Jon Belsher

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Jon Belsher is a medical professional and a member of the founding executive team of MedSpring Urgent Care. After serving in the Arizona Air National Guard, he worked for a number of non-profits prior to MedSpring. MedSpring was founded in Texas in 2011, when urgent care centers began to grow dramatically in their numbers in the United States. Since then, Belsher has helped expand MedSpring to become one of the largest urgent care providers in the United States.

Belsher formerly served as the Chief Medical Officer for MedSpring.

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Early life

Belsher served as Chief of Aerospace Medicine for the Arizona Air National Guard's 162nd Fighter Wing. He attained the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and was second-in-command of the medical group of the largest Air National Guard in the United States.

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Career

In 2011, Belsher was a founding executive team member of MedSpring Urgent Care. He and other entrepreneurs helped facilitate a healthcare revolution in the United States, where people opted to visit more affordable urgent care centers instead of hospital emergency rooms.

MedSpring was founded in the state of Texas. MedSpring located their urgent care clinics in areas with high foot and vehicular traffic, such as shopping centers and busy residential areas. MedSpring and similar retail health care providers market themselves as more cost effective and time efficient alternatives to hospital emergency rooms. The clinics provide basic medical services, such as sutures, x-rays and treatment of allergic reactions.

Belsher from 2011 onwards was a major part of Texas' boom in urgent care clinics, with the rapid expansion of the MedSpring brand. In cities such as Austin, they had opened three clinics by 2012. During 2012, Belsher announced the expansion in Texas cities would continue, with the launch of two more clinics in Austin and two more in Houston.

In 2013, Belsher was interviewed by KPRC following the expansion of the MedSpring brand and the use of urgent care clinics in the state of Texas. KPRC reported that MedSpring and other similar clinics had doubled the number of urgent care centers nationally in the United States. During an interview Belsher stated that clinics such as MedSpring were more cost effective in the long run as "what's great about a center like MedSpring is we do not charge a facility fee and that facility fee can be an extra cost to a family when they visit an emergency room."

By 2014, urgent care clinics had begun to divert patients away from hospitals. The fall in insurance-covered patients meant that hospitals had a higher percentage of uninsured emergency patients, which made them less profitable. While some were critical of urgent care clinics and said they were to blame, in an interview with the New York Times, Belsher stated, "emergency rooms have been great for the country in providing emergency care, but obviously most of us aren't dealing with true emergencies on a daily basis." The Washington Post referred to the urgent care expansion as a gold rush. MedSpring was acquired by Fresenius in late 2014, for an undisclosed amount.

In more recent years, Belsher has managed the expansion of MedSpring from Texas into other states. In 2015, Belsher and MedSpring expanded to Chicago, Illinois, before opening centers in other cities in the state.

MedSpring has since become one of the largest national providers in the urgent care market, expanding most recently into the northeast, following a partnership with Partners HealthCare.

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See also

• Urgent care

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References

Source of article : Wikipedia