The Emerus Advantage: How Its Smallformat Hospital Model Succeeds

Healthcare is a continually evolving industry, and these times are no different. With an expeditious push toward value-based care, our partners and health systems across the country are looking for options to create true and lasting values for their stakeholders in a capital-efficient way – without losing their opportunity to gain and attract new market-share growth.

Our distinct and differentiated business model brings a broader suite of hospital and outpatient medical services into neighborhoods. This distributed approach to the provision of care offers our health system partners greater reach and impact, benefitting the communities they serve. Emerus works to grow our partner’s brand, reputation, and revenue through our innovative and single focus on integrating neighborhood hospitals into our partners’ care continuum. We’re able to do this by creating value for patients, payors, and partners. How?

• Identifying service gaps across regional trade areas. By building full-service, small-format hospitals in these areas, we expand our partners’ footprint at a fraction of the cost of constructing and operating a “big-box” hospital, and we bring high-quality healthcare to thousands of people in underserved areas.

• Delivering neighborhood hospitals that are capital-efficient and conveniently close to where patients live, with door-to-doc times averaging under 10 minutes and door-to-discharge times under 75 minutes.

• Creating a “health plex” environment of fully licensed, hospital-anchored facilities that offer a broad range of evolving coordinated care options, in conjunction with its partners. These include an emergency room, primary care, surgery, imaging, pediatrics, and other healthcare services in the communities where patients work, live, and play.

• Our joint venture, unified governance approach helps health systems deliver comprehensive care with high-quality neighborhood extensions of their leading hospital.

• By leveraging the neighborhood hospital approach for acute care, health systems can better focus on the most complex, highest-acuity care.

Geographic reach, clinical expansion, capital efficiency, and enhanced bed-board management are all clear benefits of the small-format hospital strategy. These are the tenants that guide everything we do. Leading health systems are facing significant financial constraints, increasing pressure to grow revenue, brand loyalty, and improve the consumer experience. Our right-fit facility model and delivery of compassionate care have created patient loyalty, strong patient experiences and a new front door to our partner’s care delivery continuum in areas previously untapped.

Health systems are challenged to maintain effective cost controls while continuing to deliver high-quality care. Providers are navigating this dual strategic mandate by deploying Emerus’ small-format neighborhood hospitals. Emerus became a disrupter in the healthcare industry by pioneering this innovative concept, initially known as micro-hospitals. 

It has proven so successful, in 2018, The Wall Street Journal identified the Emerus model of healthcare as “what the hospitals of the future look like.”

Emerus partners with like-minded health systems, including Ascension Health, Allegheny Health Network, Baptist Health System, Baylor Scott & White, Dignity Health, The Hospitals of Providence, INTEGRIS Health, Mon Health, and MultiCare. Joint venture agreements with Emerus provide health systems with additional inpatient and ED access points. This helps optimize their health system network and transfer strategies, triaging patients to the right site for the right care, while also advancing their growth and market expansions at lower capital and operational costs.

Those engaged with Emerus’ hospital model have provided positive feedback. “We’ve validated the model, so now we’re looking to expand. If Emerus feels that we could successfully launch in one of our other states, we are ready to give the green light.”— Current Health System Partner.

“Small-format hospitals are inherently more fluid and efficient. You see less critical patients resulting in a lower cost of care and more cost savings.”— Provider Reimbursement Manager, UHC.

Founded by six emergency physicians in 2006, it took over a decade for Emerus to surpass one million patients treated. As it expanded to new markets, and with a proven concept to market, Emerus grew rapidly. In 2020, Emerus surpassed two million patients treated. At the close of 2022, its accelerated growth allowed the company to hit a new milestone of three million patients treated. Why is this significant? In the last 15 years, there is no other company in the healthcare industry that has surpassed even one million patients treated, while successfully introducing a solution for population-based health management and value-based care.

In the past five years, Emerus has built a world-class leadership team, developed strong capabilities across the organization, provided high-quality care and patient experience, grown its footprint to over 40 locations, and delivered tremendous value to its health system partners.

Emerus offers high-quality and safe elective, non-elective, and emergent surgical care based on the community’s needs and its partnered health system’s strategic plan. Its joint-venture partners provide the highest quality of patient care, in part because they are invested in Emerus facilities and its service model. Emerus provides the framework and support they require for peak performance. This is the Emerus Advantage.