One of the hardest things for me when going from an employed doctor to a DPC owner was changing my mindset. As an employed physician, you're kind of spoiled! Yes, the system sucks, but you also don't have to deal with all of the back end stuff like marketing, hiring, firing, billing, phones, making big decisions. At least now, I realize I was "spoiled". Sometimes it's amazing how many things you have to do as a DPC owner! Not only do you learn all of the business parts of HOW to run a practice, but you have to THINK like an owner. You have to value your time. You need to learn how to price your services appropriately so that it's fair to your patients and also sustainable for you. You need to set and keep your boundaries to protect your time, both at work and at home. These are the intangibles, things that you can't learn in a book. You can open a DPC using a checklist, no problem. But learning how to think as an Entrepreneur is a whole process. I talk about these shifts on my podcast, DPC Life. In my interviews with new DPC doctors, we talk about things that are hardest for them--marketing, nailing down their ideal client, fine tuning their elevator pitch. Many of these issues seem very personal, which makes them truly universal. Just about all new DPC doctors have these mindset blocks. Take a listen to the coaching calls on the podcast, they may be helpful for you if you're just starting out. I'm also hosting an in-person event in February called DPC Women Connect, at my office in Hickory NC. It's a 1/2 day event for women starting their DPC or just opened in the past 6 months, where we work on that mindset shift from employed physician to entrepreneur. 4 other established DPC founders will join me in sharing experiences and tips on how to make that adjustment and how to avoid the mistakes that we made. We'll also have a DPC focused accountant to walk us through best practices on setting your membership prices. It's a short event, just enough to get you started thinking differently and also to connect you with other DPC doctors in your same stage of growth. The event is filling up quickly, we only have room for 12-15 docs. I would love to see you there!

Has anyone heard of this? Evaluate the "EpicCare Link" Alternative- If your primary goal is just to see your patients' hospital records and not necessarily use Epic as your daily charting EMR, you should look into EpicCare Link. • Cost: Usually Free. • Functionality: It is a web-based portal that allows you to view your patients' hospital results, notes, and discharge summaries in real-time without the heavy cost of a full EMR implementation. • Best for DPCs: Many DPCs use a "DPC-specific" EMR (like Hint, Elation, or Atlas) for their daily work and use EpicCare Link as a window into the local hospital system.

What pushed us to build something different wasn’t a business idea. It was what we were seeing every day in the emergency department. A huge number of patients who come through the ER are there for one simple reason: they don’t have access to primary care. Not because they made poor decisions. Not because they didn’t care. Simply because access didn’t exist. Some arrive poorly treated—not from neglect, but from delay. Others wait four, five, sometimes six hours in an emergency department for minor illnesses that could have been handled safely and efficiently through telemedicine if access were available. That stayed with us. We weren’t trying to replace emergency medicine. We were trying to protect it—by keeping patients out of the ER when they didn’t need to be there, and by creating an economical, accessible way for people to get care earlier. From the beginning, we knew Direct Primary Care was the direction we wanted to go. But we also knew access alone wasn’t enough. Telemedicine had to be part of the solution. Not as a shortcut. Not as a replacement for real care. But as a way to remove unnecessary friction. We don’t believe doctors are “getting it wrong.” Most are overwhelmed—buried under red tape, documentation, and systems that make meaningful care harder every year. The intent is there. The time is not. At the same time, both of us were still working roughly 150 hours a month in the emergency department. We were very intentional about keeping those worlds separate. As tempting as it might have been from a business standpoint, we never pitched our clinic to patients in the ER. That line mattered to us. We wanted this built the right way—or not at all. There are plenty of colleagues who think we’re crazy for taking this path. That’s fine. What’s driven us hasn’t changed: an undying drive not just to be successful, but to create something better. Staying clinically grounded has always mattered. Emergency medicine keeps you honest. It also makes it clear that better access and longer appointments create space—for conversation, for prevention, and for alternatives before defaulting to the usual pharmaceutical path.