120 Million Americans Lack Adequate Healthcare Access — OnMed Report Calls for Bringing Care Where People Live, Work and Learn

OnMed cites an estimated 120 million Americans with inadequate healthcare access; across six specialties in 15 major U.S. metropolitan areas, new patients wait an average of 31 days for appointments, up 19% since 2022. Its report, The Access Gap, describes the issue and presents OnMed CareStation as a clinician-led treatment option for communities, health systems, workplaces and campuses.

Analysis

The investable question is not the size of unmet need; it is whether an access point can turn that need into repeatable, reimbursable care at acceptable clinician and operating cost. A CareStation could complement health systems by routing patients into diagnostics, follow-up, or specialist care, so its value may be as a patient-acquisition channel rather than a standalone clinic. Conversely, if visits are episodic, poorly reimbursed, or require substantial on-site staffing, access statistics will not translate into attractive unit economics.

Potential displacement is concentrated in low-acuity visits served by retail clinics, urgent care, and virtual-care providers such as CVS MinuteClinic, Walgreens, and Teladoc Health. But substitution is not automatic: station-based care could expand utilization or refer higher-acuity cases to local providers, benefiting health systems rather than simply taking share. The release is promotional evidence of a need, not independent evidence of deployment scale, clinical outcomes, reimbursement, or profitability.

Near term, the report alone is not a meaningful catalyst for public equities. Over 1–3 months, watch for named health-system or employer deployments and disclosed utilization. Over 6–18 months, the thesis depends on repeat use, payer coverage, clinical quality, and cost per encounter. Regulatory variation in scope of practice and clinician availability could constrain scaling. No compelling directional trade without operating data.

Key Decisions for Investors

• No trade on the report alone; do not treat the access-gap estimate as a revenue forecast for OnMed or public telehealth providers.
• Put OnMed and adjacent care-delivery models on an evidence watchlist. Require deployment counts, visits per station, repeat-use rates, payer mix/reimbursement, staffing cost, referral conversion, and clinical outcomes before underwriting scale.
• For CVS, Walgreens, and Teladoc Health, monitor whether station-based models win low-acuity volume or instead create referral and utilization growth for incumbent care networks; the article does not establish either outcome.
• Falsify a scaling thesis if announced deployments fail to produce sustained utilization or if reimbursement and staffing economics remain unattractive; strengthen it only with independently verifiable multi-site operating results and repeatable payer or health-system contracts.