Dr. Paul Thomas MD Discusses Personal Branding for Growing Your Medical Practice

Personal Branding for Direct Primary Care and Direct Speciality Care Doctors

Personal branding is such a huge topic for direct primary care doctors and perhaps even more important for direct specialty care doctors. With personal branding, a physician is demonstrating their value to the community by consistently communicating their character to their audience. There are several mediums to communicate your value and leveraging social media platforms or interacting with the media can be powerful ways to build your personal brand.

In this video, I give doctors 8 simple steps to start building their personal brand. If you love this content, you can read more in our book or take our course on personal branding, found here.

Eight Simple steps to build your personal Brand

1. Understand that you are your personal brand - you can demonstrate that you’re there to help people in your community.

2. Get professional head shots - these can make a huge difference in attracting new patients to your practice. Get photos in your office and in your community.

3. Take any speaking engagement you can get - speak to school students, adults in the community, at libraries, at pitch competitions and beyond.

4. Share about these speaking engagements on your social media channels.

5. Share about these speaking engagements on your blog - this will help you reach a broader audience and improve your search engine optimization.

6. Demonstrate that you’re an expert in your field - show people how you’re making people’s lives better by sewing up a laceration or improving their health in a tangible way.

7. Reach out to the media and tell them what you do - you should send out a press release to the media each time you take the next step with your business. Most time, you will not hear anything, but when a producer features you, it will be a home run.

8. Repeat - once you do all of the above, you have to do it again. You have to come up with creative ways to engage with your audience. If you do this consistently, you’ll be able to attract more patients to your practice.

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 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

Examples of Laboratory and Radiology Pricing at Direct Primary Care Practices

Negotiating lab and radiology prices can be difficult for new direct primary care doctors, but it doesn’t have to be. Armed with a few strategies and a few sample price sheets, you should be able to negotiate your way to lower prices for your patients and your community. This is important because you can actively lower the cost of healthcare for your patients and community, so remember that you’re doing the good work and you’re being a steward of health care resources.

Strategies to Get lower prices for lab work and radiology services

There are a few key strategies to get lower prices for your lab work and radiology services, and it starts with being persistent. You have to persistently negotiate on behalf of your patients and your community. I remember when we got our first price offering from Quest, the prices were astronomical. So I called rep after rep until I finally found the one who could help me get to a lower price. Sometimes it can feel like beating your head into a brick wall, as these are huge companies who don’t really care about small, independent practices. But, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and you have to squeak loudly to get the prices you want.

The other option is to shop around and to show a sample price list, like the one below, to several different companies and have them match your price. All of this really comes down to persistence and being a tireless advocate for your patients and their pocketbooks.

Negotiating prices with the labs can be a little cumbersome, mostly because the sales team is usually a little harder to work with compared to other industries. But it's definitely worth it and a little persistence pays off in multitudes.

Logistically, when you work with a large lab company, you're going to want to ask for "client bill" prices. In this client bill set up, you will pay 100% of the bill each month directly to the lab, and then you will collect payment from the patients. This is fairly easy to automate, especially if you put your lab prices into your EMR.

Sample prices for laboratory testing in a direct primary care practice

That being said, here are some sample prices for our most commonly run laboratory tests. We contract with Quest diagnostics, but other physicians use LabCorp or smaller, independent laboratories in their communities. You can take a look around at the options available to you in your region.

• Our basic lab panel

  • 10231 COMPREHENSIVE METABOLIC PANEL $6.27

  • 496 HEMOGLOBIN A1c $5.54 [83036]

  • 6399 CBC (INCLUDES DIFF/PLT) $4.18 [85025]

  • 7600 LIPID PANEL, STANDARD $5.21 [80061]

  • 899 TSH $6.27 [84443]

• Urinalysis and urine culture

  • 395 CULTURE, URINE, ROUTINE $5.49 [87086]

  • 7909 URINALYSIS REFLEX $2.65

• Sexually transmitted infection panel

  • 11363 CHLAMYDIA/N. GONORRHOEAE RNA, TMA, UROGENITAL $23.00 [87491, 87591]

