This week, I get to talk with Dr. Timothy Wong of iHealth in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Dr. Wong is obviously a smart physician and he’s also a smart business person. To be successful in the Direct Primary Care model, it helps to be great at what you’re trained in, medicine, and it’s essential to learn new skills that will help you succeed in creating a thriving business as well.
I really enjoyed my conversation with Dr. Wong because this Episode of the Startup DPC show is full of excellent advice and great tips to help you start and grow your Direct Primary Care practice.
What is the Direct Access Primary Care model?
The Direct Access Primary Care (DAPC) model is something that Dr. Wong has built upon. He states that it’s similar to direct primary care, but the DAPC model is not membership based. Instead, patients pay $35 per visit, plus additional costs depending on which types of services they require. In Dr. Wong’s DAPC model, he doesn’t bill or use insurance for the visits and he keeps a very low overhead. He leverages technology like his EMR as well as Google Forms to collect vital information on his patients quickly and efficiently.
How Did You Market Your Direct Primary Care Practice?
Personal Branding, Business Branding, Marketing, and Public Relations can be foreign topics for a lot of physicians. This was also the case for Dr. Wong as he didn’t have any formal training in these areas. However, that did not stop him from taking a tremendous step towards making his name known in the community and beyond his community.
I reached out to Dr. Wong for this episode because I saw his profile on LinkedIn and I recognized him from the recent NPR article about his practice. He had this to say about his experience in engaging with the local media, also known as public relations:
“Media kind of snowballs. Once you get one thing, a lot of reporters are actually looking for stories - we don’t realize that, but they’re actually looking for stories. And, if you have an interesting story, they’re going to reach out to you. But, you have to get that initial momentum going”
So how do you get that momentum going? Dr. Wong recommends cold emailing journalists and talking up his practice. He was first interviewed by a local newspaper, and then it snowballed into the local NPR affiliate, and then NPR and other national media outlets.
As long as you have an interesting story that could touch a lot of people and help a lot of people, the story starts to speak for itself.
In journalist parlance, that “interesting story”is also known as a peg, or the reason for writing the story in the first place. As Direct Primary Care doctors starting new clinics and hiring new doctors, we have a very clear peg.
The Importance of Sending the Email
Dr. Timothy Wong talks about sending dozens of emails to journalists, but only getting one story. But the difference between no stories and that one store (that may start a snowball of additional stories) is tremendous. If you have no stories, you have a limited stream of new customers. If you have just one story, that then snowballs into additional stories, you may open a floodgate of new patients, new enrollments, and new customers for your business.
That’s why it’s important to send the email, to reach out to the journalist, to tell your story so that your clinic is featured. You’re doing great work that’s changing lives and changing the community, and the world needs to know about it! So, send the damn email.
Business Logistics at iHealth in Pittsburgh
Timothy Wong MD of iHealth in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania talks with Dr. Paul Thomas of Startup DPC about how he’s starting and growing his direct primary care practice.
Dr. Wong uses Athena Health for his electronic medical record. He pays a percentage of his revenue to AthenaHealth, about 6.4% of revenue, but that includes all merchant fees on credit cards. He uses Google Forms to collect patient information up front for his new patients. This helps him prep charts quickly and efficiently.
As for growth, Dr. Wong would like to get up to 20 to 30 patients each day, or a higher volume for his practice. He’s enjoying the practice and feels less burned out. His patients enjoy the service, especially those uninsured patients in his community and those with high out-of-pocket costs. He’s also looking at how he could grow his practice, either by franchising or consulting or by creating an open source platform that other people can replicate.
Dr. Wong is also looking at creating an application that can be a plug and play option for doctors looking to start this Direct Access Primary Care model.
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!
- Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC