Our Story

AFC's story is one of following your dreams and overcoming incredible adversity. Our founder, Dr. Bruce Irwin, had an early and intense exposure to health care after a tragic train accident left his father wheelchair-bound. Witnessing the care and compassion his father received while recovering from the accident inspired the young man to one day become a doctor. With his father retrained as a shoe repairman, Bruce Irwin and his five sisters grew up in extreme poverty — but the young man never wavered from his goal of becoming a doctor.

After graduating from medical school, Dr. Irwin experienced firsthand the overcrowding of emergency rooms and saw the difficulty working people had accessing health care around their schedules. Knowing there had to be a better way, he envisioned a new kind of health care — with a facility equipped and staffed like an ER, and able to provide routine care from the consumer's point of view. This simple idea came to fruition in 1982 when the first American Family Care location opened in Birmingham, Alabama. Located close to where patients lived, worked, and shopped, it offered extended hours, 7 days a week. Best of all, it provided access on a walk-in basis, so patients could get the right care, right when they needed it.

Back then — in a world where politicians, academicians, and insurance companies drove the world of medicine — the idea of patient-centered health care was a radical one. But the idea took off, and AFC began building clinics in neighborhoods all over. Today, with hundreds of clinics across the U.S. caring for millions of patients each year, AFC is the nation's leading provider of urgent care, accessible primary care, and occupational medicine. Best of all, our clinics are independently owned and operated by people committed to your community.