[Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include comments from New England Urgent Care’s husband and wife co-founders]
A private-equity backed urgent care provider has expanded its Greater Hartford presence through the acquisition of a smaller competitor.
PhysicianOne Urgent Care, based in Fairfield County, said it has acquired New England Urgent Care and its practice locations in Bristol, Enfield, Manchester and West Hartford.
Financial terms of the deal, which is the latest in an ongoing wave of investment and consolidation in the urgent care space this decade, were not disclosed.
PhysicianOne previously only had one Hartford County location, in Glastonbury.
The four new locations bring PhysicianOne to 16 total offices in Connecticut. In all, it has 23 locations including New York and Massachusetts.
“Since opening our doors in 2011 we have worked to set the gold-standard in urgent care for the Hartford area, and we are thrilled to have the PhysicianOne Urgent Care team continue that same level of care,” Dr. Michael Gutman, co-founder of New England Urgent Care, said in a statement. “We are proud of our commitment to our patients, and can assure you the same high-quality care will continue with PhysicianOne Urgent Care.”
PhysicianOne was founded in 2008 and has since become an affiliate of Yale New Haven Health.
As PhysicianOne has grown its stature, Hartford HealthCare in 2017 launched its own network of urgent care facilities under the brand GoHealth Urgent Care.
That network has grown to 18 locations across the state.
In an interview Thursday afternoon, Gutman and his wife, fellow co-founder Yahel Gutman, a registered nurse, said they would not be involved in the business going forward. The couple are in the midst of moving to Israel, near Jerusalem.
As a four-location company, Dr. Gutman said it has been a struggle to invest enough in marketing to keep up with bigger players.
“We did feel the pressure of the competition and we decided now’s the time, before it was too late, to sell to a like-minded organization that would carry on our vision to some degree,” Gutman said.
The Gutmans said they had approximately 50 full-time employees and another 40 part-time workers, who managed upwards of 65,000 patient visits a year. Virtually all of those staffers are either staying on with PhysicianOne or have landed new jobs elsewhere, they said.
Dr. Gutman said that the business set itself apart by caring for higher-acuity patients than many urgent care facilities do, keeping more patients out of the emergency room, as well as for its decision not to affiliate with any particular hospital or larger groups.
“We chose not to be corporate, we did not want that,” Yahel Gutman added.
As the couple leaves Connecticut in the rear-view mirror, Dr. Gutman said the consolidation of the urgent care industry rolls onward. Though his remarks weren’t aimed at any company in particular, he said he worries about the impact corporate medicine will have.
“We showed the industry how it could be done,” he said of New England Urgent Care. “I’m not sure it will be done that way.”
