How Much Money Will You Make in Your Direct Primary Care Practice?

Doctors want to know how much money they’ll make when they start a direct primary care practice. This question came up in the Direct Primary Care Facebook Group. You can join it, here.

Here’s the question in full:

I’ve been looking into doing a DPC practice, however the numbers don’t make sense to me. If I charge a patients $100 a month for unlimited visits, as well as access to email and phone calls. so if I sign up 500 patients that’s $600000 a year. Taking out overhead I’m left with $400,000. But with unlimited visits that encourages pts to constantly come in and makes fir a busy practice and on top of it I’m doing emails and phone calls after hours and after taxes maybe taking home $250,000. Is this correct or am I missing something ? Is there a way to charge for visits in addition to the monthly fee ? Do you drop all insurances when you are dpc?

Here’s my answer:

Well, there’s a lot there.

First, if you’re doing it for the money, then this may not be the right path for you.

Second, there are so many intangible benefits to running a successful DPC practice, like more time with patients, greater autonomy and satisfaction with your practice of medicine.

Third, because you only have 500 patients, not 2,400 like a typical doctor, you see 5x’s fewer patients each day, leading to less stress and more time with your patients.

Fourth, your overhead is super high - there are ways to deliver excellent care at a lower cost than what you’re projecting.

I explain the ethos of this movement in great detail in my book and I give a ton of practical pointers there as well:

https://www.startupdpc.com/books

#StartupDPC

The my response was followed up with a follow-up question:

But overhead is related to where you practice so if you practice in an expensive area the rents will be expensive and people expect higher pay

To which I responded:

yes, that's true, but I think that's a smaller piece of the puzzle than you perceive it to be. In my experience monthly rent is a big expense, but just 5% of our current monthly revenue, so in no way is it the biggest expense. Plus, when you scale up and hire more doctors, the relative cost of your rent becomes much less.

STARTUP DPC - DIRECT PRIMARY CARE MASTER CLASS

Because there are no in-person conferences this year, we are hosting an intimate gathering of Direct Primary Care doctors who are looking to start and grow their DPC practices. We did this last year, and it was a rousing success! Join our Direct Primary Care Master Class on May 14th through May 15th, 2021 at our Plum Health DPC office in Detroit, Michigan and accelerate your growth as a DPC doctor.

Thanks for reading and watching, and best of luck in your direct primary care journey!

-Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC