Recently I was interviewed by Ron Barshop on his podcast, Primary Care Cures. Here’s what he wrote about the show:
In this episode Ron gets the chance to chat again with Direct Primary Care expert, Dr. Paul Thomas of Plum Health DPC. In this episode he talks about how we went directly into primary care out of college and what his work week looks like, including blogging and youtubing the DPC message. He stressed the importance of relationships with small businesses and reaching the public via social media. Paul touches on how he has been successful in growing his business without brokers so far. He discusses what it takes start a DPC practice, the importance of a good name, creating a SEO course for DPC docs. He addresses Fears physicians have about going into DPC. Here Paul also shares his thoughts around end of life care and end of life care planning.
Paul is a board-certified family medicine physician practicing in Southwest Detroit. His practice is Plum Health DPC, a Direct Primary Care service that is the first of its kind in Detroit and Wayne County. His mission is to deliver affordable, accessible health care services in Detroit and beyond. He has been featured on WDIV-TV Channel 4, WXYZ Channel 7, Crain’s Detroit Business and CBS Radio. He has been a speaker at TEDxDetroit. He is a graduate of Wayne State University School of Medicine and now a Clinical Assistant Professor. Finally, he is an author of the book Direct Primary Care: The Cure for Our Broken Healthcare System.
Listen to the full interview here.
Here’s an excerpt from the interview (below) and the full transcript is here.
How I decided to start my direct primary care practice
Yeah. Well, in my last year of medical school, I actually heard Josh [inaudible 00:04:50] on a podcast and I kind of filed that idea in the back of my brain because I thought I was going to be a professor at a teaching hospital and seeing patients and working with the residents and students, but the deeper and deeper I got into my residency, the less and less time I had with my patients. And I found myself really unsatisfied in the level of care I was able to deliver to my patients simply because I didn't have enough time. Page 3 of 13 And then I got to see Clint Flanagan, Dr. Clint Flanagan of NextEra in Michigan. He was speaking in a conference in Michigan. And so, I talked to both of these physicians and I asked if I could visit their practices. And so in my last year of residency, I wrote a curriculum, a direct primary care curriculum, and I drove out to these two practices and I took the best of their ideas and I brought it back to my hometown in Detroit. And that's where I started Plum Health. And that's three years later from that moment, I'm full with 500 patients and I've brought on a second doctor to help me meet the additional demand.
What’s a Typical Day Like for a Direct Primary Care Doctor
Well, typically most busy on Mondays and Fridays and I'll typically see about five to eight patients each day. Typically, one hour for new patients and 30 minutes for followups. I'll do a lot of texting and phone calls with my patients. I typically field about 20 to 30 text messages each day and just answering some simple questions or coordinating appointments or texting my patients and asking them, "Hey, I saw you on Wednesday with a runny nose and cough. How are you feeling today now that it's four or five days later?" So, that's a workflow that I have and I'm typically in my office 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM.
The other part of it is like on a weekly basis, I'm working on blog posts. I write a blog post and shoot a short YouTube video and post that onto my blog. And then on a weekly basis, I reach out to a small business in my community and ask them, "Would you like to enroll your people into our membership model?" And so, there's different hats that I wear. I'm of course always checking the finances of the business and making sure that our profit and loss statement is lining up each month. So, there's other things beyond patient care and I just fit those between my patient visits so that my business remains healthy as well.
Paul Thomas interviewed by Ron Barshop on Primary Care Cures. See the original post, here.
How do you attract new patients to your Direct Primary Care Practice?
Yeah, I think it's important to develop relationships with small businesses because I really believe that if you're a small business and you're not offering some sort of health care benefit, you would be doing your employees a great service by offering something like this, even if you can't afford health insurance. This is something where offering like direct primary care can help employees maintain a good level of health and have something where they can actually access a physician and have guidance through their illnesses and injuries. And then, I'm also really focusing on social media and reaching the general public. That's where 90% of my members are coming from. So, I try to strike a balance of landing some larger groups, some larger customers, and also maintaining an outreach to individuals.
As for employer groups, I mostly am focusing on those employer groups that are fewer than 50 full time equivalent because those are the folks that aren't mandated to provide health insurance for their employees and they often end up in this messy middle where they're not doing anything because they don't know what's out there.
How Do I Start a Direct Primary Care Practice?
Well, I actually get this question so much that I decided to put all of my knowledge into a website that I recently created and it's in a soft launch right now. It's called startupdpc.com. And folks can go through and read how to, how to start a direct primary care practice. There's a long form blog post that I put there where you can read through, okay, do I have the right mentality to start this? Am I willing to give up the paycheck? Do how to come up with a great name for my practice? How to develop a website? How to build out social media channels? And that kind of gives you a broad overview of if this is something that you want to tackle on your own or with a partner or with some help. And then, I take it one step further and I take a really deep dive into individual topics. And I put together some courses that people can take to really cement their knowledge and become proficient in the skills that you need to become a great direct primary care physician with a thriving successful practice.
A lot of people in medicine have no business experience. And one of the things I often tell people is business is relationships. So as a primary care doctor, we are the most friendly, outgoing doctors that there are. And so how do you cultivate good relationships with people in your community, with small business owners, to create a practice that works for you and works well for your patients?
HOW CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT STARTING A DIRECT PRIMARY CARE Practice?
If you enjoyed reading this blog post and if you want to learn more about starting and growing your direct primary care practice, look no further than our courses on how to start and grow your direct primary care practice. We at Startup DPC have begun compiling some of the best content available on this blog and in our courses.
The best place to start is to take our Direct Primary Care Business Plan course, available here. From there, you can learn how to attract new patients to your direct primary care practice and how to find the perfect location or build out the practice of your dreams.
Thanks for reading and watching, and best of luck in your direct primary care journey!
- Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC