November 1 is National Direct Primary Care Day. It was first celebrated in 2025 to recognize independent, patient-centered practices that work directly with their patients instead of through insurance networks. The date isn’t random: it’s the first day of open enrollment, when a lot of people are already rethinking their healthcare. The day is a reminder that there’s more than one way to get primary care.
I spent years practicing inside the traditional insurance system. Here’s some of what I saw:
Someone I know was recently billed more than $3,000 at a local hospital for a set of labs I could likely have ordered for under $100.
My patients routinely waited three weeks to see me with questions I could have answered in a text message.
A 20-minute appointment often meant 10 minutes getting roomed and about 10 minutes face to face with me.
When primary care was booked up, patients ended up at urgent care or the ER instead.
Asking a question during an annual wellness visit could turn what you thought was a free visit into a bill.
Every layer between you and your doctor adds cost to medications, imaging and labs.
Coverage rules change, often with little notice to your doctor, and the plan you and your doctor agree on can be denied by your insurer.
Knowing your doctor has become the exception. Many people don’t really know theirs, many doctors carrying thousands of patients can’t remember them without the chart in front of them, and your appointment may be with someone on the care team who has never met you. That isn’t because the people in the system don’t care. It’s what happens when the system is built for volume.
Here’s what direct primary care looks like at Metronome:
Calls and texts that come in before 5 pm on a weekday get a response that day. Anything later gets one the next business day.
Labs, imaging and medications at discounted cash prices, quoted to you up front.
One monthly fee, about the cost of a monthly cable bill or a cup of coffee a day, for a doctor who knows you, with no copays. Anything extra, like a procedure or a consult or a lab, is quoted before you agree to it.
Visits of 30, 60 or 90 minutes, which is enough time to actually hear what you have to say and build a relationship.
Same- or next-day visits for urgent problems, in the office or virtually.
A triage call with your own doctor instead of an unnecessary trip to urgent care or the ER.
If a question doesn’t have an answer yet, it gets a plan.
I’ve spent months and months preaching the gospel of DPC, but today I’m doing something else. I’m spending the day with my family: celebrating my wife’s birthday week, watching the Broncos win, taking a deep breath, getting a workout in, and staying home in my pajamas, except for the 20 minutes it took to pick up a pizza for the game.
Because beyond more time with patients and no insurance middlemen looking over my shoulder, DPC gave me something else: my life back. And a doctor who takes care of themselves can do a much better job taking care of you :)
Happy DPC Day!
