My DPC Story

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 dueling pianos in bars around Boulder and Denver. His dad was a Filipino immigrant physician who ran a small practice out of the family's basement in...

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 North Carolina is why his firm stopped taking non-direct care clients in 2024.

Together they walk through 10 questions, each with a real number attached, that every DPC owner should be able...

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 partners. When imaging is needed, someone follows up to confirm it happened. Accountability means closing every loop: a weekend text gets a Monday check-in call. A referral goes out? Her staff confirms scheduling. Care management is where rural DPC shines...

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 residency in Boise. At the VA she joined a Primary Care Center of Excellence and helped launch the Boise Clinical Resource Hub, delivering clinic-to-clinic telehealth to rural sites across the Northwest, then trained physicians in telemedicine through th...

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 Direct Primary Care practice in Arnold, California, which she owns with her husband, Dr. Jeremiah Fillo, and runs with a fully virtual team. No vendor names, on purpose...

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 there are seven or eight DPC practices in the Rochester area, and Dr. Petrescu has founded the New York State Direct Care Physicians Alliance with board members from Buffalo, Syracuse, Hudson Valley...

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, JD, MBA) of DPC Frontier joins Dr. Maryal Concepcion to break down what changed and what it means for your practice, then walks through the Medicare opt-out...

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 episode, Dr. Rickner talks with Dr. Maryal Concepcion about what it takes to build a DPC practice that serves employers without giving up autonomy. He opened with 198 members on day...

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, and debt payback, though they are not paying themselves yet. Meanwhile the non-compete case that made the opening possible is still moving. Her former employer appealed...

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. Both came to New Orleans with a list. What they say out loud is what most physicians only think: the workflows you built on day one and...

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, California, just outside Palm Springs in a community as economically diverse as almost anywhere in the country. He shares why he chose to become a physician rather than...

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, surviving non-Hodgkin lymphoma at 38, then weathering COVID pneumonia, a heart attack, and adult-onset Still’s disease — all while continuing to care for his patients. He opens up about how DPC helped save his m...

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 healing.

After more than a decade in fee-for-service family medicine and infectious disease, including HIV care, Dr. Soto completed an integrative medicine fellowship, trained in ketamine-assisted therapy, and opened a micropractice designed around...

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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 makes a medical career, a practice, and a life sustainable.

The throughline is simple. Healthcare becomes sustainable when the people providing the care are allowed...

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 experience working with a virtual assistant she found through Cool Blue VA, then hands the room over to Justin.

Justin walks through the...

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 Nebraska training under Dr. Tim Blecha (Blay-kee), through residency in Modesto, into a corporate regional medical center that slowly turned the heat up the way you would on...

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 their social, economic, religious, or ethnic background.

Dr. Khatibi shares how she nearly tanked her own practice caring for pregnant patients who could not afford care anywhere else, and why the answer was not working...

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-for-service system. His definition of sustainability is simple and worth sitting with: work that is aligned with your interests is sustainable, and the drag of burnout shows up when there is interference and conflict instead of...

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 how he and his wife built two separate Direct Primary Care clinics in San Antonio while protecting each other's autonomy. The standout story: how they used federal...

Dr. Emily Holt returns to the podcast one year after opening Poppy Direct Care in New Orleans, and the landscape around her has changed dramatically.

When Maryal last spoke with Dr. Holt, Poppy was just months old and DPC Summit attendees were touring her 100-year-old clinic house. A year later, her panel has more than doubled, she's about to opt out of Medicare, and she's a named plaintiff in a lawsuit against Louisiana's Attorney General over the state's classification of mifepristone and misoprostol as controlled substances.

This conversation goes deep on what it...

What if your new patient visit didn't start with a 200-page ER record dump, scattered portal logins, and a patient saying "I think mom had some kind of cancer"? In this episode of My DPC Story, Dr. Maryal Concepcion sits down with Anna Smith, RN, MPH, CEO of Vivid Vault Health Solutions, to talk about a patient-owned, multi-generational health navigation platform built to strengthen the physician-patient relationship, not replace it.

Anna shares her realization that healthcare collects massive amounts of data but rarely puts it in patients' hands in a way they can actually use...

This month on the My DPC Story podcast we are talking about the tools that serve us, and Dr. Michael Hobbs is a voice you do not want to miss.

Dr. Hobbs is a pediatrician and founder of Lakes Pediatrics, the first pediatric Direct Primary Care practice in the Minneapolis area, serving families across Edina, Wayzata, and the western suburbs. He brings over twenty years in Twin Cities pediatrics, more than a decade as an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School, Top Doctor recognition from Mpls.St.Paul Magazine and Minnesota Monthly...

