How to Hire an Employee for Your Direct Primary Care Practice

How to Hire a Medical Assistant for Your Direct Primary Care Practice

Hiring a medical assistant or an office manage for your direct primary care practice is a huge step. This will free up more of your time to care for patients or work on administrative tasks or grow the business, as you will spend less time collecting vital signs or inventorying medications or other small tasks that you can now delegate to your medical assistant.

I would argue that the most important part of your hiring journey is finding someone that you’re going to work well with. Maybe you worked with an excellent medical assistant or nurse during your residency training and that person is available for hire. Give them a call and ask them if they’d be interested in joining your practice. If so, this will work out well, because you’ve already worked with them and you will have a mutual understanding about expectations.

There are several items you need to check off your list before you hire an employee for your direct primary care practice.

• Find a medical assistant or a nurse that you’re going to work well with

• Invite them to become a part of your practice

• Send them a Medical Assistant Roles and Responsibilities Form (see Startup DPC course on hiring another doctor)

• Invite them to your office to go through what would be expected and offer them a contract if necessary (some states are at will employment states where a contract is not necessary)

• Print federal minimum wage poster

• Print OSHA safety poster

• Get worker's compensation insurance (not required in all states if there are exactly two employees)

  • This typically costs roughly 1% of wages per year

• Create a log for employee injuries

• Update Policies and Procedures document

• Document training for OSHA, blood-borne pathogens, and HIPAA (if clinic is a covered entity)

• Download electronic copies of material safety data sheets (MSDS) for all chemicals used in the workplace

• Create employment contract (see Startup DPC course on hiring another doctor)

• Ensure accounting software can handle payroll (e.g. biweekly direct deposits, W4 form/withholding)

• Ask new employee for anticipated time off in the coming 6 months to 1 year

For our business, we started out with Gusto for payroll services, but the software missed some tax payments. It was more of a nuisance than anything that cost a lot of money or late fees. But the time spent correcting these mistakes was frustrating. Therefore, I contacted my accountant who helped me set up a new payroll system through Run Payroll, and I’ve been very happy with it.

That being said, this will likely be your first time running payroll. Therefore, it will be helpful to reach out to your accountant, who has likely helped hundreds of other businesses set up their payroll software. Take advantage of their expertise and go with what they recommend.

How to Hire a Doctor for Your Direct Primary Care Practice

Doctors who are starting direct primary care practice typically grow to a saturation point - their practice panel is full, but more patients are eager to join. If this is the case for you, check out our course on how to hire a doctor for your direct primary care practice. It will give you the tools you need to hire that second doctor for your DPC practice and the confidence to get the job done!

HOW CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT STARTING AN 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 book and 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, in our book, 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

Direct Primary Care Elective Rotation Curriculum

Many students and residents aspiring to become direct primary care doctors have reached out and asked for advice on how to write a direct primary care elective rotation curriculum. Writing your own elective rotation curriculum for a month with a direct primary care doctor can be transformational, and it’s a crucial step towards seeing what works in the direct primary care model. I highly encourage all students and residents to look into either writing their own direct primary care elective rotation curriculum or using a template to write their own curriculum.

When I was a third year resident, I wrote my own direct primary care elective rotation curriculum and it was quickly approved by my program director. I traveled out to Kansas and Colorado to shadow some influential direct primary care doctors and it was transformative for my journey to start and grow my own direct primary care practice. I detail that journey in my book, Startup DPC How to Start and Grow Your Direct Primary Care Practice.

Writing a Direct Primary Care Elective Rotation Curriculum: What to Include

When you write a direct primary care elective rotation curriculum, you should include required responsibilities for the elective rotation, like the amount of time you’ll spend shadowing, working with, or learning from a direct primary care doctor.

You should also include goals of the rotation, like being able to differentiate between various payment models for family medicine and to gain experiential knowledge from other practicing physicians in varying payment models.

