Banner Health has acquired 32 urgent-care facilities in the Phoenix and Tucson metro areas. The state’s largest private employer plans to add even more urgent-care facilities by the end of 2017.

Banner completed the acquisition of the Urgent Care Extra facilities on Tuesday after working on the deal for the past several months. Now it’s in the process of renaming them to Banner Urgent Care. 

"We have some rapid growth plans," said Joan Thiel of Banner Health. "By the end of next year, we anticipate we’ll have as many as 50, so some sites have already been designated and construction is under way so we will add new staff as we grow the operation."

As part of the acquisition, more than 400 employees joined Banner from Urgent Care Extra. Thiel says they plan to hire several hundred more employees when they open the additional urgent care facilities.

Although Banner is relatively new to the urgent-care market, with this deal, that’s about to change, according to Thiel.

"We have a couple of urgent-care centers in Colorado and one in Casa Grande, but this is a much broader entry into the market," she says. "We’ve seen the need for it, and we want to meet the needs of our customers."