The day after we published our Urgent Care Industry Report, HCA Healthcare ($HCA) purchased 24 MedSpring Urgent Care ($PRIVATE:MEDSPRING) locations from Fresenius Medical Care ($FMS) in Texas. That covers locations in Austin, Houston, and Dallas, but does not include the centers MedSpring has in Chicago.

What does this all mean? HCA already was serving 10% of the Dallas-Fort Worth population, according to the company, and had 770,000 patient visits in North Texas. The extra eight centers could tip that over the 1,000,000 visit mark, especially considering MedSpring's traction trends.

Over one month of traction data, which was tracked every hour on the hour, we saw how MedSpring had a constant, yet not overwhelming, flow of patients at all of its Texas locations.

The busiest time for MedSpring locations is late Monday morning, where there was usually more than one patient queued for care on average across its Texas locations. Since the report, we continued to track waiting times at all locations, and found that MedSpring's Central Austin locations is the busiest on average.

This acquisition will, without question, boost HCA's presence in Texas with two dozen active health care centers in prime locations. With the urgent care industry growing as it is, HCA, who also owns hospitals and other care centers, is further expanding its reach to compete the likes of other big players in the space such as American Family Care, Concentra, and UnitedHealthcare Group's MedExpress.

About the Data: 

Thinknum tracks companies using information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales. 

Further Reading: 

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