TriStar Health and CareSpot form urgent care center partnership

HCA’s TriStar Health is wading deeper into the urgent care center market. On Monday, TriStar and CareSpot, an urgent care center operator, announced a joint venture that will open as many as 15 new urgent care centers in middle Tennessee next year.

A press release issued by the two companies said the joint venture will make them the leading urgent care provider in middle Tennessee.

TriStar’s partnership with CareSpot is another step in its plans to enter the urgent care market, said Krinda Hie, TriStar spokesperson.

“One of the reasons we are interested into coming into the urgent care arena is because it is a lower cost option to emergency care,” Hie said. “A lot of these illnesses and injuries can be treated in an urgent care setting as opposed to an emergency room. It’s just a lower cost option for a lot of patients.”

Last February, TriStar announced a clinical affiliation with MinuteClinic, the retail healthcare division of CVS Caremark, a market leader in the retail health clinic industry that has 14 walk-in clinics operating in middle Tennessee. The agreement between the two companies applies to current and future MinuteClinic locations in Nashville and 10 surrounding counties.

The company’s interest in CareSpot, Hie said, developed from CareSpot’s leadership in the urgent care arena and that the company recently relocated its corporate headquarters from Florida to Nashville, where TriStar is based. “Not only are they proven but they’re local to us so the partnership was just a natural fit,” she said.

CareSpot, formerly Solantic, was headquartered in Florida and founded by current Florida Gov. Rick Scott. The Scott family sold its stake in the company in 2011.

Hie says TriStar’s partnership with CareSpot will allow both companies to extend their reach and will offer patients a “quick route” if they need to move from an urgent care center to more in-depth care that can be provided by one of TriStar’s hospitals. “It’s just one more way that we can touch people in our community and expand our continuum of care,” she said.

While Hie declined to discuss the particular financial arrangement between the two companies, both are making contributions to the partnership she said. The new urgent care centers will operate as CareSpot and daily management will fall to CareSpot but TriStar will be involved in site location and build out of the new centers, Hie said.