  • 36126 RPR (DX) W/REFL TITER AND CONFIRMATORY TESTING $4.18 [86592]

  • 6447 HSV 1/2 IGG,TYPE SPECIFIC AB $16.21

  • 91431 HIV 1/2 ANTIGEN/ANTIBODY,FOURTH GENERATION W/RFL $10.46 [87389]

• Pap Testing Panel

  • 58315 THINPREP TIS PAP $24.00 [88175]

  • 90887 HPV mRNA E6/E7 $45.00 [87624]

• Basic hepatitis panel

  • 10306 HEPATITIS PANEL, ACUTE W/REFLEX TO CONFIRMATION $51.73 [80074]

  • 499 HEPATITIS B SURFACE ANTIBODY QL $18.82

  • 8472 HEPATITIS C AB W/REFL TO HCV RNA, QN, PCR $15.68 [86803]

Sample prices for radiology testing in a direct primary care practice

Here are the radiology prices that we have for our patients. We use a free-standing imaging center in the community that readily supplies a list of cash prices.

• 2D MAMM SCREENING W 3D TOMOSYNTHESIS 77067 + 77063 $260

• 2D DIGITAL MAMM SCREENING 77067 $185

• CHEST 2 VIEWS 71046 $43

• US ABDOMEN COMPLETE 76700 $165

• US PELVIC 76856 $149

• US TRANSVAG PELVIC 76830 $166

• LUMBOSACRAL 4 VIEWS 72110 $70

• DEXA HIPS PELVIS SPINE 77080 $55

• MR LOW JOINT WO CONTR AST 73721 $316

• MR LUMBAR WO CONTRAST 72148 $299

• US BREAST LIMITED (NOT ALL 4 QUADRANTS) 76642 $119

• CT ABD AND PELVIS W CONTRAST 74177 + Q9967 $464

If you’d like to see the full price list of our labs or our imaging, I can send you a PDF copy, just fill out the form below, with the subject “SEND ME YOUR PRICES”:

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

The Confidence You Need to Start Your Own Direct Primary Care Practice

Startup DPC book hits 51 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ reviews

Our book, Startup DPC: How to Start and Grow Your Direct Primary Care Practice just received its 51st review, and it has a 5-star rating overall. Our latest reviewer, Kyle, said that “After reading this book, I feel much more confident about opening my new DPC practice next year. This is a comprehensive guide, highly recommended.”

Thank you so much Kyle, and thank you to all of the people who’ve picked up a copy of our awesome book on starting and growing a direct primary care practice!

I am truly humbled by all of the kindness and positive feedback that I’ve received after publishing this book. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

-Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC

Our book, Startup DPC: How to Start and Grow Your Direct Primary Care Practice just received its 51st review, and it has a 5-star rating overall.

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

How to Hire a Second Doctor for Your Direct Primary Care Practice

Introduction

Back in April, I got a ton of insightful questions from a doctor looking to start and grow their direct primary care practice. One of their questions was about hiring a second doctor. In today’s blog post we’re going to take a deeper look on why and how to hire a second doctor for your direct primary care practice.

SHOULD I HIRE A SECOND DOCTOR FOR MY DIRECT PRIMARY CARE PRACTICE?

Here’s the original question:

Last one: I see you have a partner in your practice!  Do you find this has been financially advantageous for you practice compared to a solo practice?  

There are so many tangible and intangible benefits to hiring a second doctor in your direct primary care practice. I mentioned this above, but by hiring a great physician in my practice, I’ve gained a trusted colleague and a great friend.

Drs. Paul Thomas, MD and Raquel Orlich, DO of Plum Health DPC in Detroit Michigan. When your direct primary care practice is nearing capacity, it’s time to start looking for a new doctor to join your practice. In our latest course on How To Hire Another Doctor For Your Direct Primary Care Practice, we show you how to do just that!

Having a second doctor allows me to have someone to share an interesting case with, who can help me manage my patients better by teaching me things along the way. A second doctor also allows me to take a vacation in a relatively care-free way - I don’t have to close my clinic or not be available for my patients because the second doctor can absorb those urgent concerns in my absence.

