Duly Health and Care plans to open a new, 100,000-square-foot clinic in Schaumburg — its largest location so far — following growing pains for the independent doctors’ practice.
The new location will open to patients Aug. 4 and include primary care, specialty care, lab services, imaging, an endoscopy lab for outpatient gastrointestinal procedures, an immediate care center and physical and occupational therapy. It will also focus on cancer care.
About 40 providers will work there to start, and it will have 103 exam rooms, 19 procedure rooms and 13 infusion bays.
“Schaumburg is a big move for us,” said Duly CEO Dan Greenleaf.
Though the facility will be Duly’s biggest to date, it will be one of 13 large multispecialty Duly care centers scattered mostly throughout the west and southwest suburbs.
It’s part of a resurgence in growth after a tumultuous time for Duly, which describes itself as the largest independent multispecialty physician practice in the Midwest. Duly has more than 950 doctors, 670 advanced practice providers such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants, and more than 150 locations. It does not own any hospitals.
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“For a period of time, for whatever reason … the growth plans kind of stalled out, and we’re back to growing again, and one example is our Schaumburg facility,” Greenleaf said.
For years, Duly, previously named DuPage Medical Group, was growing at a breakneck pace. It was somewhat unusual in the Chicago area — a large independent doctors’ practice expanding during an era in which doctors have increasingly been leaving private practices to work for groups that are part of large hospital systems.
Doctors have been fleeing to hospital systems for years, lured partially by the promise of less administrative work and more leverage when negotiating with health insurance companies. The percentage of doctors working in private practices dropped from 60.1% to 42.2% between 2012 and 2024, according to the American Medical Association.
Duly provided an alternative for doctors who no longer wanted the burdens of being in small, private practices but also didn’t want to join a hospital system.
Large independent doctors groups and hospital systems can offer the type of scale needed to handle complex issues for doctors such as compliance with regulations or electronic health records systems, said Joshua Gottlieb, an economist and professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy.
“That’s scale that you can achieve without being part of a hospital system,” Gottlieb said of large, independent medical groups.
During the 2010s, Duly grew from a few hundred doctors to more than 700, often by acquiring smaller medical practices in Illinois. By 2021, Duly had more than 900 doctors.
It now has more than 950 physicians, and sees about 1.5 million patients, according to Duly. Duly received a $1.45 billion investment by private equity firm Ares Management in 2017 to help fuel its growth.
Duly, however, hit a slower patch in recent years. In 2019, the practice’s CEO Michael Kasper, who had led the group through a time of rapid expansion, died at the age of 46. What followed were a series of new CEOs — three between Kasper’s death and now.
Duly’s current CEO, Greenleaf, started in 2023 and made dramatic changes.
He replaced 23 of the top 25 people at Duly, Greenleaf said. In 2023, Duly implemented multiple rounds of layoffs, Crain’s Chicago Business reported at the time, though a spokesman for Duly said the company doesn’t characterize those actions, which “addressed duplicative roles and streamlined certain functions,” as layoffs.
Duly “was not performing at the level that, from my perspective, it should have been,” Greenleaf told the Tribune.
Greenleaf also changed the vendor handling Duly’s revenue cycle, worked to improve the patient contact center experience and invested in recruiting and retaining top doctors. Greenleaf has been a CEO at six different organizations, and said he often takes over organizations when their processes or technologies aren’t working well.
“The majority of those things — and there’s still work to do — the majority of those things have been addressed,” Greenleaf said of Duly.
The plan to open the new $56 million facility in Schaumburg was caught up in the upheaval. The center, which is in a former big box store, was supposed to be finished by early 2024. But it was delayed because of labor and supply issues and leadership changes, according to documents filed with the state Health Facilities and Services Review Board.
“We acquired the property shortly after the pandemic and we’ve been sitting on it and waiting for the right time and opportunity to roll out our services there,” said Dr. Paul Merrick, chairman and chief physician executive at Duly.
On a recent day, workers filled the sprawling, one-story building, putting finishing touches on all the spaces within it. The walls have been painted in calming shades of greens and blues, and light pours through skylights in a cavernous area designed to serve as a waiting area for families and patients.
“It’s intended to be all the medical services you could need and want under one roof that is not a hospital,” said Nicolas Dronen, vice president of enterprise, strategy and growth at Duly.
Schaumburg leaders are enthusiastic about the project. According to Duly, many Schaumburg residents now leave the suburb to get care. There is no hospital in Schaumburg, though Ascension St. Alexius and Ascension Alexian Brothers hospitals are in neighboring towns.
Duly is part of an overall expansion of care offerings in Schaumburg in recent years, as the suburb continues to grow. Northwest Community Healthcare, which is now part of Endeavor Health, has an outpatient care center in Schaumburg, and Lurie Children’s Hospital plans to open a 75,000-square-foot outpatient center in Schaumburg in the fall.
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“We’re pretty happy that they’re here,” said Schaumburg Mayor Tom Dailly of Duly. “I think it’s a great location. It’s accessible, fits in well with what’s going on in the area. They really … made it a large facility and not just skimped on it.”
Duly leaders say more growth is on the way. Duly hopes to open “a couple more” large multispecialty centers like the one in Schaumburg over the next few years, Merrick said. Duly leaders expect Duly will acquire another four to eight private practices over the next year, and expect to have added an additional 150 providers by the end of this year.
“Duly’s been really rapidly trying to grow in the last 12 months,” Dronen said.
Duly leaders say their large, independent doctors’ practice is what’s needed in the Chicago area to help rein in health care costs for patients and employers. Duly is able to provide many of the same services as hospitals but at a far lower cost, Greenleaf said.
A recent analysis commissioned by Duly and conducted by Avalere Health found that annual Medicare spending in 2023 for beneficiaries cared for by Duly physicians was nearly $8,000 lower on average than for beneficiaries who saw hospital-affiliated physicians.
“The independent medical group practice is a forgotten necessity to the health care ecosystem,” Merrick said.