Whatever the Congress decides to do about the new health care law, health care remains one of the growth industries in the country. In fact, it's become a franchise industry, a marriage between medicine and business.
One of those franchises is located in Santee, its called Doctor's Express. Its an Urgent Care franchise delivering non-life threatening treatment after doctor's hours, and you see a doctor in less than 20-minutes.
This franchise, which opened its doors last November, is one of 26 Urgent Care Centers across the country with hopes of expanding to 3,000 centers.
The clinic treats all types of non-life threatening problems, including stitches, broken bones, infections, you name it. They have x-rays, and even an in house pharmacy, and they do it for less.
The cost for a typical emergency room visit will range between 6-and 800-dollars whereas a typical visit in an Urgent Care setting will be between 120-dollars and 250-dollars.
Still a bit more expensive than a visit to the doctor's office but these clinics offer treatment when doctor's offices, and other clinic's are closed, in the evening and on weekends.
As a business these franchise clinics do fill a niche, including accepting medicare patients, but they do not accept medi-cal patients who's numbers will grow into the millions when the health care law takes affect in 2014.
Bottom line: this is a business that's likely to grow no matter what Congress does but their appearance on the scene does not alleviate the big health care problem. Some of which are already upside down with their finances.
The county will soon get another Doctor's Express franchise which will open soon in Oceanside.