For me, I didn’t hire a second doctor to make more money, but I did hire a second doctor to build a more sustainable practice. Eventually, as my colleague fills their panel with more patients, I will earn more money, but this was never a top priority.

My top priority has always been delivering excellent care and service to the people in my community, and my practice partner joined my practice to help me achieve this goal. And, that’s why we’re successful.

HOW TO HIRE A SECOND DOCTOR FOR Your DIRECT PRIMARY CARE PRACTICE

Just about every week, a direct primary care doctor reaches out to me and asks how we went about hiring new doctors to our DPC practice here in Detroit. So far, we’ve hired two doctors to join our practice at Plum Health DPC, and we have a third doctor joining us in February 2021.

Drs. Paul Thomas, MD, Jamie Qualls, DO, and Raquel Orlich, DO of Plum Health DPC. Hiring your first doctor for your direct primary care practice can be a difficult process, but it doesn’t have to be. Check out our latest course on hiring doctors to help you grow your practice, build a more sustainable practice, and serve more patients in your community.

Dr. Raquel Orlich and Dr. Jamie Qualls have helped us grow our practice and serve more members in our community. Hiring these doctors is a win-win-win. Patients in our community win because they have access to three kind, caring, and thoughtful physicians who are actively lowering the cost of health care in the community. Our doctors win because they have the opportunity to build trusting, long-term relationships with their patients, and earn a comparable salary to a doctor in the fee-for-service system while seeing fewer patients each day. Our practice wins because we’re able to become more sustainable over the long term with a capacity for more patients and therefore greater revenues.

The hiring process starts with building a successful foundation and that looks like having a successful business and brand onto which you can add more physicians. Doctors are attracted to our practice because we have a compelling mission, vision, and values, and doctors can see themselves furthering that mission. At Plum Health, we believe that healthcare should be affordable and accessible for everyone, and we all work together to achieve that goal.

If you don’t have a successful practice and if you don’t have a strong mission statement, it will be hard to attract another doctor to your practice.

Beyond attracting another doctor to your practice, you need to be able to write a contract, offer a contract, provide a reasonable salary and benefits package, purchase malpractice insurance, and go through several other steps to get this doctor from interested in your practice to working in your practice and serving patients in your community.

This can be a difficult process, so we’ve created a course to help you in your journey. The course, called How to Hire Another Doctor for Your Direct Primary Care Practice includes the following:

• Best Practices for Hiring A Second Doctor into your Direct Primary Care Practice

• The Three Signs That You're Ready to Hire Another Doctor

• Why Doctors Struggle to Find Another Doctor to Join Them

• How to Attract the Next Doctor for Your Direct Primary Care Practice

• Having This Framework is a MUST Before You Hire Your Next Doctor

• The Single Best Place to Find a New Doctor for Your Direct Primary Care Practice

• Three Other Great Places to Find Another Doctor For Your Practice

• What You Must Do Before You Offer a Contract

• How to Pay Your New Doctor: Details on Compensation

• How to Pay Your New Doctor: How to Raise the Money

• Our Downloadable Sample Contract

• Sealing the Deal - What You Must Do AFTER the Contract is Offered

• Going from a Signed Contract to the Start Date - What You Should Do Before Your Doctor Starts

• Detailed Legal Information to Cover Taxes, State Requirements, and Other Info

• Our Full Press Release for Our New Doctor That Got Us Amazing Press Coverage

If you’d like to learn more about or purchase this course, you can find it here.

Thanks for reading and learning more about this topic, and best of luck in the hiring process!

-Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC

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

How do you grow your Direct Primary Care Practice in the First Year?

How do you Grow your Direct Primary Care Practice in the First Year?

This week I got a nice email from someone who purchased our Startup DPC book. Here’s what they had to say:

When you first started out, aside from social media, what do you think is the best way to market to people to gain patients? Which population of patients were you most successful with?

There are so many things that you can do to grow your direct primary care practice in the first year. When it comes to marketing, it’s all about delivering a consistent message through the most powerful channels at your disposal.

