received care from Prisma.
“This is a global number, not by site, but approximately 20% of the patients coming into these facilities are new to Prisma altogether,” Mr. Sevillian said.
The main referral pathways out of urgent care are primary care, orthopedics and therapies, he said, and the system’s goal is to connect those new patients with a primary care physician.
“When we think about our journey to covering the majority of the lives in South Carolina, this is a goal for us,” he said.
Prisma has begun communicating with the roughly 500 employees at the acquired sites, and its goal is to retain as many as possible for day-one operations. A small number of the sites are near existing Prisma locations, and the system is considering consolidating some of them.
“We’re looking at how we can consolidate some of those centers,” Mr. Sevillian said. “It’s a small portion of those 36 sites, but there are a few where it only makes sense for us to consolidate those locations.”
He said Prisma hopes to retain employees from any consolidated locations elsewhere in its growing network, including physicians, nurse practitioners and medical assistants. Prisma will also evaluate over the next year whether some nearby sites could instead become primary care or specialty locations.
For Novant, the sale is part of a shift in how it delivers care in South Carolina.
“As patient preferences for how and when to receive care have evolved, we are thoughtfully aligning our services to meet those needs, including improving access, affordability and convenience,” a Novant spokesperson said in a statement to Becker’s.
Novant said it is transitioning away from traditional urgent care locations in the state as it expands virtual care to 24/7 availability, and that it will work with patients and new site ownership on continuity of care. The system also pointed to continued investment in South Carolina, including two new freestanding emergency departments in Charleston and Bluffton and a Greenville medical campus opening in October.
For now, Prisma’s urgent care expansion is a South Carolina initiative. Mr. Sevillian said the system plans to deploy a similar strategy at Blount Memorial in Maryville, Tenn., one of several moves that have extended Prisma into Tennessee. Prisma is also among a group of health systems expanding across state lines.
A year from now, Prisma will judge the Novant acquisition against the same measures it applies to its current platform, Mr. Sevillian said: the financial performance of each facility, whether sites are relieving ED pressure and avoiding boarders during peak season, the share of patients who are new to Prisma and how many establish primary care with the system.
“If we see increases in all of those areas, along with financial stability, that will be a huge success for us as an organization,” he said.
Primary care access is another factor in Prisma’s urgent care strategy, particularly in rural areas where physicians are retiring.
“It’s a challenge right now. Especially in some of our rural areas, it’s very difficult to get access to primary care, and a lot are retiring,” Mr. Sevillian said.
“We’re seeing a lot of that in terms of not being able to have enough primary care support that our areas need. This is another avenue for us to help complement that.”
