You spent a lifetime learning medicine.
You shouldn't have to practice it on someone else's terms.
Twelve-hour shifts. A panel of 3,000 you couldn’t possibly know. Paperwork that outlasts the patient — and a clipboard held by someone who has never met one. You don’t have to quit medicine, climb into management, or open a practice that still answers to the insurer. There’s a fourth door: a concierge telemedicine practice you start from your phone — keep your income while you build it, set your own hours, and answer to your patients, period. Add in-person care later if you ever want it. Or never.
The work didn't change. Who controls it did.
Over the last decade, corporations and private-equity roll-ups bought up independent practices. The doctor who used to own the practice became an employee inside it — handed a patient panel too large to know, a schedule set by someone else, and productivity targets that reward volume over care.
You didn't lose your judgment or your skill. You lost the room to use them. Prior authorizations, RVU quotas, a chart that takes longer than the visit, and a compensation model tied to throughput rather than outcomes. The relationship that drew you to medicine — knowing a patient over time — is the first thing the model squeezes out.
Widely reported industry estimates, shown for context — confirm current figures before publishing.
Start as a telemedicine concierge practice — from your phone, on your schedule.
You don't have to quit, sign a lease, or hang a shingle to begin. The easiest on-ramp is a telemedicine concierge panel you build on the side and run remotely: keep your current income while it grows, then decide how far you want to take it — if at all.
Run it from anywhere
A phone and a secure video link. No waiting room, no build-out, no overhead — and none of the institution's politics.
Set your own hours
A handful of calls and video visits in a day, on the schedule you choose. The rest of the day — your family, your life — is finally yours again.
Keep your income while you build
Start on the side while you keep the job you have. Grow the panel until it stands on its own — no leap of faith, no empty months.
Priced to scale
A suggested $200 per member, per month — recurring, predictable revenue that's yours, and it compounds with every member you add.
Start remote. Grow into a brick-and-mortar practice when you're ready — or never.
Many physicians who start on the phone find the lifestyle is the whole point, and stay there. Others use it as the runway to a full independent practice. Either way the first step is the same — and it's a small one.
Telemedicine is practiced under the same license and standards as any care: you must be licensed where your patient is located, establish a proper physician–patient relationship, and stay within what remote care can safely do. We help you set it up on the right side of those lines. Suggested pricing is illustrative and not a promise of income.
There's a version of this life you haven't been shown.
Before the numbers and the how-to, watch what the other side actually looks like — a physician's real transition from the fifteen-minute treadmill to a practice they own. Watch it with your spouse.
We're putting the finishing touches on it. The full film will play right here.
Two ways to practice the same medicine.
Concierge medicine keeps everything you trained for and changes what surrounds it: your panel size, your calendar, and who the practice answers to.
Traditional insurance-based practice
- × A panel of 2,000+ patients you can't really know
- × 15-minute visits, dictated by the schedule
- × RVU targets — you're measured in volume
- × Someone else sets your pay, protocols, and hours
- × Documentation and prior-auth after the kids are asleep
- × The upside of growth goes to the owner, not to you
- × Loss of autonomy over how you practice
- × A challenged quality of life — for you and for your family
- × Little left to sell at the end — often worth close to its equipment
Physician-controlled, membership-based
- ✓ A right-sized panel — roughly 300–600 patients
- ✓ Visits that take the time the patient needs
- ✓ Revenue from membership, not volume quotas
- ✓ You set the schedule, the model, and the terms
- ✓ Far less overhead spent chasing insurance
- ✓ You own the practice — and its growth
- ✓ A practice you can actually sell — valued on recurring revenue, not scrap value
The difference isn't only how you practice. It's what you can sell.
Ask most physicians what their practice is worth and they've never run the number. It's the question a CPA is built for — and the honest answer is that these two models aren't just different jobs, they're different assets. An insurance-based practice is valued close to its hard assets; a membership practice is valued like the recurring-revenue business it is. Here is what the current market data actually shows.
Valued near its hard assets
- Revenue is volume-dependent and tied to insurance contracts and referral patterns — not to you, and largely non-portable.
- Small independent practices (1–4 providers) list at roughly 0.7–1.2× revenue and 1.5–3.1× owner cash flow.2
- The goodwill is thin: the smallest solo practices frequently change hands for little more than their equipment.
Valued as recurring revenue
- Contractual, high-retention memberships mean predictable cash flow — priced like a subscription business, not a clinic.
- Higher margins (cash pay, far less insurance overhead) lift the EBITDA that the multiple is applied to — the premium compounds.
