My DPC Story

Dallas pediatrician Dr. Tonya McDonald was laid off with 21 other physicians and opened Radiance Pediatrics, a house-call direct primary care practice, in 2019. Seven years and hundreds of kids later, she shares how she built it for less than the cost of a used car, how COVID doubled her practice, and how she uses Texas’s free CPAN network for pediatric mental health. In this episode: How her own...

Medicare Open Enrollment: A DPC Physician’s Toolkit for 2027 Changes Today we discuss why Direct Primary Care (DPC) practices still field urgent calls during Medicare open enrollment when patients’ coverage changes affect care outside the DPC clinic.  Host Maryal Concepcion introduces the Fall 2026 Medicare Toolkit and gives a five-question CMS-based quiz covering 2027 updates:  Find out what the...

Opening a DPC Practice After Training Through COVID: Dr. Nada Farooqui, MD of RAWQ Medicine Dr. Nada Farooqui, MD trained in family medicine at the height of the pandemic. Her unopposed residency taught her to do everything. Then she sat through job interviews where someone else defined her scope. After a few years in wound care and hyperbarics, one Direct Primary Care summit settled it. Dr. Faroo...

What does a Direct Primary Care practice look like six years after opening? In this annual anniversary episode of My DPC Story, Dr. Maryal Concepcion catches up with Dr. Christina Mutch and Dr. Mutch of Defiant, Dr. Lauren Hughes of Bloom, and Dr. Deepti Mundkur of My Happy Doctor. They all opened their practices in 2020. These doctors get real about growing a DPC practice. They talk about adding...

Under current Medicare rules, a physician who opts out of Medicare for their DPC practice can't bill Medicare anywhere else. That means no hospitalist shifts, no SNF work and no hospice. AAFP Resolution 504, introduced by the New Mexico chapter, asks the AAFP to advocate for a partial opt-out by practice setting. The Congress of Delegates votes on it in October. Dr. Shannon Connolly is co-own...

Today a DPC physician in Iowa, 25 months into her DPC practice, emailed us with three decisions she's weighing, and one challenge: "If there are still spots, convince me to come." Challenge accepted. In this mini My DPC Story episode, Drs. Clodagh Ryan and host Maryal Concepcion answer her directly and walk through how the Illinois DPC Summit (open to DPC docs in ALL STATES!) meets...

Dr. Brian Juan toured with rock bands and played dueling piano bars for more than a decade before he became a family doctor. Three months into Metronome Family Medicine, his solo Direct Primary Care practice in Longmont, Colorado, he talks about what it actually took to make the leap. Dr. Brian Juan spent most of his 20s and 30s on the road, first touring with rock and jam bands, then playing duel...

What should a direct primary care physician actually pay themselves? On this episode of My DPC Story, Dr. Maryal Concepcion sits down with Nate Goodman, CPA, founder of Goodman CPA , the accounting firm that works exclusively with direct primary care and direct specialty care practices. Nate is also a DPC patient. His family's experience with direct primary care in the Black Mountains of Nort...

Dr. Jillian Klaucke, MD, FAWM. Board-certified family physician at Sandpoint Premier Direct Primary Care, Idaho. Wilderness medicine fellow. Eight years into Direct Primary Care, Dr. Klaucke shares what actually works running a rural family medicine practice without insurance. Her practice runs on three pillars: teamwork, accountability, and patient safety. Teamwork means working with patients as...

Dr. Sarai Ambert-Pompey opened Libélula Primary Care in Boise, Idaho. "Libélula" is Spanish for dragonfly, chosen for transformation. One year in, she joins Dr. Maryal Concepcion to talk about what changed when she left the VA for Direct Primary Care. Her path is unconventional: CompUSA and GameStop, Sony PlayStation reviewer training, oncology research at OHSU, then internal medicine re...

One month shy of five years. That is how long Big Trees MD ran on the electronic health record it opened with, and this month, that ended. Not because Dr. Maryal Concepcion went looking for something shinier, but because the terms under which her patients' data lived changed, and she could not accept them. In this solo episode, Dr. Concepcion documents the switch in real time from her rural D...

When Dr. Laura Petrescu opened Athena Direct Primary Care & Lifestyle Medicine, she was the only Direct Primary Care physician in the Rochester, NY metropolitan area. Health system leadership thought she was out of her mind. Colleagues told her nobody would pay a membership on top of insurance. The advice everywhere was the same: New York is too restrictive, and DPC will not work here. Today t...

