Urgent Care for Children is a Birmingham-based health care company that is expanding outside of Alabama.

The recent expansion of two Birmingham-based urgent care clinics signals that the Birmingham region, long known as an epicenter for health care, continues to be a launchpad for growing health care companies.

MainStreet Family Care, founded in 2015, will expand its operations into three locations in Georgia over the coming months, and Urgent Care for Children, founded in 2017, will open two Tennessee locations this fall.

These represent the first out-of-state expansions for both companies, with both citing the increasing need for a bridge between patients’ primary care physicians and the emergency room as the reason behind their success.

“We realized there was a need for after hours and weekend care to support primary care pediatricians,” said Bannon Thorpe, CEO of Urgent Care for Children. “It’s better to have us around where you can go to a walk-in urgent care location and see a pediatric specialist rather than have to go to the general emergency room with a little child.”

Urgent care clinics are growing in popularity both across the country and in Birmingham, said Jon Nugent, vice president of innovation and technology at the Birmingham Business Alliance (BBA), and Birmingham is producing companies to help meet that need.

“Urgent care facilities are incredibly valuable to the continuum of care, creating a bridge between primary care providers and the emergency room,” Nugent said. “Birmingham is fortunate to be the home to several of the leading urgent care providers in the country, dedicated to convenience and quality of care. In the current environment, many analysts expect urgent care to continue to grow, expanding into more communities for at least the next several years.”

Three years into operations, by the end of 2020 Urgent Care for Children will have nine locations – seven across Alabama, including three in the Birmingham metro, and one in Collierville, Tennessee, just outside of Memphis, and one in Chattanooga.

The company, which employs 75, said the Tennessee expansion was the first of many out-of-state announcements planned for across the Southeast.

Within the coming months, MainStreet Family Care – which primarily serves rural areas – will open three locations in Georgia, first in Bainbridge and then in Cairo and Fitzgerald. Additionally, the pediatric arm of the company, KidsStreet Urgent Care, will open its third location in Alabama in November, expanding to Montgomery.

The company, which employs 200, said the next phase of its growth was made possible by its new equity partner Trinity Hunt Partners, a firm that aligned with MainStreet to provide significant investment to fuel its aggressively-planned growth over the coming years.

MainStreet, which spun out of Innovation Depot, credits local Birmingham investors and the Alabama Futures Fund for the capital to support its plans to build about 15 clinics per year for the next three to four years, including plans to move into the Florida and South Carolina markets soon, said CEO Sam Eskildsen. By the end of March 2021, MainStreet will have either built or be in the process of building a total of 22 clinics, he said.

Thorpe said, though his company is expanding out-of-state, Birmingham will continue to serve as a solid backbone for his business.

“Birmingham is just such a good market right now for startups and new businesses,” he said. “People want to come here, and it’s just such a ripe location right now for growing business. There is so much potential for growth here.”

Birmingham is home to 75 health care companies, and the industry directly employs more than 59,000 in the region. The industry funneled $4.7 billion into Birmingham in 2019.

And both MainStreet and Urgent Care for Children represent Birmingham’s commitment to and prowess in the health care sector, said Emily Jerkins, director of research at the BBA.

“The growth of these two urgent care startups headquartered in Birmingham add to the region’s growing health care services industry, which is anchored by companies like Encompass Health, American Family Care and UAB,” Jerkins said. “As evidenced by these two expansions, the Birmingham region has the quality and depth of talent and funding needed to support the growth of health care service companies.”

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