HCA Healthcare’s outpatient strategy runs on two engine.: HCA Surgery Ventures, its ASC company, and years of aggressive urgent care buying. That second engine just kicked into a higher gear.
On Aug. 1, the Nashville, Tenn.-based system acquired Texas MedClinic, a 40-center network, splitting it between two Texas partnerships. Methodist Healthcare — HCA’s 50-50 co-ownership with Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, which also runs 11 hospitals and 10 freestanding emergency departments — picked up 18 locations, growing to 35 total. St. David’s HealthCare, HCA’s partnership with St. David’s Foundation and Georgetown Health Foundation, took the other 14, expanding to 39 clinics that will be rebranded St. David’s CareNow Urgent Care.
“By bringing these locations into the Methodist Healthcare family, we’re creating a more connected healthcare experience while ensuring patients have access to the care they need, close to home,” Dan Miller, Methodist Healthcare’s president and CEO, said in a release. David Huffstutler, St. David’s president and CEO, said the deal “significantly expands the St. David’s CareNow footprint into new Central Texas communities, including Burnet, Liberty Hill, Jarrell, Lockhart and Dripping Springs.”
It’s the latest in a run of 2026 deals. HCA bought 17 Urgent Care Group clinics in the Carolinas on June 2, and the South Carolina locations became the state’s first HCA CareNow clinics, while the North Carolina sites kept the Medac name. In February, Medical City Healthcare, an HCA subsidiary, acquired 13 CommunityMed centers across North Texas, pushing CareNow’s Texas presence past 95 sites and HCA’s national urgent care count above 340.
The pattern predates this year: 41 FastMed centers in Texas in 2023, the 59-site MD Now network in Florida in 2022, and Virginia’s 12-location BetterMed shortly after.
“It also connects MD Now patients to a comprehensive statewide network of care, including acute care and specialty services should they be needed,” HCA CEO Sam Hazen said of the Florida deal at the time.
For HCA, urgent care isn’t the destination, it’s the front door. Health systems increasingly treat these clinics as both a competitive shield and a funnel into higher-margin specialty and inpatient care, and HCA has leaned into that model harder than most.
On the company’s Jan. 27 earnings call, Mr. Hazen said HCA added roughly 100 outpatient facilities in 2025 and has “significant capital in the pipeline” for 2026 and 2027. Outpatient revenue grew as a share of total revenue in the fourth quarter of 2025, driven by outpatient sites expanding faster than the hospital count.
“The combination of that, we think, is important to our overall network resiliency,” he said. “By that we mean creating an environment where patients have easier access into the HCA Healthcare system, and our payers actually have better price points for their members.”
HCA now runs roughly 2,400 outpatient sites and 190 hospitals across 20 states. Texas remains the epicenter, but the Carolinas, Florida and Virginia deals make clear the strategy isn’t confined to one state.
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