To say that CityMD, an urgent care practice based in New York City, has grown rapidly is an understatement. From an initial four practices in 2010 to more than 169 in 2024, the company has followed a unique growth path. What’s the secret to their success? The answer lies in their consumer-centric philosophy…with some help from analytics.
CityMD’s Approach
CityMD was founded by a group of ER physicians focused on two things: offering an exceptional patient experience and allowing doctors to practice medicine effectively and efficiently. “We started a practice with the philosophy that patient care can be done better,” explained Nedal Shami, co-founder and former chief growth officer at CityMD.
CityMD believes a key to improving the patient experience is embracing consumerism. As Shami explained, becoming a consumer-centric retail healthcare brand means that you must, “build around the customer, not around your ideas of how you want to practice medicine or deliver care. Where does the customer live? How is he or she going to interact with your brand or service?”
Buxton’s Solution
Buxton developed patient profiles to help CityMD better understand who their patients are as consumers and where current and potential patients are located. Buxton also developed a site selection model and used it to conduct a potential analysis to identify CityMD’s best growth opportunities. The profile, model and analysis results were deployed to SCOUT, a geospatial application in the Buxton Platform, so CityMD could analyze markets on demand.
“Today, we have a platform that allows us to not only search, which is interesting, but also validate,” remarked Shami. “There are certain markets that we know, or feel we know, are the right markets, and we can use the tool today to really go with confidence to our steering committees and our boards and say, ‘This is our growth strategy. This is our plan. And here’s the data to support it.’ Buxton is an integral part of validating and supporting that.”
Another important benefit of the Buxton solution is the ability to glean insights from internal datasets.
“CityMD, as a healthcare company, has a plethora of data that is really difficult to sort through. What matters? What doesn’t matter? Buxton as a partner was instrumental in helping us not only sort through our internal data, but also bringing us external data points to help both validate some of our assumptions and discover new ones that we weren’t fully aware of,” noted Shami.
Continuing the Partnership
CityMD appreciates both the services and the staff at Buxton. As a people-first brand, CityMD looks for great people in their vendors, too, and has been impressed with their Buxton support team. Buxton’s combination of consultative support and analytics makes it a unique option for healthcare providers.
“I would tell you that the technology is great, but the people are even better,” concluded Shami. “If you’re looking for a partner, you choose Buxton.”