- A transferable, financeable book of business — an asset you can sell, not just a job you eventually walk away from.
Same physician, same medicine. One model leaves you a job that ends the day you stop; the other builds a business you can sell. The premium compounds on both sides of the equation — a cleaner, higher EBITDA and a richer multiple applied to it — which is exactly why the structure around the practice, not just the practice itself, is what protects the number. That structuring is the work this project exists to do.
References & the best current reports
- FOCUS Investment Banking — Physician Practice M&A Multiples (2026). Primary-care add-on deals ≈3–6× EBITDA; platforms 8–12×, low-teens for scaled value-based groups.
- HealthFMV — Valuing Primary Care Practices in 2025. Small independent practices ≈0.7–1.2× revenue, 1.5–3.1× owner cash flow (SDE), 3–8× EBITDA.
- Sofer Advisors — Medical Practice Valuation Multiples Guide 2025–2026.
- Evergreen — Concierge Medicine Valuations Are Rising — Here's Why. Membership practices trading ≈6–10× EBITDA on recurring-revenue strength.
- Strategic Medical Brokers — How to Value a Concierge / Membership-Based Practice. Method: adjusted-EBITDA income approach; recurring revenue as the core value driver.
- Professional appraisal datasets used in a formal valuation — BVR DealStats, the IBBA Market Pulse, and MGMA benchmark data.
Figures are market-observed ranges reported by the sources above, shown for context — this is not an appraisal and not a promise of any particular sale price. Actual value depends on specialty, market, margins, membership retention, and how the practice is structured. Confirm current multiples with a qualified valuation professional, and against primary transaction databases such as BVR DealStats and the IBBA Market Pulse, before relying on them. There is no single published report that compares the two models head-to-head; the contrast above is drawn from the separate primary-care and concierge sources cited.
Four things you get back.
Autonomy
You own the practice and the decisions inside it — the model, the panel, the schedule, the standard of care.
Time
Fewer patients, real visits. The time to think, to listen, and to practice the medicine you trained for.
Income you control
A predictable membership base instead of the insurance treadmill — and the upside of the practice is yours.
The relationship
Knowing your patients again — continuity, trust, and the reason most of us went into medicine in the first place.
Leaving is a decision. This is the path.
Most physicians don't stay because they love the model — they stay because the switch feels unknowable. It isn't. It's a sequence, and it's been walked before.
See the numbers
Model your panel, your membership revenue, your overhead, and the runway you'd need — before you commit to anything.
Plan the switch
Timing, your patients, your contract and non-compete, and the concierge or direct-care model that fits your specialty.
Structure it right
Entity, agreements, compliance, billing, and tax — the business scaffolding, handled with the right professionals.
Open your doors
Launch the practice that's yours, with the systems to run it lean and the support to keep it steady.
The Co-op — national-quality marketing without the national-quality bill.
There are established firms that do this well — you'll find a directory of them further down the page, under Transition. They're talented and capable, but they carry heavy overhead, and their pricing shows it. Here is the other way: an organic content engine and a cost-sharing co-op that put real advertising within reach of a solo practice — built and produced lean, and priced like it.
National-quality content. Hyper-local distribution.
Two moving parts, working as one. Video in your real voice does the convincing — short clips earn attention, longer pieces earn trust. Then precise local targeting puts that content in front of the people inside your catchment, and nobody else. Great content with no local reach is a hobby; local reach with weak content is noise. You need both.
Short-form video
15–60 second clips that earn attention and show your personality — the “text your doctor at 8am and get seen” moment, myth-busting, why you left the system.
Reach & discoveryLong-form video
The trust engine. A day-in-the-life, your philosophy of care, patient stories with consent — the piece someone watches before handing over a yearly membership.
Trust & conversionLocal targeting
We put the content in front of your ring — and no one else. A pin on your practice, a sensible radius, and lifestyle signals, so every dollar stays inside your market.
The right neighborsCompliant by design
Targeted by geography and lifestyle — never by anyone's health status — on consent-based, HIPAA-eligible channels. Built by a CPA who keeps professionals inside the lines.
Safe to runNot every platform can aim this tightly.
A twenty-mile ring is a real technical constraint, and the platforms differ a lot in how precisely they can hit it. We pick the mix that fits your map — here's the current landscape.
Facebook & Instagram
The workhorse. True radius and pin-drop targeting — drop a pin on the practice, set the ring, layer age and lifestyle. Reels give short-form reach with the same precision.
