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Direct primary care · What physicians told us

Physicians who left conventional primary care talk about time, not money.

Data from 47 representative interviews. The responses have been normalized.

Here's what got them to leave.

ReasonStartup9Growing11Established23
Time89%82%57%
Paperwork89%64%61%
Quality time67%64%48%
Stress and burnout44%55%57%
Loss of autonomy22%64%52%
Reimbursement problems78%36%17%

Quality Time with Family as a Reason to Leave

89%of startups

52% of established practices said the same.

Most Common Among DPC

Question

  • Not enough time with each patient68%
  • Documentation, billing and coding burden66%
  • Loss of patient relationship / care quality55%
  • Burnout and work-life strain49%
  • Loss of autonomy and control47%

What wore them down in conventional, fee-for-service practice? Base: the 47 physicians who answered.

Who we heard from

49% run established practices.

Time, not money

60% wanted time with family. 9% wanted financial security.

How patients find them

Word of mouth reaches 93%. A website, 36%.

Who needs staff

Staffing limits 36% of team practices and 8% of solo ones.

These charts count all 47 physicians. The filter below changes the findings, not the charts.

All 47 physicians

Pick a question

9 findings

Rare but instructive

It did not work

“What are the Medicare reimbursements for the codes that I would normally be billing? And so that was kind of a reasonable benchmark, but I would say I definitely made the mistake of undercharging significantly. You could argue that I'm probably still undercharging.”
Financial sustainability · from a separate audit of 12 interviews

It did not work

“Every time I post something, say the flu shots are available, the person says 'by the way, that flu shot causes the flu,' and I just don't want to deal with that. And generally speaking, it generated clicks but not membership.”
Patient acquisition and retention · from a separate audit of 12 interviews

It did not work

“I tolerated that for about two weeks. I could see the revenue plummeting because the bookings were plummeting, so after two weeks I turned it off. The website that they created was great, it really looked professional, but it didn't generate revenue, and that's the key.”
Patient acquisition and retention · from a separate audit of 12 interviews

It did not work

“I just get ghosted, and I call the number, the number's disconnected, and this is like November and I'm panicking, because we as a young family had everything up in the air.”
Financial sustainability · from a separate audit of 12 interviews

Mixed result

“has really helped my practice explode because finally women were saying, "Oh my gosh, I've been looking for you for so long." I felt so unseen. I didn't know if I was safe here. I didn't know if I was going to be okay walking into the space as a black woman and I know that coming here I'm going to be okay.”
Patient acquisition and retention · from a separate audit of 12 interviews

Only one physician said this

“If you have an EMR and you're using a different one right now and you have a bunch of macros, go through copying them down and save them and email them to your personal email, which is what I've done every job transition that I've made, but they lose some of their integrity as time goes on.”
Technology and workflow · from a separate audit of 12 interviews

Only one physician said this

“It's one minute per patient, so if I see 20 patients, I spend 20 minutes or less documenting, which is unbelievable.”
Technology and workflow · from a separate audit of 12 interviews
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