A Word from Andy Klearman: Urgent Care is Growing Quickly
June 17, 2026 by Medigroup
Urgent Care is Growing Quickly, and Many Operators are Leaving Money on the Table
Making a strong case for getting organized around purchasing.
The urgent care industry doubled in size between 2014 and 2023*. It now treats 206 million patients per year, and generates $44 billion in annual revenue**. Estimates reveal that the industry has grown at approximately 5% CAGR for five consecutive years***. By several projections, the industry will experience strong revenue growth to $55 billion through 2030. Those numbers are hard to dispute. This growth is not coincidental: patients are choosing urgent care because it is closer, faster, and less expensive than the care they could get at a hospital. Payers have taken notice, and so have deep pocketed private equity firms.
The operators that are building multi-site models are beginning to look a lot less like independent clinics and a lot more like complex operations with detailed supply chains. Are those businesses capturing the advantages that come with that scale? For many urgent care operations, the answer is simply “no.” For these operators, there is a simple way to improve the bottom line.
Where Money Goes Unmanaged
Most urgent care centers do not have a dedicated procurement team. Purchasing decisions are left to an office manager, a nurse, or whoever has a moment. That is not meant to be critical. In fact, it is the reality of running a lean operation. But it means that meaningful savings go uncaptured with each passing month.
Spend Categories – The spend categories where this shows up most are easy to spot include medical and surgical supplies, capital equipment, back office services and indirect spending.
Medical and surgical supplies: disposable gloves and masks, IV supplies, rapid diagnostic kits
Capital equipment: exam tables, DR and imaging equipment, software, analysis tools
Back-office services: credentialing, billing & coding, practice management/EHR software
Indirect spending: Wifi and connectivity, shipping accounts, language services, copy machines, office supplies
Across all four categories, the gap between what operators are paying and what they could be paying is significant. A group purchasing organization exists specifically to close that gap.
How a GPO Actually Works
A GPO negotiates contracts with vendors and manufacturers on behalf of its member facilities. Members use those contracts to buy at pre-negotiated rates. In the case of MediGroup, the GPO I lead, membership is free. MediGroup earns its revenue through administrative fees paid by the vendors, not by the members. That last point matters more than it might seem: there is no price of entry. If a member joins and uses a single contract, that contract saves them money they would not have saved otherwise. A single contract results in members saving money. Most members find several contracts that apply to their operation right away.
“At Medigroup, a single contract results in members saving money.”
Corporate operators are buying cheaper.
MediGroup focuses specifically on providers of non-acute care. This group includes physician practices, surgery centers, and urgent care facilities. Being tightly focused on this group matters because the needs of a busy urgent care center are very different from those of a hospital system. The contract portfolio that we have built at MediGroup reflects those differences.
Consolidation Can Change the Calculus
As well-run urgent care groups expand and merge, the potential purchasing leverage they have increases. Volume speaks volumes. A single-site operator has some negotiating power, but not that much. A twelve-site regional group has real leverage as a buyer, but only if it is organized. This is a circumstance where GPO membership makes a big difference. Smaller and independent members and groups generally have access to the same contract portfolio that larger healthcare systems and facilities use. Being larger results in deeper savings across more categories. MediGroup has seen this play out firsthand. When member facilities have merged with non-member groups, MediGroup has competed for and retained the combined business. The savings case holds up at every scale.
The Purchasing Platform Gap
A purchasing platform is a gap worth mentioning. Most urgent care facilities are still not using a centralized purchasing platform. They are placing orders with multiple vendors through multiple channels, and they don’t have a clear view of what they are spending or whether they are using the best available contracts.
A purchasing platform fixes that issue by providing a single point to login, a single purchase order for multiple vendors, and full spend reporting. In the case of GPO members, a purchasing platform provides visibility into which contracts they are actually using. At MediGroup, we are agnostic about which purchasing platform a facility chooses. Our goal is simply for members to take advantage of the reporting and workflow infrastructure in order to capture the value that is available to them.
One of the Best Ways to Improve Your Margin
Urgent care operators work hard to grow revenue. That effort is visible and it is energizing. Cost management is quieter work, but it moves the same needle, resulting in bigger margins. For a non-acute care facility, lowering overhead costs by using a GPO is a direct path to a better profit margin. It does not require a new service line or new staff. It requires joining, which is free, and then spending a few hours reviewing what contracts apply to your operation.
ABOUT ANDY KLEARMAN, CEO – Before he was CEO of MediGroup, Andy spent 10 years in leadership at a medical supply distribution company. His experience led him to found MediGroup, which is one of the largest group purchasing organization for non-acute care in the United States. He has spent his career helping physicians lower their operating costs.
ABOUT MEDIGROUP – MediGroup helps physician practices, surgery centers, and urgent care facilities lower overhead through pre-negotiated contracts across medical, operational, and indirect spend. Membership is free.