Nextdoor
The sleeper for concierge. Hyperlocal, by neighborhood, skewing older, homeowner, and affluent — and “the neighborhood's doctor” is a frame that lands hard here.
YouTube & Google
Where the long-form lives and where intent gets caught — the person typing “concierge doctor near me.” Radius targeting works here too. High-intent, high-value.
TikTok
Great for reach and personality, blunt for tight local — no radius targeting, only city or zip. We use it for organic presence, not surgical local spend.
Where you see patients is where we spend the dollars.
Your twenty-mile home base is the primary campaign. See patients in a town fifty miles out on Thursdays? That town becomes its own targeted campaign, with creative that names it. Add a plane and you add more pins. Your geography is a set of dials — turn each one up or down.
A war chest no solo practice could fund alone.
The idea is old and it works: a group of independent operators each puts a set amount into a shared advertising fund, and together they buy reach none of them could afford one at a time. For a field of solo concierge doctors spread across different towns, it's close to ideal — you're not competitors, so pooling is pure upside.
You contribute
A flat amount on a set schedule — by territory or tier. Not a cut of your revenue, not a fee per patient. A predictable line item.
We produce & place
The pooled fund produces the video content and buys the local advertising — at a production and media scale a single practice can't touch.
Leads route by territory
Interest from a given area goes to the physician whose territory it is — assigned by map, never sold by the head.
We manage it
Medicine on Your Terms administers the co-op for a flat management fee — the books, the campaigns, the reporting — so you just practice.
A long time ago, in a business with nothing to do with medicine, I saw firsthand what a marketing co-op can do.
I was part of a group selling a consumer product, and we ran a shared advertising fund. We each put in a set amount every week, pooled it, and bought radio at a scale none of us could have afforded alone. It drove real business, fast — and the marketing cost was a fraction of what it returned. It worked for one simple reason: the math of pooling beats going it alone, every time.
I'll tell you how that story ended, too, because it's the more important half. The company behind that product ignored letters from the federal government — until the government stopped writing and shut them down. The party was over overnight. That lesson stuck harder than the profits ever did. So we build the exact opposite way: inside the compliance lines, structured by people who know them, reviewed by counsel before a dollar moves. If a regulator ever writes to us, our attorneys answer that day.
That was a different industry and a different product. It is not a prediction of what any medical practice will earn — your results depend on your market, your specialty, and the work you put in. What carries over is only the structure: pooled dollars buy reach that solo dollars can't.
Prefer to go it alone? You don't have to join the co-op to work with us. If you'd rather be the only concierge voice in your market, we'll produce content for your practice alone and run your own campaign, targeted to your territory — you own and fund the ad spend, and the exclusivity is yours. The co-op is the affordable path; a solo campaign is the exclusive one. Either way, the content and the targeting are ours to build.
Built to keep you — and your license — safe.
Medicine has rules that consumer marketing doesn't — fee-splitting laws, anti-kickback rules, corporate-practice doctrine. A co-op is entirely workable inside them, but only if it's built correctly from the first day. It's built by a CPA who has spent a career keeping professionals on the right side of exactly these lines.
- ✓ A flat-contribution cost-share, never a share of your patient revenue — the distinction the fee-splitting laws turn on.
- ✓ No per-patient or percentage fees — the arrangements that draw anti-kickback scrutiny are the ones we deliberately avoid.
- ✓ Physician-controlled and administered for a flat management fee — the medicine, and the money from it, stay yours.
- ✓ Leads routed by geography, not brokered by the head.
- ✓ Patient messaging on consent-based, HIPAA-eligible channels; ad targeting by place and lifestyle, never by health status.
- ✓ Structured and papered with healthcare counsel, reviewed state by state before launch.
This is a description of how the program is designed, not legal advice. Concierge medicine, direct primary care, marketing cooperatives, and physician fee arrangements are governed by state-specific laws that vary widely; the structure is confirmed with qualified counsel in your state before you join.
Patient communication — access your patients can trust.
Membership medicine lives on one thing: a patient — and their family — can actually reach their doctor. Start with a proven, HIPAA-compliant app today, and let the concierge relationship do the part no software can: keep whole families close to the ones they love.
This is the access you'd be able to offer.
In a concierge practice, a patient who isn't feeling well doesn't sit in a phone queue or wait a week for a slot — they text their own doctor's office and get seen. Here's the kind of exchange your patients would have. It's the medicine you trained for, with the room to actually practice it.