Direct Primary Care no longer disqualifies patients from HSA eligibility. As of January 1, 2026, DPC membership fees are a qualified HSA expense at or below $150 per month for one person and $300 for a family. Above $150 you are not in violation. You are in the same gray zone DPC lived in for a decade, and the tax position belongs to the patient and their accountant, not to you. Dr. Phil Eskew (DO...

Dr. Kyle Rickner heard about Direct Primary Care in a side room at the AAFP National Conference in October 2014 and committed to it 50 minutes later. Today Primary Health Partners cares for employee lives in 30 states, and it started with a patient named Jason who owned a 22 person company and handed Dr. Rickner a check covering every employee for a full year, six weeks after opening. In this epis...

Two months after opening Amity Creek Primary Care in Duluth, Minnesota, Dr. Nyasha Spears returns to My DPC Story with the real numbers, the real costs, and the parts of a Direct Primary Care startup nobody puts on a slide. She and her DPC partner Dr. Kristin Lusian hit 130 patients six weeks in, with no advertising beyond a website and word of mouth. As of June they are covering overhead, rent, a...

Recorded LIVE on the floor at the AAFP Co-sponsored DPC Summit in New Orleans, Dr. Angela Andrews of Direct Primary Care of West Michigan and Dr. Nicholas Jones of Clear Health Direct Primary Care in Eugene, Oregon sit down with Dr. Maryal Concepcion for an honest roundtable on what changes between year one and year three of direct primary care practice ownership. Both opened in November 2023. Bot...

From physician assistant to DPC physician, Dr. Reid Lancaster took the long road on purpose. In this episode of My DPC Story, he sits down with Dr. Maryal Concepcion to trace his journey from PA to DO and the moment a three-minute news clip about direct primary care planted a "worm in his brain" he couldn't shake. Dr. Lancaster is the founder of Ethos Modern Medicine in La Quinta, C...

When Dr. Timothy Blain opened his direct primary care practice in the middle of COVID, he finally felt like a “real doctor” again — after two decades of employed medicine, five-year burnout cycles, and the constant ache of knowing he could help patients but never had the time. In this honest and moving episode, Dr. Blain shares his full journey: graduating in 2000 as hospitals bought up practices,...

What does it look like to build a Direct Primary Care practice that protects your health as fiercely as it protects your patients? In this episode of My DPC Story, Dr. April Soto of Love and Light Integrative Medicine in South Pasadena, California shares how she systematically exited corporate medicine over three years and built an integrative DPC practice rooted in authenticity, boundaries, and h...

CLOSING SOON! VOTE IN THE 2026 MY DPC STORY BATTLE! VOTE HERE When most physicians hear the word sustainability, they think about keeping the doors open. But after a weekend with more than 80 doctors at the California DPC Summit, our host Dr. Maryal Concepcion came away certain it means so much more. In this episode of My DPC Story, five voices from the Direct Primary Care community share what mak...

What if you could get back fifteen hours of your work week without seeing a single extra patient? In this special episode, recorded live in a breakout room workshop following the California DPC Summit, Justin Lam, CEO of Cool Blue VA , sits down with a room full of physicians to talk about getting real help in your practice and in your life. Dr. Maryal Concepcion opens by sharing her own experienc...

What happens to a family physician when the system that trained him decides he no longer has value? In this deeply personal episode, Dr. Maryal Concepcion hands the introduction to a special guest, then sits down with her husband, Dr. Jeremiah Fillo of Big Trees MD, for an honest conversation about sustainability, not just as a doctor, but as a whole person. Dr. Fillo shares the path from rural Ne...

What does it take to make women's healthcare access sustainable, not just for patients, but for the physician carrying the mission? In this episode of the My DPC Story podcast, Dr. Maryal Concepcion welcomes back Dr. Esther Khatibi, family physician who does surgical obstetrics, and founder of My DOC , a nonprofit delivering high-quality, evidence-based obstetric care to women regardless of t...

In this June sustainability episode, Maryal sits down with Dr. Daniel Hochman, a psychiatrist in private practice in Texas and the founder of Self Recovery, an online addiction curriculum built from thousands of hours of one-to-one clinical work. Dr. Hochman left the insurance model early, around 2014, because the deep, philosophical therapy he wanted to practice could never be reimbursed in a fee...

Can Direct Primary Care really pay off for a physician family carrying student loan debt and no employer match? In this episode of the My DPC Story podcast, host Dr. Maryal Concepcion talks with Dr. Manuel Vogt of Texas DPC about the real financial tools behind building a thriving practice. From a billboard at a railroad crossing to a 220-patient pre-enrollment list on opening day, Dr. Vogt shares...