Disrupting Medicine Through Entrepreneurship

EMRA*Cast Host Shreyans Sanghvi, DO, takes a deep dive on the entrepreneurial journey with Rich Park, MD (CityMD4All). Early in his emergency medicine career, Dr. Park turned an eye toward the patient experience; in 2007 he embarked on an entrepreneurial journey that led to a chain of urgent care centers now valued at more than $1.2 billion.

Overview
Each year hundreds of thousands of Americans will spend hours in a stuffy, overcrowded, busy emergency waiting room as they seek care for themselves or their family members. But since its inception in the 1960s, the emergency department experience has hardly changed or improved to benefit the patient. So how do we transform the timely, costly, and inefficient experience that is seeking care in the emergency department?

Richard Park, MD, discusses lessons he’s learned along the way dedicating his life to improving the patient care experience, growing an urgent care empire valued at more than $1.2 billion, and exploring the onus of entrepreneurship as a physician.

CityMD: A Summit Health Company is a chain of urgent care centers with 23 locations in New Jersey and 124 locations in New York (and counting). The idea grew from a small core of emergency physicians who scaled their concept and opened the first CityMD in 2010. In 2019, CityMD merged with Summit Medical Group in New Jersey, a multispecialty medical group.

Now a member of the group’s board of directors, Dr. Park reflects on what it takes to venture into the choppy waters of healthcare business.