For me, I started by leveraging my social media channels, engaging in activities that strengthened my personal and business brand, and leveraged that success and momentum to reach out to journalists and media outlets in my community.

Once the word got out about our affordable and accessible healthcare service in Detroit, the patients followed. Social media channels typically reach a smaller audience, but they can reach a larger audience with a viral post or a post that gets shared several times in the community.

Traditional media outlets can amplify your voice and allow you to reach more people in your community. My strategy is to leverage the small wins, which can build toward bigger wins and bigger media coverage opportunities.

Steps We Took to Grow Our Direct Primary Care Practice in the First Year

Here’s what we did when we first started out to grow our direct primary care practice:

• - social media posts, at least every week

• - blogging; writing thoughtful content on our blog each week, which helped us build our SEO or Search Engine Optimization

• - networking events

• - email list serve with monthly emails, which typically echo our social media posts or blog posts

• - writing a book on DPC https://www.instagram.com/p/BqkM1etA2Q5/

• - speaking at town hall events https://www.instagram.com/p/BqI5T3XA5Hs/

• - partnering with small businesses to take care of their employees

• - reaching out to local media/reporters via email and twitter https://www.instagram.com/p/BoH31kdgrKx/

• - hitting baseballs https://www.instagram.com/p/BnttFXoFjK0/

• - kicking field goals https://www.instagram.com/p/B2u0RgJlZwH/ YES! Kicking field goals helped me build my direct primary care practice - we had patients sign up after I made this post!

• - giving a speech at my local medical college and alma mater https://www.instagram.com/p/Bt2BbdVgjd9/

• - mentoring students https://www.instagram.com/p/BqPt0POAU6t/

• - volunteering as the race doctor for a 5K/10K/Half Marathon https://www.instagram.com/p/Bv9FihBAPg_/

• - sponsoring my soccer team and volunteering with them https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz3qw1Zl_fX/

• - and more!

Frankly, you need to hustle. One of the things I write in my book is “If you’re bored, you’re doing it wrong.”

You need to take advantage of the time that you have to get the word out about your practice. You need to fill your calendar with meetings - meet with business owners, political leaders, teachers, librarians, human resource directors, and others - to teach people about your new and different business.

I teach people how to do this in my book and in my courses, so if you want to take a deeper dive and start using these powerful tools, I show you exactly how to do it in my courses.

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful day,

-Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC and Plum Health DPC

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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

How to Set Up Your Lab for Direct Primary Care Practices

Drawing blood is a bit of an art form. You can typically get the hang of drawing blood after 3 tries. I learned by observing one of the seasoned medical assistants where I worked at an Urgent Care. She taught me, step-by-step, how to draw blood.

At our office, we use a blood draw caddy with all of our requisite supplies

• - butterfly needle

• - plastic tubing

• - tourniquet

• - tiger-top or serum separator tube

• - lavender tube

• - plain red top tube

• - alcohol swab

• - gauze

• - bandages

All of these supplies are free via our lab vendor, Quest Diagnostics. We simply log into Quanum (a website run by Quest) and order all of the supplies that we need.

When you first set up your account, they will mail you your Quest Box that goes on the back door or front door of your office. They’ll also send the Centrifuge to you at no cost.

Once we draw the blood, we centrifuge the Red Top Tube only. You have to wait 15 - 30 minutes before running the centrifuge. After that wait time, the tube spins for 15 minutes.

From there, we label the specimen by using a Dymo Printer. Our EMR, Atlas MD, allows us to print lab labels for Quest because the two platforms are integrated. We also print out a cover sheet for Quest with a large bar code that is easy to scan by the Quest lab pick-up professional.

We then set the samples in the box at the back of our office for pick up in the evening, usually around 5 pm or 6 pm each day.

Our lab results are then attached to the patient's chart by Quest AND faxed to our office. We have digital faxing set up, so we get an email instead of a piece of paper printed from a fax machine. Results typically start coming back around 10 am the next day, and then full results for most labs are back by 3 pm.