Further you should include learning objectives, like understanding the concepts of how to write a business plan and learning how to interact with the community as a business owner. There are so many tangible skills to learn, and this is a good place to include those objectives.

Download our Direct Primary Care Elective Rotation Curriculum

If you’d like to download our direct primary care elective rotation curriculum, it can be found as a part of our Startup DPC course on writing a business plan. In my opinion, these two documents go hand in hand.

Direct Primary Care Doctors Embrace the Startup DPC Book and Courses

Where to find the best information for starting a direct primary care practice

Direct primary care doctors are trying to get the best information on how to start and grow their direct primary care practices. There’s a lot of good resources in the DPC ecosystem, but we want to deliver the best content that helps doctors transform the way they approach starting and growing their DPC practices.

Dr. Prisiliano Salas recently took our Sales Funnel course, and he had great things to say about the process. Check out his LinkedIn Post, here:

Testimonial for Startup DPC book and Courses

Post from Dr. Prisiliano Salas about the Startup DPC Book and Startup DPC Courses:

Just finished a course by Paul Thomas, M.D. from Plum Health DPC and #startupdpc. Let me just say that Paul knows his stuff. I met him in 2018 at the Family Medicine DPC Summit. He gave a lecture about his experience starting a #DirectPrimaryCare practice and using social media marketing strategies. I've been following him on/off during this time but had not fully made the jump onto social platforms the way he describes it. Now two years later his practice growth is testament to this method. He's full and added a new doc! On top of that he remains faithful to his mission, to empower the #DPC community with his knowledge and reproducible success. I'm now ready to embrace social media to share my knowledge and experience with my patients (though still working up to youtube to get more camera ready 😎 ). Take one of his courses or read one of his 2 books, he won't disappoint. Keep the momentum going!

Thank you so much for the shout out Dr. Salas! and best of luck with your direct primary care practice. I know that you’ll have every advantage on attracting new patients after taking our Sales Funnel course.

-Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC

Thank you so much for the shout out Dr. Salas! and best of luck with your direct primary care practice. I know that you’ll have every advantage on attracting new patients after taking our Sales Funnel course.

More about Prisiliano Salas, MD

To learn more about Dr. Prisiliano Salas, MD, check out his practice, Salveo Direct Care, or read his bio, here:

Dr. Prisiliano Salas is a Board Certified Family Medicine physician practicing in the Medical Center in San Antonio. His practice is Salveo Direct Care, one of the first Direct Primary Care clinics in San Antonio and Bexar County TX. In this new model of practice, Dr. Salas offers membership-based care without the limitations that health insurance can have on primary care visits. His mission is to deliver convenient and accessible health care services in San Antonio and across the state of Texas. He is a graduate of The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, TX and holds a Plant-based nutrition certification from Cornell University - T. Collin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies.

The Direct Primary Care Book is The #1 New Release

Today’s a very exciting day! Startup DPC: How to Start and Grow Your Direct Primary Care Practice has hit number 1 on Amazon under the Physician category.

Startup DPC: How to Start and Grow Your Direct Primary Care Practice has hit number 1 on Amazon under the Physician category.

Additionally, the book has garnered some amazing reviews so far. Here’s the top review:

Dr. Thomas has a wealth of knowledge from his experience starting and running a highly successful DPC practice. This book, his previous book, and his online courses are all extremely helpful resources for physicians to start their own DPC practice to provide better, more affordable care to patients.

The next review came from Kendrick:

This book is more than just one guys thoughts about starting a DPC practice. Dr. Paul has been advocating purpose driven business for years. If you have a goal of making money with a successful DPC practice you may or may not find that brings you happiness or fulfillment. Dr. Paul's discussion fo the concept of ikigai could change your life if you are open to it.

The practical stuff is here too. You could follow this recipe for a practice like his and have something you could really be proud of in the end. But inevitably, you're going to be adding in your own ingredients and the recipe here becomes not a restriction but a great base to start with.

