DENVER (The New York Times News Service) -- Christopher Prior practiced medicine in Littleton, Colorado Springs and the army before deciding he wanted more freedom in providing care.

So instead of starting his own practice, he turned to a business model that looks more like a McDonald's than a mom-and-pop sandwich shop.

Doctors Express of Towson, Md., takes a novel approach to urgent care, using franchises to do for shots and stitches what Supercuts tries to do for haircuts. By letting a national business staff handle billing, records and many of the clinic's capital expenses, Prior said he has more time to care for patients.

"I did take a pay cut to do this, but I also have more control over the quality of the product I deliver," Prior said. "I'd rather do the work than sign my name to something."

Prior opened Doctor Express' first Colorado location last month in the Denver suburb of Centennial. The clinic has seen moderate business offering everything from X-rays to sports physicals -- almost any service provided by a primary care physician, and then some.

Almost everything a patient sees, starting with the purple banners fluttering outside, is standardized by Doctors Express.

Prior has done some marketing of his own at hotels because the company hopes to grab traveling patients who will recognize a national brand.

"If you go to any of those hotels, the only other option they really have is the emergency room, because they're not near their primary care doctors," Prior said. "So we fill that niche."

As waiting times for primary care doctors get longer, the new clinic is betting patients will pay more to see a doctor immediately, especially if their insurance covers much of the cost.

"We are seeing fewer and fewer primary care physicians and less availability to get in there and get an appointment," said Ateev Mehrotra, a health-policy researcher with the RAND Corp. in Pittsburgh. "That's why there is this increasing demand for urgent care clinics."

Doctors Express plans to open more clinics in the next year, said Peter Ross, a businessman who co-founded the original Maryland clinic with Dr. Scott Burger in 2006. The company now has 70 clinics across the country.

Doctors Express takes 6 percent of a clinic's revenues in royalties in exchange for centralized processing of medical records and medical device purchases. The for-profit company also encourages doctors to own a stake in their individual franchises as an incentive.

"That's been some of the driving force behind recruiting those doctors," Ross said. "They also don't have to worry about the business side of the business, which is huge."

Doctors Express is not the only urgent care business in operating independently from an insurance provider. While no one keeps an exact count of such clinics, Mehrotra said they number in the thousands nationally.

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