GoHealth Urgent Care CEO sees big opportunities for growth

With more patients turning to urgent care for illnesses and injuries, Todd Latz sees plenty of opportunities for growth.

Todd Latz, the CEO of GoHealth Urgent Care, talks about the growth of the company and the urgent care model in the latest episode of Healthy Bottom Line, a podcast from Chief Healthcare Executive®.

Latz is the CEO of GoUrgent Health Care, which operates nearly 400 urgent care locations around the country. He talked about the company and the urgent care model in the latest episode of Healthy Bottom Line, a podcast from Chief Healthcare Executive®.

“We continue to see immense opportunity for growth,” Latz says.

GoHealth has recently partnered with UPMC in a joint venture to operate 81 urgent care locations in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

The company also has forged partnerships with 13 health systems, including Henry Ford Health, Northwell Health, Novant Health and UCSF Health.

GoHealth has also expanded its work with Hartford HealthCare in Connecticut.

“We started with a sizable partnership, but over the past 18 months, even in a more mature partnership, we found many opportunities for future growth, both in terms of service expansion, but just pure geographic growth and opportunity,” Latz says.

GoHealth operates in 17 states in joint ventures with health systems. He talks about the keys in developing successful partnerships.

“The first piece is finding a like-minded health system partner that sees the world the way we do, wants to be consumer-oriented, is looking to get patients into a lower cost site of care, with high quality not being sacrificed in that process,” he says. “And then we think about the geography and that community access, the need state, the competitive landscape.”

The partnership with UPMC, its newest relationship, represented an alignment of those factors, he says.

“One of the beauties of our partner there is, it's a very large provider system … It's also a huge health plan in that market as well. And so it allows you to think about value-based care and other things. And so really a unique opportunity for us to partner with a high quality institution, real access needs in the market,” Latz says.

GoHealth operates in markets ranging from California to West Virginia, but the company doesn’t take a “cookie cutter” approach in each region. “There are nuances in each market that make it unique,” he says.

In an area with fewer healthcare providers, Latz says, “That might mean different hours or staying open longer to meet the need. It might mean that you see a different mix of not just episodic injury and illness, but you have to lean in more on a primary care sort of management side of it.”

With changes in Medicaid programs expected in the coming years, hospitals and health systems may be looking to direct more patients into urgent care settings. Hospital leaders say they expect to see millions of patients losing Medicaid coverage, which could mean more people turning to emergency care for basic health needs.

Health systems may be looking to divert more patients into urgent care settings to alleviate some of the crowding in emergency rooms. Latz expects to see more demand for urgent care.

“It's going to put even more pressure on the system, health systems and payers and everyone else involved in it, to get patients into the right site of care and to lower the cost in doing that,” he says. “So if it is not a life-threatening event, then that patient really shouldn't be in the emergency department, and urgent or on demand care is absolutely the answer for that.”

“We see a huge opportunity to help support the communities and our health system partners there,” he says.

Latz has led GoHealth for 10 years, but he has experience outside the healthcare industry. He began his career as an attorney, and he jokes, “I’ve been in recovery for a long time.”

He talks about the “beautiful complexity” of the healthcare industry.

“There's so much opportunity,” Latz says. “Many would say that the healthcare system we live with today is broken in many respects, but it also creates an immense amount of opportunity.”

Check out the full conversation in our podcast. You can subscribe to Healthy Bottom Line wherever you get your podcasts.