Dr. Bruce Irwin opened the first American Family Care® in 1982, making it the first urgent care, family care, and primary care practice in Birmingham, Alabama. As a child, Dr. Irwin frequently watched doctors attend to his father’s medical needs. During frequent trips to the emergency room, Dr. Irwin noticed that many non-emergency patients were taking up time and resources from the ER, making the experience more difficult for themselves and those in need of true life-saving care. It was during this time he came up with his idea for an urgent care network that could attend to the needs of non-emergency patients who were in need of immediate attention.
