Dignity Health-GoHealth Urgent Care acquires Golden Gate Urgent Care Centers in Bay Area
Dignity Health-GoHealth Urgent Care's network of 14 locations will extend to North and East Bay.
GoHealth Urgent Care, in partnership with Dignity Health, has acquired the six urgent care centers operated by Golden Gate Urgent Care, a San Francisco-based urgent care provider and an affiliate of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Health. The deal will expand the Dignity Health-GoHealth Urgent Care network to more communities in the Bay Area.
WHY IT MATTERS
Dignity Health-GoHealth Urgent Care's network of 14 locations will extend to San Francisco, San Mateo, Marin and Alameda counties, expanding care to the North Bay and East Bay areas.
All six Golden Gate Urgent Care locations will continue to care for patients under the Golden Gate Urgent Care brand. Dignity Health-GoHealth Urgent Care intends to maintain the majority of Golden Gate Urgent Care's clinical providers in order to ensure continuity of care to patients throughout the greater Bay Area.
THE TREND
Activity in the urgent care space appears to be picking up as these types of facilities gain popularity thanks to often-lower prices, shorter wait times and walk-in availability. Last week, a major merger between two other well-known urgent care systems, FastMed and NextCare announced plans to merge, a deal that would yield one of the largest urgent care provider systems in the country, with a combined 251 clinics in 10 states.
WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW
The Golden Gate centers will be integrated into Dignity Health-GoHealth Urgent Care's urgent care network and will offer the same services such as onsite laboratory and X-rays, online check-in, electronic medical record integration, same day/walk-in visits and shorter wait times. The newly integrated centers will remain in-network with most major commercial insurance plans, including insurance plans for those Dignity Health-GoHealth Urgent Care centers are in-network.
GoHealth Urgent Care operates more than 100 urgent care centers in the New York and Portland, Oregon-Vancouver, Washington metropolitan areas, the San Francisco Bay Area, Hartford and South Eastern Connecticut, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, St. Louis and Springfield, Missouri, and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Dignity Health staffs 10,000 physicians, more than 60,000 employees and includes 41 acute care hospitals, and 400-plus care centers including neighborhood hospitals, urgent care, surgery and imaging centers, home health, and primary care clinics. In FY 2018, Dignity Health provided $2.1 billion in charitable care and services.
ON THE RECORD
"Golden Gate Urgent Care has a reputation as one of the most trusted names in the Bay Area for urgent care and shares our focus on delivering high-quality care and exemplary customer service through innovative facilities and cutting-edge technology, and thus is a natural addition to the Dignity Health-GoHealth Urgent Care family," said Todd Latz, chief executive officer of GoHealth Urgent Care. "...This transaction will allow us to leverage our respective and collective strengths and will create a larger, more robust network from which we can offer more patients in our local communities both the unparalleled experiences and convenient access to high-quality clinical providers that they value."
"Dr. Connell, myself, and the rest of the team at Golden Gate Urgent Care are extremely pleased with the opportunity to join the Dignity Health-GoHealth Urgent Care network and to offer greater access to compassionate and consumer-focused urgent care," said Dr. Kurt Kunzel, chief executive officer of Golden Gate Urgent Care. "Our combined team and deeper resources and support will allow us to pursue greater growth in the future while still delivering high-quality care to San Francisco and the Bay Area as a whole."
"We are pleased to welcome Golden Gate Urgent Care to Dignity Health-GoHealth Urgent Care," said Dr. Todd Strumwasser, senior vice president of operations for Dignity Health Bay Area. "By coming together, we can expand our ability to provide excellent health care focused on what patients need – the right level of care, in the right setting, in a convenient location, for the right price."
Twitter: @BethJSanborn
Email the writer: beth.sanborn@himssmedia.com
