How to Grow a Direct Primary Care Practice

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Dr. Paul Thomas MD Featured on The Changed Physician

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How I started Plum Health DPC - a recap with The Changed Physician

This is Episode 68 of The Changed Physician Podcast when hosts, Drs. Melissa Cady and Kevin Cuccaro, speak with direct primary care physician, Dr. Paul Thomas about how any new physician can successfully start and build a direct primary care practice.

Timeline:

  • 01:00​ Why and how he started a DPC practice in 2016

  • 03:40​ How he dealt with the fears of risk & recruited interest from patients

  • 05:00​ The house call that changed everything

  • 06:30​ Where he started his physical practice

  • 10:00​ His first “doctor bag” (medications from Andameds)

  • 10:50​ Setting up a business entity

  • 13:45​ Medical malpractice

  • 17:00​ How he acquired new equipment/resources

  • 20:00​ How he adds value to his patient members

  • 22:30​ Electronic Medical Records from beginning (e.g. Atlas, Hint & Elation, etc.)

  • 24:30​ Typical overhead for direct primary care

  • 25:40​ Leveraging moonlighting while building own practice

  • 28:00​ Reasons not to go into your own direct primary care practice

  • 29:30​ The “safer” route?

  • 32:00​ How he marketed himself and grew his practice

  • 35:30​ Pain now or pain later?

  • 39:00​ Paul Thomas’ take on his own practice and work

You can learn more about Dr. Paul Thomas and his practice at: https://www.plumhealthdpc.com/

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.

STARTUP DPC - DIRECT PRIMARY CARE MASTER CLASS

Because there are no in-person conferences this year, we decided to host an intimate gathering of Direct Primary Care doctors who are looking to start and grow their DPC practices. We did this last year, and it was a rousing success! Join our Direct Primary Care Master Class on May 14th through May 15th, 2021 at our Plum Health DPC office in Detroit, Michigan and kickstart your DPC journey!

Thanks for reading and watching, and best of luck in your direct primary care journey!

-Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC

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

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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:

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

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

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What are the Ages of the Patients in Your Direct Primary Care Practice?

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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 zer…

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

Question from the Community: How did you work with Veterans?

My name is Dr. Paul Thomas with StartUpDPC and I'm here to help you start and grow your Direct Primary Care practice. Our question this week comes from a Direct Primary Care doctor in the community. They want to know more about the health care services that we provide for Veterans in our community through our practice, Plum Health DPC.

“Hello again. This is _______ from _____ DPC in _______, __. I just saw that you have partnered with the VA to provide care for veterans. I currently have 4 patients who are vets that come to me and I would love to be able to help more of them as we all know this is a significantly under-served population. If you have a minute I am very interested in a few things regarding this partnership:

1. How you went about getting this partnership

2. How you are reimbursed (vets or VA paying?)

3. Did you have vets that were currently on your panel that were pulled into this (as I assume there is some sort of gov reimbursement)?

4. Anything else worth knowing if able to get into this?

If you have some time I'd love to see your thoughts as I think this would not only help my practice grow, but provide a much needed alternative for vets besides going into a broken Fee For Service community system.

Thanks so much, _____.”

I love this question! You want to help veterans with their primary care services, and I absolutely love that. That’s what I’m out here doing as well. To be clear, I’m not partnering with the VA or the Veterans Administration.

What I did, was I partnered with a small business called Veterans Care Network. I developed a relationship with Shane and Jenny who run the Veterans Care Network. We built a relationship over time and they grew to trust me and want to business with our practice, Plum Health. They developed an application process, and selected two veterans to send to our practice.

You can read more about it on my practice’s blog, Plum Health. I go into more detail with our (first ever!) YouTube video.

StartUpDPC tackles how to work with Veterans in our latest blog post! It starts with developing relationships.

StartUpDPC tackles how to work with Veterans in our latest blog post! It starts with developing relationships.