Dr. Maryal Concepcion welcomes Dr. Nyasha Spears, family physician and co-founder of Amity Creek Primary Care in Duluth, Minnesota. After her century-old community clinic was closed by a corporate hospital system with just 36 days notice, Dr. Spears took her former employer to court, won a temporary injunction against her non-compete, and opened the doors to Amity Creek alongside her partner Dr. Kristen Lusian.

What You'll Learn

Dr. Courtney Barrett, founder of True Insight Direct Care in the Raleigh, North Carolina area, opens our May theme, The Tools You Use, with a conversation that redefines what tools means in a Direct Primary Care practice. As a DO offering osteopathic manipulative treatment alongside full-spectrum primary care, Dr. Barrett shares how OMT functions as both a clinical tool and a front door to membership.

We dig into her EHR vetting process, her non-negotiables for tech stack decisions, and why patient experience optimization shaped every choice. Dr. Barrett also shares how her husband...

Dr. Maryal Concepcion welcomes Dr. Jihan Ansari, founder of Harbor Direct Primary Care in South Orange County, California. Dr. Ansari shares the marketing strategies that grew her DPC practice from patient zero to a thriving two-physician clinic she runs with her husband, Dr. Pedram Ansari. From cold-calling former co-resident Dr. Jose Buenostro to learn about DPC, to filming a TikTok before jury duty that unexpectedly went viral, Dr. Ansari's story is a real-world playbook for direct primary care physicians who want to market authentically without expensive ads or pushy sales tactics.

What You'll Learn

After nearly a decade as a hospitalist in the Washington, DC area, Dr. Nadia Sirdar realized she had stopped feeling. End-of-life conversations had become a script. Length-of-stay metrics were drowning out the humans in front of her. She wasn't burned out on medicine. She was burned out on the system.

In this episode of My DPC Story, Dr. Maryal Concepcion sits down with Dr. Sirdar, internal medicine physician, public health expert, and founder of Find Bethesda Doctor, to talk about the leap from hospital medicine to Direct Primary Care, opting out of Medicare to care for elderly...

What does it actually take to market a direct specialty care practice in a city full of competitors? For Dr. Ashley Agan, otolaryngologist and founder of Scottie ENT in Dallas, Texas, the answer had nothing to do with billboards or ad spend, and everything to do with how patients felt when they left her office.

In this episode, Dr. Agan shares her journey from nearly 13 years at UT Southwestern, including a clerkship director role, to opening her own cash-pay ENT practice named after her late grandmother. From her first pivot away from saying "I'm an otolaryngologist" to...

Dr. Aleea Gupta of Family First Direct Primary Care in the western suburbs of Chicago returns to My DPC Story four years after her first appearance, and a lot has changed. Her Instagram following has grown to over 12,000 organic followers, she has partnered with national brands including GoodRx and the AAFP, and her solo practice has evolved into a model of physician entrepreneurship built on authenticity rather than advertising dollars.

In this episode, Dr. Gupta and Dr. Maryal Concepcion dive deep into what so many listeners have been asking between seasons: How do you make your DPC...

What does it look like when a physician gets laid off from a corporate-acquired DPC practice and turns that loss into the exact practice he always wanted to build?

We close out Financial Sustainability Month with Dr. Josh Chow, DO and his wife Katherine Chow of Ohana Medical in Centennial, Colorado. Their story is one of resilience, financial clarity, and a deep commitment to family, both the one they are raising and the one they are building with their patients.

Dr. Chow spent five and a half years in what started...

Can Your DPC Practice Survive Its Own Success?

Most physicians opening a Direct Primary Care practice master the clinical side quickly. The harder challenge? Running the business that sustains it.

In this episode of My DPC Story, host Dr. Maryal Concepcion sits down with Tom Squire, founder of Osprey CFO, a financial advisory firm built specifically to support small businesses and DPC practices. Tom brings a background in banking and private equity and translates that institutional financial playbook for independent physician practice owners.

Whether you're pre-launch, in...

Dr. Shannon Connolly, Dr. Shayne Poulin, and Dr. Amy Tressan found each other inside Melody Health, a mission-driven primary care practice embedded within Planned Parenthood, serving more than 13,000 patients across seven health centers in Orange County, California. Then, with the passage of HR 1 and the defunding of Planned Parenthood, they lost it, in a matter of weeks.

They opened Open Arms Primary Care on March 1st 2026. Melody Health closed in December 2025.

