The Rising Tide: Notes from the DPC Summit
Last week I attended the Direct Primary Care Alliance's annual summit in New Orleans, to meet the clinicians and innovators bringing life and love to the movement to restore physician autonomy and patient relationships to modern medicine.
The pioneers were there. I shook hands with doctors who first jumped into these uncharted waters years ago and built the framework that let them practice on their own terms — shrugging off the time restrictions that corporate systems and insurers impose to drive volume, and creating the first plans that allowed employers to offer DPC to their teams.
Everyone Does It Differently
Then there were the subsequent ripples of that revolution.
One doctor's clinic shares a building with her husband's hardware store in rural Oklahoma, where they also sell freshly butchered bison. Another was introducing a newly hired physician to the scale of this movement before she got to work on a waiting list of 150 patients for a growing practice in Ohio.
The seeds of startups were there too. One couple — both physicians, shopping for an EMR to power the DPC practice they're planning — brought their kids along. One is a second-year med student prepping for Step 1; the other just finished the MCAT and is working through application essays. They wanted their children exposed to an alternative to traditional primary care now, rather than years into what could become a dissatisfying career in fee-for-service medicine.
I met the podcasters (both Filipina!) whose work dominated my listening all year as I prepared for this transition, and brought their swag back to my clinic. I talked with the teams behind my electronic medical record, who are constantly improving their platforms while actively building community and mentorship programs.
The adage has never rung more true: if you've seen one DPC, you've seen one DPC.
Everyone does it a little differently — because at the end of the day, DPC patients aren't just subscribing to primary care. They're investing in a relationship with the doctor who cares for them. These doctors are individuals, with idiosyncrasies that separate them from their peers. Ultimately, you choose the doc you match with.
"It Would Be Weird Not to Have a DPC Doctor"
During a roundtable, someone was asked where he saw the movement heading. His answer stuck with me: in a few years, he said, it would be weird not to have a DPC doctor — and unusual for a primary care physician not to be a DPC physician.
Another stated his mission plainly: get everyone in the country onto a Direct Primary Care membership.
The hotel buzzed with that charged energy for 72 hours. The force of this movement was matched only by the joy and the twinkle in the eye of every doctor I met who had thrown themselves into it — founders, innovators, entrepreneurs, and DPC-employed practitioners alike.
Most of the Country Still Doesn't Know What This Is
In a room like that, it's easy to forget how few people have heard of this.
The concept is simple. You pay your doctor directly, usually as a monthly membership fee, and in exchange you get access to that doctor — by phone, email, text, and office visits. You get to build a real relationship with someone who has the time and capacity to actually know you, unlike physicians drowning under enormous panels in the fee-for-service system.
Many of the doctors I spoke with who were contemplating DPC weren't aware of the 2022 study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine that quantified what the current model actually asks of us: providing adequate, evidence-based care to a typical 2,500-patient panel would require 26.7 hours per day.
So many physicians considering this switch are feeling the weight of that impossibility. We are a uniquely competitive, empathetic, and resilient group — and as one doctor put it over breakfast (she carries a private practice panel of 6,000 patients), insurance companies and healthcare corporations have perfected the art of manipulating us into buying into impossible standards, and then holding ourselves to them.
The Rising Tide
In case you missed it: Metronome Family Medicine provides quality health care to individuals, families, and teams in Longmont, and telehealth across all of Colorado. I incorporate midlife vitality — hormones, functional medicine, peptides, and weight loss with and without medications — into primary care, because in my opinion, these things are primary care.
And if I'm not the right DPC doctor for you, I know several others in the area I'd be happy to tell you about. Because they are not my competition. We are all part of a revolution in healthcare, things are changing, and this rising tide will inevitably float all boats:)
📞 720-856-4058 🔗 www.metronomemd.com/book