I honestly can't believe what Dr. Paul has accomplished. He and I started practices at the same time and if I were the comparing type, I'd feel bad about myself. Instead, I'm choosing just to be inspired.

Sincerely thank you for the kind words Kendrick, I really appreciate you.

If you’d like to pick up a copy of Startup DPC, you can do so here.

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful day! - Dr. Paul Thomas

How This Direct Primary Care Doctor Built a Successful Sales Funnel

How to attract more patients to your direct primary care practice

Direct primary care doctors want to know how to attract more patients to their direct primary care practices. This can be accomplished by using a sales funnel, which may seem like a foreign concept, but let me explain. You see, doctors aren’t taught how to market themselves in medical school. There is no course on branding and marketing in medical school or residency. Further, doctors can feel icky about marketing themselves or selling their services.

However, you shouldn’t feel gross about marketing yourself, and here’s why. The best form of marketing is giving the right people in your community the right information about your service. If you can clearly explain what it is that you do and how you help people, that’s marketing. If you can share interesting stories about yourself and about your direct primary care practice, that’s marketing.

There’s a lot of nuance here and there are some tips and tricks to create the best marketing plan for yourself and for your direct primary care practice, which is why I created the Direct Primary Care Sales Funnel Course on Startup DPC.

How this Direct Primary Care Doctor Built a Successful Sales Funnel

For me, it’s been exciting to watch more and more doctors purchase this course, learn from this course, and start applying this new knowledge to grow their direct primary care practices! Further, I’ve been getting some great reviews for this course material. Here’s what one of our successful students had to say about the Sales Funnel Course:

Paul Thomas through his marketing course explains how a blog will get people to click on your actual website and while there take a look at your services. You can also title the blogs to items frequently searched such as #bestdoctorincharlotte or #howtofindagooddoctor Since I’ve taken what I would’ve normally put in a Facebook post (like info about COVID-19) or that I put in weekly emails, into a “blog article on my website”, I’ve cross posted it in blog format so when they click on it to read-they are at my website. I get quite a few views from Facebook and LinkedIn which I used to never interact with. Google searches have gone up too. In terms of SEO it definitely works to drive traffic to your site (now it’s fun to see how many people have been to my website after a posting). In terms of patients-definitely a couple since I started doing it this way, but like a lot of marketing-it seems to be a long game. Since I’m basically giving out good info for free, it doesn’t feel like “marketing” or trying to be a saleswoman which I like. I do spend about 3-4 hours researching and working on content, so was very hesitant to commit at first. Since I’m still building and have empty slots-I just use that time to work on content. As I get busier, I plan to blog less or as needed when a topic is relevant. Some docs pay a service to write blog articles for them as part of their SEO-you could do this, but it isn’t as personable to you. It does work though-just have to weigh the benefits/ROI of your time.

I responded to her by saying that this made my day, because it sincerely made my day! There are few things that make me happier than seeing doctors succeed in their direct primary care practices. Sincerely thank you Melissa Jones, DO for writing this.

This is the review from Facebook of our Startup DPC Sales Funnel Course.

More About Melissa Jones, DO

To learn more about Melissa Jones, DO, please check out her website, here. Her practice is in Charlotte, North Carolina and her goal is to provide all of her patients with quality care, greater access, and better solutions all of the time. Check her out on Facebook as well!

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

Praise for Startup DPC

We work really hard to help doctors start and grow their direct primary care practices, and we get results! We help doctors attract new patients and grow their practices. It’s enjoyable to do this work and it’s nice to get some positive feedback from our doctors who have been successful. This doctor took one of our courses and had some nice things to say:

A nice note from one of our customers who took one of our courses on Startup DPC. You can visit these courses at our Take Action page!

Here’s another piece of praise for our work at Startup DPC, this time for the Attract New Patients to your Direct Primary Care Practice Course:

HOW CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT STARTING A DIRECT PRIMARY CARE PRACTICE?

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!

-Paul Thomas, MD