4 Ideas to Keep in Mind When Selecting a Location for Your Medical Franchise

By: Christine Dura

The medical franchise industry is booming and it seems that there’s a new location that pops up every day. This makes selecting a location for your medical franchise crucial to its success. Beyond being in a convenient and popular spot, you want to make sure that wherever you select serves not only your staff but the community at large as well. Here are some things to keep in mind when choosing where to open your medical franchise location.

Look Outside Your Comfort Zone

Many people opt to open their medical franchise in their hometown or very close to it, however this could be a very poor location to select. Just because it’s close to home, doesn’t mean that your medical franchise will succeed. If you look outside your comfort zone, you could discover a community within 30 miles or so that needs an urgent care center or other healthcare franchise. This area would allow your business to thrive and be within commuting distance. In addition, should you elect to option a second location in the future, you’ll be able to evaluate where it would succeed in relation to your first.

Saturation

Healthcare franchises are one of the most popular businesses to open today. As a result, finding the perfect location, that isn’t already served by the type of medical franchise you’re opening, is crucial. If you attempt to break into a community that already has adequate care through a healthcare franchise, you risk failure. As an example, if you’re planning on opening an urgent care facility, you wouldn’t want to select a community that is already served by one. An established urgent care in the community will not be happy to see competition moving in. As a result, they could potentially hamper your efforts to creating a successful business. It isn’t enough to just deliver the best in medical care if you’re working within a saturated market.

Unsupportive

While selecting a community that’s out of your comfort zone is a good rule of thumb to follow, you must be cautious about the area you end up in. Settling on a community in decline as a place to open your medical franchise can be a huge mistake. While finding a community that has a healthcare need is ideal, setting up shop in a place that can’t support your business is a recipe for failure. Everyone in this country needs convenient and affordable healthcare and even small communities can support a medical franchise. However, if a community is in decline – meaning population is dwindling, new businesses aren’t opening, and current businesses are closing – it might not be a great bet to set up shop there.

Residential Areas

Your goal as a medical franchise is to cater to the residents of the community you operate in, but opening a location in a purely residential area might not be a great idea. While you can certainly succeed in a residential area, an ideal location for your medical franchise is somewhere that’s just next to a residential area on the edge of an industrial/business zone. This type of location offers visibility to those who are venturing out of their own residential areas – maybe across town or beyond. As a bonus, you’ll be visible to corporations who may be interested in patronizing your services.

OrthoNOW is the first and only Orthopedic franchise. Contact Christine Dura at Christine@orthonowcare.com for more information about franchise opportunities.

Christine has over 25 years of quantifiable executive management and franchise related leadership experience within the US and internationally with notable franchise startups in the service, technology, retail, food, health and wellness, financial service, medical care, technology and professional services.   As a Senior Franchise Executive and Entrepreneur, Ms. Dura has been both an individual contributor and has successfully led world-class teams.

Ms. Dura excels at partnering with all core business operations to significantly increase the company’s foot print, expand market share, and generate sustainable revenue and EBIT gains.  Her proven successes, combined with her Master Degree in Training and Development, have shaped Ms. Dura’s uncanny ability to identify opportunities, build mutually rewarding partnerships and produce remarkable results. 

In addition, as a four-time Master and Unit Franchise Owner, Ms. Dura is in a very unique position to leverage her experiences and reputation at all levels in franchising along with her vast personal and professional investor network to drive immediate and long term results.   As OrthoNOW’s Chief Development Officer her role is to identify critical gaps in franchise growth and implement strategies to drive results. Her unique background allows her to leverage past experiences and solid reputation to spearhead OrthoNOW’s national expansion plans.