GoHealth Urgent Care and Mercy Partner to Create Premier Network of Patient-Focused Urgent Care Centers in Multiple Midwest Markets

ST. LOUIS, Jan. 3, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- GoHealth Urgent Care, one of the nation's fastest-growing urgent care providers, and Mercy, one of the nation's most innovative and integrated care delivery health systems,  today announced they have partnered to create a substantial network of urgent care centers across the Midwest that will put patients first and deliver superior care and convenience. The joint venture will provide patients in Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas with greater access to innovative urgent care through state-of-the-art technology and unique patient access tools?wherever and whenever they need it the most.

Mercy and GoHealth Urgent Care plan to open more than 30 co-branded Mercy-GoHealth Urgent Care centers over the next two years, with convenient retail locations throughout St. Louis, Springfield, Oklahoma City and Northwest Arkansas. The joint venture will begin serving Mercy communities this summer, combining GoHealth Urgent Care's industry-leading patient satisfaction ratings, technological advancements and award-winning center and website designs with Mercy's long-standing reputation for high-quality, fully integrated acute and ambulatory health services. With these new Mercy-GoHealth Urgent Care centers, GoHealth Urgent Care will become one of the nation's five largest urgent care companies.

Each Mercy-GoHealth Urgent Care center will operate seven days a week with extended evening hours, welcome walk-in patients and offer online pre-registration and check-in to ensure that patients can access providers as quickly as possible and control when and where they are seen. The centers will feature electrostatic "smart glass" procedure rooms, transparent charting on a wide screen in each exam room, mobile x-ray equipment and Mercy's unified electronic health record (EHR), including the user-friendly MyMercy patient portal. The utilization of an integrated EHR will allow caregivers across the entire Mercy system immediate access to relevant and important patient medical history and information, helping to ensure continuity and the highest levels of care.

"We could not be more excited to partner with Mercy, as our mission to create a culture of care, seamless integration with the broader health care continuum and effortless patient experiences in urgent care is in complete alignment with what Mercy provides to each of its communities," said Todd Latz, CEO of GoHealth Urgent Care. "Through robust collaboration and the combination of our respective innovative approaches to care, our joint venture will offer a differentiated and superior level of consumer-focused urgent care that is not currently available in Mercy's markets. We are really looking forward to improving access to clinical care by bringing this new experience to St. Louis, Springfield, Oklahoma City, Northwest Arkansas and beyond."

Mercy has grown to 44 acute care and specialty hospitals with over 40,000 co-workers, and a multispecialty physician group with more than 2,000 physicians. Mercy has a long history of care innovation and was among the first organizations in the U.S. to have a comprehensive, integrated electronic health record. In addition, Mercy was named a "Most Wired" health care organization by the American Hospital Association in 2017 for the 14^th time since 1999 and has created a nationally recognized Virtual Care Center.

"Our partnership with GoHealth Urgent Care will help fulfill our mission to transform health in our communities," said Lynn Britton, Mercy's CEO. "We are dedicated to delivering integrated, consumer-focused care through innovative models that are convenient to where our patients live, work and play. This joint venture further demonstrates Mercy's leadership and focus on providing quality outcomes for the millions of patients who have entrusted us with their care."

GoHealth Urgent Care continues to rapidly expand its footprint across the U.S. The urgent care provider has grown more than 10-fold since the beginning of 2015. GoHealth Urgent Care will continue to focus on patient-centered care and growth in 2018, as the company is poised to spearhead new groundbreaking health care initiatives and offerings for customers in existing markets, including New York, San Francisco, Portland and Hartford, as well as each of its new Midwest markets together with Mercy.

About GoHealth Urgent Care
GoHealth Urgent Care is one of the country's fastest-growing and largest urgent care providers. At GoHealth Urgent Care, we place the needs of our patients first?by providing an effortless patient experience, a welcoming culture of care and seamless integration with market-leading health systems and our communities. GoHealth Urgent Care operates 80 urgent care centers in the New York and Portland, Oregon, metropolitan areas, the San Francisco Bay Area and Hartford, Connecticut, and will soon open urgent care centers in multiple Midwest markets. GoHealth Urgent Care's current partners include health systems that are at the forefront of care delivery innovation, including Northwell Health, New York's largest health system, Legacy Health, the largest nonprofit, locally owned health system in the Portland-Vancouver area, Dignity Health, one of the nation's largest health care systems, headquartered in San Francisco, Hartford HealthCare, Connecticut's most comprehensive health care network, and now Mercy, one of the Midwest's largest, most integrated and innovative health systems. GoHealth Urgent Care is a d/b/a of Access Clinical Partners, LLC, a TPG Growth portfolio company. TPG Growth is the middle market and growth equity investment platform of TPG, which has over $70 billion of assets under management. To learn more, please visit www.gohealthUC.com.

About Mercy
Mercy, named one of the top five large U.S. health systems in 2017 by Truven, an IBM Watson Health company, serves millions annually. Mercy includes 44 acute care and specialty (heart, children's, orthopedic and rehab) hospitals, more than 700 physician practices and outpatient facilities, 40,000 co-workers and more than 2,000 Mercy Clinic physicians in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. Mercy also has outreach ministries in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. To learn more, please visit www.mercy.net. 

SOURCE GoHealth Urgent Care