Can a Direct Primary Care Practice go from $1,000,000 in Annual Revenue to $10,000,000 in Annual Revenue?

Can a Direct Primary Care Practice go from $1,000,000 in Annual Revenue to $10,000,000 in Annual Revenue?

Direct primary care is a growing business practice in primary care. Many doctors start successful practices by recruiting about 400 or 500 patients and having them pay $60 or $80 monthly. With these examples, it’s easy to see how a doctor could earn $288,000 in annual revenue up to $480,000 in annual revenue. Now, if there are two or three doctors in a practice, it’s easy to see how one office can generate $1,000,000 in annual revenue.

As a side note, annual revenue does not mean take home pay. Doctors have to account for overhead expenses like rent, paying employees like medical assistants, and paying for labs, medications, and other services vital to the clinic’s function.

All that being said, what would it look like to take a DPC practice from $1,000,000 in annual revenue (a big achievement) to $10,000,000 in annual revenue? That’s what I want to explore in this blog post:

How to grow from $1,000,000 in Annual Revenue to $10,000,000 in Annual Revenue?

Growing a business from $1 million to $10 million in annual revenue can be a significant challenge, but it can be done with the right strategy, hard work, and execution. Here are some steps that can help:

1. Define your target market: Identify the specific segment of customers that you want to target and tailor your products or services to meet their needs. This will help you to more effectively reach and retain customers, and drive revenue growth. In the case of DPC, you need to have a very strong customer avatar - what does your typical customer look like?

2. Increase sales and marketing efforts: To grow revenue, you'll need to increase your sales and marketing efforts. This could involve expanding your sales team, improving your marketing materials and campaigns, and leveraging technology to reach new customers. Beyond blogging and SEO, your DPC practice might need to hire someone to recruit new patients for you.

3. Offer new or complementary products or services: Consider offering new products or services that complement your existing offerings and appeal to your target market. This can help you to tap into new revenue streams and increase overall sales. It could be a line of supplements, or a weight loss program, or BOTOX or other programs to increase revenue.

4. Enhance your customer experience: Providing excellent customer service and a positive customer experience can help you to retain existing customers and attract new ones. Consider implementing customer feedback programs and investing in training and development for your customer service team. Even a 1 hour lunch and learn about improving the customer experience could go a long way in growing your practice.

5. Leverage technology: Technology can help you to streamline processes, reduce costs, and improve efficiency. Consider investing in technology that can automate repetitive tasks, improve customer engagement, and drive growth. As doctors, this tends to be a blind spot for us.

6. Expand your geographic reach: Consider expanding your business into new geographic markets, either through physical expansion or through online channels. This can help you to tap into new revenue streams and increase overall sales. I think this is the easiest to understand for DPC doctors - you probably need to go to the other side of the city or to the next town over or even the next biggest metro area to grow your business.

7. Foster a culture of growth: Encourage your employees to take ownership of the growth of the business and to continuously look for new ways to improve processes, increase sales, and drive revenue growth. What if you incentivized your employees to bring on new patients?

These are some of the steps that can help you to grow your business from $1 million to $10 million in annual revenue. It's important to develop a comprehensive and well-executed plan and to stay focused on your goals.

Thanks for reading, and good luck starting and growing your direct primary care practice!

-Dr. Paul Thomas, MD with Startup DPC

Recent Review for Startup DPC Book

Startup DPC Book Reaches 103 five star reviews

This week, the Startup DPC book reaches 103 five star reviews. Here’s one of our recent reviews:

This book is a must read for those interested in direct primary care. Very well written to the point while not missing out on any details. It will prepare even those with absolutely no knowledge or background in business (like myself) to be able to successfully start a DPC clinic.

Startup DPC reaches 103 five star reviews this week!

Also, here’s a very kind email that I received from one of our readers:

Hi Paul,

My name is [Doctor]. I'm a primary care physician and owner of the newly formed clinic [a} Direct Primary Care. I just wanted to send you an email of thanks. I've read your book twice now in the lead up to starting this company. Once, about 2 years ago when it first came out - I was incredibly inspired, but at that time, I was an employed physician and had a lot of self-doubt about whether I could really do it. This time around, I read it about 3 weeks ago in about 3 days after I left that same employed job after I was just fed up with feeling run down, anxious, depressed, and like a glorified employee - I read it the second time, not because I wanted to do DPC, but because I HAD to do DPC. I found my why and I credit your book with a lot of the momentum I am gaining in the community. We just launched our pre-enrollment today and already have 5 patients signed up. You have inspired me more than you can imagine. And I just wanted to say I appreciate you and everything you do for physicians.

Have a great day!

[Doctor]

All that’s to say I have a tremendous amount of gratitude for the doctors in this Direct Primary Care movement and I’m so happy and grateful that this Startup DPC book is a key resource for starting and growing a direct primary care practice.

-Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC

How to Get More Referrals For Your Direct Primary Care Practice

How to Get More Referrals for your Direct Primary Care Practice

Direct primary care doctors often want to know how to get more referrals to their direct primary care offices from the local healthcare ecosystem. How do you get the nursing staff and discharge coordinators to send patients from the hospital, emergency department, specialist clinics, or urgent care clinics to your direct primary care practice?

One good way is to go to those places and meet with the nursing staff, front desk staff, and physicians. Our practice in Detroit is called Plum Health DPC, and we've gone to all of the local urgent care clinics and emergency departments to make sure that our practice is listed as a Primary Care office accepting new patients. We’ve also visited the handful of specialist offices in the Detroit community to make them aware of our services.

What you should bring with you:

1. A flyer describing your services, usually an 8.5 x 11 inch page with information on the front and back. Bonus points if it’s in full color.

2. A stack of business cards with your name, title, email address, street address, and phone number.

3. Your smiling, positive, outgoing self. Use positive body language to communicate that the patients being referred to your office will be in good hands.

To go above and beyond, maybe you could act like a drug rep and bring lunch - a box of Jimmy Johns or something similar - to the emergency department break room and introduce yourself to all of the ED workers. You can bring lunch to the specialists’ offices and urgent care clinics in your community as well.

Good luck with your journey! - Dr. Paul Thomas

Here’s a portion of our promotional flyer that we hand out to our local businesses and local healthcare ecosystem, like the emergency departments, specialist offices, and urgent care clinics.

Direct Primary Care Book Nearing the Finish Line

I’m really excited because my second book on Direct Primary Care is nearing the finish line! I’ve written 20 chapters and 120,000 words about the process of starting and growing a direct primary care practice. Many of the lessons in the book have been learned the hard way - through my own experiences and my own failures in starting a practice. I also share about my victories and successes, as well as the lessons learned from conferences and speaking to other Direct Primary Care doctors, like the lessons learned through the conversations on this website. If you’d like to sign up to receive an email notification about the progress of the book, just drop me a line at Paul@StartupDPC.com or leave your email in the “Subscribe” box at the bottom of the page. Thanks for reading! - Dr. Paul Thomas

Wow! that word count tho - getting up there with 120,643 words in my next book on how to start and grow a direct primary care practice.