As for paying the bill, we have a client account with Quest and each lab that we run is “Client Billed” to our account. This gives the best price for our patients. We collect money from our patients individually and then pay one large monthly bill from Quest. The cost is typically $1,000 each month for a smaller panel of patients. We currently have 900 patients in our practices and our lab bills are typically in the $3,000 to $4,000 per month range, depending on how many labs we’re running.

I hope that this information helps you in your journey towards staring and growing a direct primary care practice. Thanks for watching and have a wonderful day.

- Dr. Paul Thomas with Plum Health DPC and Startup DPC

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

Encouraging Doctors to Start Direct Primary Care Practices

Family medicine doctors and primary care doctors are using the Startup DPC book to start and grow their direct primary care practices. This week, we got a delightful review via Amazon from one of our readers, and they said “Very awesome book. Not only does it give great insight for dpc but it is also very encouraging. Thank you for writing this, exactly what I was looking for!”

We really appreciate this sort of feedback.

To all of my direct primary care colleagues, I love encouraging other doctors and helping them succeed - your success is our shared success for this DPC movement.

Keep pushing. Keep growing. Keep serving. Keep leading.

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

Startup DPC Book Helps Doctors Start and Grow Their Direct Primary Care Practices

This week, I got a very kind text message from a doctor who is on the verge of starting their direct primary care practice. They mentioned how they loved the business perspective that this book demonstrates - I think this is because doctors aren’t quite sure how to start a business because they’ve never done it before. In this book, I take you step by step through the startup process for your direct primary care practice. I give you the timeline and I break it down into simple pieces. These simple steps will come together to help you create a fulfilling, successful, and sustainable practice.

A kind review for the Startup DPC book from a doctor who is on the verge of starting and growing their direct primary care practice

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 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

How this Family Physician Started a Direct Primary Care Practice Straight Out of Residency

How to Start a Direct Primary Care Practice Straight Out of Residency

Many doctors want to start a direct primary care practice straight out of residency. This is a difficult task, so many doctors become intimidated by the amount of work involved and subsequently settle for a job as an employed physician with a large hospital system.

But, it doesn’t have to be this way. There is a step-by-step approach available to doctors who want to start their own direct primary care practices. First, you need to write a business plan for your direct primary care practice. This is crucial so that you understand the numbers involved, like how much it’ll cost to get set up, how much it will cost each month to run your business, how many patients you’ll need, and the average amount of money each patient needs to spend for your business to be sustainable.

Once you have your business plan in hand, you can create a timeline for that business. You will start by laying out a 12-month or 9-month or 6-month road map where you execute all of the tasks that you’ll need to complete to have a successful and thriving direct primary care practice. The great news is that you can complete many of these steps while in residency.

As a resident you can:

• write a business plan

• start building relationships with specialists

• learn as many new skills as you can that will help you deliver excellent medical care for your future patients

• design a website or work with a web designer

• design a logo or work with a logo designer

• come up with your mission, vision, and values for your new clinic

• start developing relationships with vendors like lab vendors, whole-sale medication vendors, and imaging services vendors

• start looking for locations for your new clinic

Simply put, residency is a great time to plan and dream big for your future direct primary care practice because you can start working on it now. I write about this process extensively in my book, Startup DPC: How to Start and Grow Your Direct Primary Care Practice. In the book, I dedicate an entire chapter to what to do in Residency and how to do it, so you’re primed for success in the direct primary care model after graduation.

One of the biggest things you can do during residency is to set up your own elective rotation in direct primary care. I created a Direct Primary Care Elective Rotation Curriculum and I am happy to share it with you here - just drop me an email and I will send you my direct primary care elective rotation curriculum. Please include “Send me the Direct Primary Care Curriculum” in the message for the fastest response possible.

I also dedicate an entire chapter of the book to a detailed timeline of what to do over a 6 month to 12 month period, and how to leverage that time to build up to a successful and thriving direct primary care practice.

I’m writing about this today because I was recently featured on the Health Solutions podcast with Shawn Needham. It was a great conversation and we touch on these subjects in the interview!

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 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