Urgent Care Feasibility Study

From $4,900, fixed fee, quoted before the engagement starts. 9 to 16 business days, rush from 5 business days. Prepared to SBA SOP 50 10 8.1 and USDA 7 CFR Part 5001, with a contractual acceptance commitment written into the engagement letter. First response within 12 business hours.

MMCG Invest prepares the independent feasibility study a lender needs to finance an urgent care center whose repayment rests on projected visits. The study defines the trade area by drive time, counts the population and the competing centers inside it, measures the demand diverted from nearby emergency departments, models the ramp from opening to stabilization and tests debt service coverage against the payer mix and credentialing timeline of the specific market.

The United States has between roughly 11,000 and 15,400 urgent care centers, depending on definition. The Urgent Care Association's dashboard counts 15,101 operating centers, National Urgent Care Realty counts 14,655 as of April 2026, and Definitive Healthcare counts more than 11,000 under a stricter definition that requires on-site imaging and a procedure room. Growth ran at 7% to 8% a year from 2019 to 2022 and has slowed to 1% to 2% a year since 2023, with closures of low-volume sites now running alongside new openings. About 40% of centers are hospital-affiliated, 18% are backed by private equity and 81% sit in metropolitan areas. Nationally there are about 22,500 residents per center, close to the 20,000 threshold below which operators report difficulty attracting adequate volume, and 89.4% of the population already lives within a 20-minute drive of a center.

The underwriting conclusion follows from those numbers. A new center cannot be financed on national growth. It has to show unmet demand or a credible path to taking share inside its own trade area, and the feasibility study is where that case is made.

A stabilized center sees about 34 visits a day and collects $141 to $144 in net revenue per visit across the industry, with a range of about $115 to $300 depending on payer mix and state. Break-even sits at 25 to 30 visits a day, or about 20 with strong contracts and lean staffing. A new center typically opens at 5 to 10 visits a day, reaches 20 to 25 by month six and stabilizes at 35 to 45 between months 12 and 18. Cash-flow break-even arrives in months 13 to 18 and requires more than 30 visits a day at $130 to $160 per visit.

The physical program is 3,000 to 4,000 square feet with four to five exam rooms, built out at more than $200 per square foot for a medical interior, with x-ray shielding adding $25,000 to $50,000 and equipment of about $250,000 including a $75,000 to $150,000 digital x-ray. All-in project cost runs $0.95 million to $1.6 million, and the single most important variable is working capital of $300,000 to $500,000: commercial credentialing takes 90 to 180 days and Medicaid managed care 180 to 270 days, and at least one of the top five payers in a market is often closed to new entrants at first. About 85% of operating cost is fixed, and the model is led by advanced practice providers, with physician oversight through a management services agreement in states that enforce the corporate practice of medicine.

MMCG's urgent care studies rest on three tests. The first is population per center inside a 12 to 15 minute drive-time trade area, which spans about two miles in a dense urban market and up to ten miles in a rural one, cut by rivers, highways and municipal lines, with 20,000 residents per center as the floor. The second is competitive intercept: competitors are mapped by the residential approach routes they intercept rather than by radius, because a center that is boxed in on its approach routes serves only its own retail strip; a freestanding building is worth about 8 to 10 more visits a day than inline space. The third is emergency department diversion. Wait time at the nearest hospital emergency department is the strongest single correlate of urgent care volume, and the study models emergency department length of stay, left-without-being-seen rates and avoidable-visit volume at the two or three nearest hospitals, against a median emergency department wait of 150 minutes and a 56-minute average urgent care visit.

Urgent care is classified in NAICS 621493, with freestanding surgical and emergency centers, and SBA lending to the code is a small, startup-heavy niche: a majority of loans are to new businesses, and operators use 7(a) for blended real estate, build-out, equipment and working capital rather than 504's real-estate-only structure. A 7(a) startup carries a minimum 10% equity injection and a 1.15 debt service coverage requirement on standard loans above $350,000. Under SBA 504, 13 CFR 120.910 sets the borrower's contribution at 10%, rising to 15% for a business operating two years or less or for a limited or single purpose building and 20% where both apply; an urgent care in a standard retail or office shell is arguable either way and turns on the build-out, while purpose-built centers are treated as limited purpose. Franchise centers are checked against the SBA Franchise Directory, where the listed urgent care systems carry an addendum that makes the borrower ineligible when the management company is affiliated with the franchisor, a clause that matters because the corporate-practice structure depends on a management services agreement. A center owned 20% or more by a nonprofit hospital system is ineligible for SBA unless the system guarantees the loan and its receipts fit the size standard.

Rural markets are where urgent care still grows. Rural centers made up 26% of new rooftops in 2024 against 17% of the existing stock, and openings net of closures were positive in rural and suburban areas and flat in urban ones. For-profit operators in communities of 50,000 residents or fewer can use USDA Business and Industry guarantees of 85% on loans under $5 million in FY2026, with terms up to 40 years and an independent feasibility study required on guaranteed loans over $1 million to a new business. Where the center qualifies as a Rural Health Clinic, MMCG models that billing designation separately, since Rural Health Clinic Medicare rates rise from $139 per visit in 2024 to $190 in 2028, subject to cost-report reconciliation.

Only four states, Texas, Colorado, Delaware and Rhode Island, license freestanding emergency departments to operate without a hospital affiliation; Texas has about 208 licensed standalone facilities, and standalone emergency rooms handle about a quarter of the state's emergency visits. The facility is 8,000 to 12,000 square feet, construction can reach $800 per square foot given imaging, mechanical and life-safety systems, and Texas requires 24-hour operation with a board-certified emergency physician on site, so break-even volume is far above urgent care levels. The No Surprises Act removed balance billing for out-of-network emergency care, which was the core revenue model of independent facilities, independent freestanding emergency departments are generally not Medicare-certified, and the largest independent operator failed twice between 2017 and 2020. MMCG underwrites health-system-affiliated satellites as the financeable form and treats independent facilities as high-risk, with collateral recovery depending on re-tenanting by a hospital system.

Two full model studies are published for this page: a franchise urgent care startup in a Sun Belt growth suburb financed under SBA 7(a), and a rural urgent care center billing as a Rural Health Clinic in a market under 50,000 residents, financed under a USDA Business and Industry guarantee. SBA 7(a) Feasibility Study Case Study: A Franchise Urgent Care Center at Travis Ranch in Forney, Texas, Feasible Conditioned on the Ramp Reserve · Model Case Study: Rural Urgent Care Acquisition, Duncan, Oklahoma, USDA B&I

Send the site address, the building type, the operator's background, the loan program and the proposed opening date. A senior analyst responds within 12 business hours with a fixed-fee proposal and a delivery date.