How Does Direct Primary Care Make Sense from a Numbers Perspective?
Lots of people want to know how direct primary care makes sense for doctors from a numbers and earnings perspective. This came up on Twitter today and I was mentioned in one of the responses. Here’s the original question:
I’ve been trying to wrap my head around how DTC healthcare can make $ bc the margins are low. The only way it makes sense to me is if you expect low utilization of services, whereby an ongoing retainer (subscription) is not redeemed often or pt requires very little management.
I responded with the following:
we use a membership model for health care - we take care of about 450 patients per doctor and charge about $60 monthly. A family doctor can make a typical salary if they keep their overhead low. I love DPC and we’re able to serve an HPSA in SW Detroit with our clinic
I added the following:
I have about 450 patients - I see my patients 3 - 4 times each year on average. I see about 4 - 8 patients in a typical work day. Our #PlumHealth clinic is in SW Detroit and we serve an underserved community with affordable and accessible healthcare #directprimarycare #detroit
Thanks for reading and watching, and have a great day.
-Paul Thomas, MD with Startup DPC