This month, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Justin Hancock (and Jonathan Bourland!) from Integrity Urgent Care. Evolve has been working with Integrity for about two years now, and what a relationship it has been – we have gotten to watch Integrity grow and open not one but TWO new locations throughout Texas! Check out our interview with below for some insight into Integrity’s day-to-day, and to get to know Justin and Jonathan a little bit better.
Tell me about yourself! How’d you get to where you are working for Integrity?
JH: “That actually goes back a long time. Dr. Dark is our CEO – he’s an ER doc, I met him probably back in 2011 when I started practicing in Waco… He opened 2 urgent cares there in Waco, and we ended up going to the same church. Fast forward to 2013, I was doing family medicine, and I just wanted to look for something different… I ended up getting a spot in working for him at the urgent care, so that started a little more in-depth relationship with him… He found this spot available and wanted to venture out and open up another urgent care… he approached me and asked, “Hey, would you be interested in moving to college station?” and I said, “Well… maybe?” He didn’t tell me what it was entailing…. And when he decided to spill the beans on everything I said, “Well when do you want me to move?””
What have some of the ups and downs of establishing and running Integrity Urgent Care – College Station been?
JH: “We just love coming to work every day – getting to see patients. Being on the owners’ side is fun… we get to choose what we get to incorporate in our daily practice.”
JH: “(There are downs to) running any business - the stress of trying to grow any business from the ground up… We’re kind of getting on the other end of it now, so it’s not as burdensome.”
JB: “There’s downs with any company, but I’d say the hard part… its either feast or famine. From an owners’ standpoint, the burden that you feel as a leader. For the most part… there are a lot more ups and downs.”
Why was continuing Integrity, specifically in College Station, important to you?
JH: “Being an Aggie for sure! I love coming back here. It’s different since I’ve been in school because you get a different perspective, but now that I’m a husband and I have kids, it feels like a hometown I’d love to stay in. It’s important to me to get to come back and share that with our kids...”
SR: “Its growing a lot!”
JH: “Oh heck yeah, and its going to continue to grow which is a blessing for us, getting started when we did…”
What can you attribute Integrity’s growth to?
JH: “There’s a lot there… One, I think it was needed… We have a niche.”
JB: “I think for me it’s really simple - you treat people the way you want to be treated. For us, we’re vested owners, so every person that walks through the door, whether it’s a minor bump or scrape or their finger is falling off… Our slogan is “let our family take care of yours….” We’ve all been on the other side of the bed for various reasons, sometimes its uncomfortable, so no matter why these people walk in the door, we know they’re having a bad day. So, it’s very important to us that we see it from the other side of the bed… It’s as simple as… treating people the way you want to be treated.”
JH: “Something I also added… is that the patient will always see an owner. He and I both worked for places where we got paid per hour… it’s a different perspective, a different mindset, and I feel like the patients will feel that… I feel like that makes a big difference.”
SR: “I feel that is a really unique competitive advantage for you guys because I don’t know of a lot of places where a) I’d even be aware of the fact that I was seeing an owner and b) I think that it really does change the way that you go about patient care.”
Going off of how you found this niche in College Station, how has the influx of stand-alone ER’s affected Integrity?
JH: “I really don’t think it has affected us too much… as far as patients go, we really are continuing to grow because…. They (patients) might try them once, and obviously they’ll get good care, but the amount of money it costs them, they feel that afterwards… I feel that the urgent care will always be where it’s at because… we are a cheaper option than the ER’s… and here at integrity we provide the same amount of care. We’re blessed that we have a little more available to us and can provide that higher acuity of care. Plus, we’re ER trained… I think we’re competitive to the ER in that sense.”
What do the next few years look like for Integrity?
JH: “Dr. Dark is aggressive and he’s a dreamer, so he wants to continue to grow… He has other ideas he wants to continue. As far as Johnathan and I here, I’d love to see where we don’t take such a big dip in the summer and our numbers continue to climb and stay steady… the goal would be to grow with the population. That would be amazing. If we could have two providers, three nurses on every shift, that would be so fun. I’d love to get more involved in the community… I’d love for everyone to know who we are and at least where we can be found.”
JB: “…I would say our goal is to be the leading urgent care in the area… we want to stay busy. We never want to become the clinic where you just pick a number and get in line. We want people to come in and say “How’s Justin? How’s Johnathan?” We have that rapport with most of our patients, where they walk in, we talk to them about school, we spend time with them, and we don’t ever want to lose that.”
JH: “We want to be relational.”
JB: “Yeah! In terms of expansion, if that means we need to add more nurse practioners or PA’s or doctors or staff, we’ll grow with the necessity of the volume, whatever it takes to do that… that formula seems to be working.”
JB: “- without losing the one-on-one time with the patients, because I enjoy talking to patients, (which) gets me in trouble sometimes, because I talk a little too much, but patients enjoy that too!... we want to stay relational, that’s important.”