How Old Are the Patients in Your Direct Primary Care Practice?
A question that comes up frequently is how old are the patients that populate your direct primary care practice? I have been asked this question several times by reporters, medical students, prospective direct primary doctors, and fellow direct primary care colleagues.
In this blog post and the accompanying video, I tackle this question head on! First of all, I am a primary care physician and a family medicine doctor, and that means that I take care of patients of all ages and stages. All patients are welcome at our practice regardless of age.
Currently, our youngest patient is two months old and our oldest patient is 102 years old. That being said the majority of our members at Plum Health DPC are between the ages of 20 and 65 years.
I think there are a number of factors at play that cause the majority of our patients to be in that demographic.
First of all, we are a primarily urban practice, and we take care of several young urban professionals who are highly mobile and without children. Detroit and Southeast Michigan has a strong economic output, that attracts top talent to the region in various professions like law, medicine, automotive engineering, and others. Perhaps we would have more pediatric patients if we were in a suburban community where there are more children and families.
Second, I am 32 years old and I primarily use Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn to market my direct primary care practice. These social media platforms typically have users that are my age. Facebook may skew a little bit older, and Instagram may skew a little bit younger in terms of age, but whenever I post on their social media platforms, the audience is primarily within my age demographic.
Third, the people that I know trust me and are more likely to become my patients. The people that I know are mostly my age, plus or minus a few years. That probably skews our data or the number of patients in our practice who are around the age of 32 somewhat. I’d be willing to wager that if you sought out a direct primary care doctor who is 45 years of age, they will likely have the majority of patients around their age, especially if they are marketing to them using social media channels in which they have the most contacts and connections in their own age demographic.
Fourth, our country provides health insurance coverage for people under age 26 through the affordable care act. As long as a child’s parents have health insurance, that child will be covered under their parents’ health insurance plan. Also, those individuals over 65 are covered by Medicare, and because they may be on a fixed income they may be less inclined to seek out a direct primary care practice where they have to pay over and above their Medicare coverage.
In this image, each individual orange line represents an individual patient, and you can see that we have one patient who is 102 years old. What is somewhat confusing about this image is that we have roughly 6 patients who are between the age of zero and one year of age, and they have no lines to represent them but there is a small gap between the Y access of the chart and the one-year-olds. That gap represents the 0 year olds.
In the above image, each individual orange line represents an individual patient, and you can see that we have one patient who is 102 years old. What is somewhat confusing about this image is that we have roughly 6 patients who are between the age of zero and one year of age, and they have no lines to represent them but there is a small gap between the Y access of the chart and the one-year-olds.
Thank you so much for reading and watching, I truly appreciate all of you who are taking the time to learn more about direct primary care!
If you live in the Detroit area and he would like to become a patient of our direct primary care practice, you can find out more on our website, www.plumhealthdpc.com
If you are a direct primary care doctor and you’re ready to up your game, to attract more patients, and to grow your direct primary care practice, take a look at the other materials on our website, specifically the courses on our take action page.
Thanks again for reading and watching, - Dr. Paul Thomas