SBA 504 Urgent Care Feasibility Study

The highest cancellation floor in 504

Only 37 urgent care loans went through SBA's 504 program over FY2017 to FY2026, worth $54.5 million, yet the record stands apart on cancellation and on size. Take cancellation first. Among urgent care approvals made in FY2017 to FY2024, 29.0% were cancelled at the floor, the highest of any 504 class we publish, and the ceiling is the same 29.0%, so no approval from those years is still pending: the figure is final. The 7(a) urgent care record cancels far less. Size comes next: the median 504 urgent care loan is $1.4 million, well above the class median across both SBA programs and distinct from the 504 all-class median too, and half of the loans fall between $722,000 and $1.9 million.

A mixed class and a thin lender list

Part of the explanation may sit in the coding. Urgent care, ambulatory surgery and freestanding emergency centers share one industry code, so this record mixes walk-in clinics with surgery and emergency facilities that cost far more to build and license; the two topics cannot be separated in SBA's files. No lender has many of these loans. California has 12 loans, Florida 5, Nevada and Texas 4 each, and New York 3. Franchised clinics account for 2.7%. No urgent care charge-off rate is printed, because the cohort window holds under 30 funded loans, too few to support one.

What an urgent care study must answer

With the highest cancellation floor in the 504 record, an urgent care borrower needs the study to find the weak point before approval, not after. It should first establish what kind of facility this is, since a walk-in clinic, a surgery center and a freestanding emergency department carry very different costs, licenses and payer rules. Demand means the population within a short drive, competing urgent care, hospital emergency departments and retail clinics, and the payer mix across commercial insurance, Medicare and Medicaid. Cost covers construction, imaging and lab equipment, and any certificate of need or state license. Both 504 payments must stay covered through a patient volume ramp and at lower reimbursement. The appraisal will treat a medical building as re-lettable to other providers only if it is built that way, so the study should show its value to another medical tenant.