In this episode, Dr. Connolly and Dr. Poulin share what it looks like to join forces and rebuild from the ground up...

Dr. Feneisha Franklin spent a decade in corporate medicine before finding her door: a Direct Primary Care practice seven minutes from her house, owned by a retiring physician ready to pass the torch. She left her employer on a Friday. She owned Living Well Family Medicine on Monday.

In this episode, Dr. Franklin breaks down what it actually takes to purchase an existing DPC practice: profit and loss statements, Medicare opt-out windows, non-compete clauses, legacy pricing, quarterly taxes, and the financial advisory team she credits with keeping her afloat in year one.

This is one...

She was working 20 hours a day in fee-for-service medicine, and her supervisor was online at 3am too, totally unbothered. That's when Dr. Victoria Leventis-Shew knew nothing was ever going to change. So she changed everything.

Dr. Leventis-Shew is the founder of Victory Family Medicine in Columbia, SC, a physician-only micropractice she built intentionally, organically, and on her own terms. In this episode she gets radically honest about the financial decisions that shaped her DPC journey: using retirement savings to launch, hiring a consulting firm she wasn't sure she needed, growing slowly without advertising...

Dr. Matthew Hitchcock of Hitchcock Medical Group in Chattanooga, TN has spent over a decade proving that direct primary care is not just better medicine, it's a smarter business. In this episode, he breaks down the layered economic model behind his DPC practice, in-house pharmacy, and cash-only imaging center.

What we cover:

Episode Summary:

After our episode about Zion HealthShare sparked more listener questions than almost any other episode this season, we brought together Preston Guthrie, Head of Sales at Zion HealthShare, and Camila Guerrero, Practice Manager at Brock Family Care in North Carolina and a Zion member herself, to answer everything.

We discuss pre-existing conditions and the 24-month pre-membership rule, maternity care and the six-month waiting period, GLP-1 medications, how Zion pairs with a Direct Primary Care membership, the IUA and three-claim family protection rule, international emergency care benefits, state insurance mandates, and whether...

We’re closing out February with Dr. Aisha Harris of Flint, Michigan, a board-certified family physician, community advocate, and the founder of Harris Family Health, the first Direct Primary Care clinic in her hometown. In this episode of My DPC Story, Dr. Harris shares how returning to Flint to open a DPC practice allowed her to practice medicine with purpose - addressing trust, environment, and health literacy upstream while creating real opportunities for prevention, especially around heart and metabolic health. Her journey weaves together entrepreneurship, advocacy, and deep community commitment, showing how Direct Primary Care of...

In this previously aired episode of My DPC Story, host Maryal Concepcion sits down with Dr. Jalan Burton, a Washington, DC/DMV–based pediatrician practicing at the intersection of healthcare policy and deeply relational care. As the founder of Healthy Home Pediatrics, Dr. Burton shares how Direct Primary Care allows her to deliver unrushed, home-based pediatric care in a policy-dense environment while protecting both physician autonomy and patient trust. Her story highlights values-driven medicine, proactive cardiovascular and metabolic health conversations for children, and the power of designing a practice that supports families and physician wellbeing. 

We chose Dr...

In this episode of My DPC Story, we’re highlighting Dr. Adelola "Lola" Ashaye, a board-certified family and lifestyle medicine physician and the founder of InTouch Primary Care in the Sugar Land area of Texas. Practicing in one of the most complex healthcare markets in the country, Dr. Ashaye shares how Direct Primary Care protects physician autonomy while expanding access for patients, creating space for meaningful conversations around prevention, metabolic health, and long-term outcomes. Her journey, shaped by experiences with fragmented care, immigration barriers, and burnout in fee-for-service medicine, is a powerful reminder that physicians of...

If you run a Direct Primary Care clinic, you’ve probably asked: What happens to my family if I can’t work for months? In this episode, Zion HealthShare President Ashton Casper and DPC practice administrator Camila Guerrero share how medical cost sharing works, what “coverage” can look like without insurance, and how Zion pairs with DPC. 

Have Questions? Ask your questions live?
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In celebration of Black History Month and Heart Health Month, we're re-airing our powerful conversation with Dr. Gabrielle Williams, founder of Gateway Direct Health in Georgia. Dr. Williams shares her inspiring journey from severe burnout in fee-for-service medicine where she dreaded waking up each morning to discovering Direct Primary Care as her "second chance into medicine." As the first person in her family to attend college, she went on to become a board-certified family physician who now practices medicine on her own terms. In this episode, Dr. Williams candidly discusses the personal and spiritual growth required in that crucial...