Sample conversation for illustration — names, timing, and details are fictional. A live version runs on a HIPAA-eligible, consent-based messaging platform, with clinical triage handled by the practice's care team.
Four HIPAA-compliant apps a physician can trust now.
A short list of established, independent products built for exactly this. Each signs a BAA and is already in daily use by independent practices. They differ in emphasis — we'd help you match the one that fits how you want to work.
Spruce Health
HIPAA · BAA includedThe all-in-one.
The most complete single platform for a small practice — the closest thing on this list to everything in one place.
- Secure two-way texting, plus phone with voicemail transcription and e-fax
- Photo, video, audio, and file attachments — the “here's my foot” message, natively
- Secure video visits from anywhere
- Shared team inbox with tasks, internal notes, and paging
Best fit: a concierge practice that wants one tool to run all patient communication.
OhMD
HIPAA · BAATexting that replaces your cell number.
Built and marketed for concierge and direct-primary-care practices specifically — the access promise, made safe.
- Secure patient texting instead of handing out a personal number
- Video visits and telehealth
- Conversations auto-documented, with EHR integration and PDF export
- Availability settings so you're not tethered around the clock
Best fit: a doctor who wants the concierge “text me” feel with the least setup.
Klara
HIPAA · BAAMessaging plus front-desk workflow.
Strongest when there's a staff member or team routing messages, scheduling, and intake — not just the doctor.
- Two-way messaging across text, web chat, and voicemail in one thread
- Telehealth with a virtual waiting room
- Self-scheduling, automated reminders, and digital intake forms
- Smart routing to the right person, plus EHR integrations
Best fit: a practice with front-desk support and an EHR to plug into.
Doximity Dialer
HIPAA · free for MDsFree, trusted calls & video.
Not a full messaging suite — a zero-cost, high-credibility way to call and video-visit patients. A great place to begin.
- Call patients showing your practice number, not your cell
- Browser-based video visits — no app for the patient to download
- Free for verified physicians; no PHI stored in the call log
- Named #1 telehealth video platform in the KLAS report
Best fit: starting with calls and video today at no cost, paired with a messaging app above.
These are independent, third-party products, described from their own current materials to help you compare — not endorsements or paid placements, and we're not affiliated with any of them. Features, pricing, and BAA terms change; confirm the current Business Associate Agreement and capabilities directly with the vendor before you rely on one. Our role is simply to help you choose and set up the right fit for your practice.
The real advantage was never an app. It's a doctor who cares for the whole family.
The proven apps above handle access — and honestly, they handle it well. What no app can do is the thing a concierge physician does naturally: know the whole family, not just the patient in the bed. When one trusted doctor looks after the parents, the kids, and the grandparent down the hall in a facility, care stops being a string of disconnected visits and becomes something a family can actually feel.
Treat the family, not the chart
A concierge panel is small enough that one physician can truly know an entire family — and catch the problems of an aging parent that a fifteen-minute visit never would.
Proactive by training
Part of how we help you build the practice is a posture the system trains out of doctors: reach out first — especially for the ones who can't always advocate for themselves.
Nobody gets forgotten
A parent in a facility should never feel out of sight. A shared photo, a two-minute call, a hello passed along — connection, even when the family can't be in the room.
Tools that already exist
You don't need us to invent anything. Plenty of trusted apps already keep families in touch — we help you fold that into the care you give, and we widen what we recommend as we vet more.
A wave from a grandfather in his room, reaching his family at dinner that night — and their hello coming back.
Nobody has to invent that moment. It only has to be encouraged — by a doctor who knows the whole family and the everyday tools that already connect them. That's what a concierge practice makes room for, and it costs nothing to start.
Why it matters — and why we keep it simple:
- ✓ An older patient in an institution who hears from the people who love them — even briefly, even remotely — is a patient who knows they're still here, and still cared for.
- ✓ The physician who treats the whole family is the one who notices a quiet decline early — because they're already in the loop, not called in at the crisis.
- ✓ Family communication touches protected health information, so it stays on consent-based, HIPAA-eligible tools — the same careful standard as the rest of your practice.
- ✓ We are deliberately not building software. Established apps do this well today; our job is to help you use them — and to grow the list as we research more — not to put your practice on an unproven platform.
“This isn't a shortcut, and it isn't for everyone. It's for the physician who's done being measured in volume, ready to own the practice, and willing to do the work of the change.”
If that's you, the door was never locked — you were just never shown it was there.
Fifty years as a concierge CPA taught me what makes a practice worth owning.
I’m not a physician. But I’ve spent my whole career doing for business owners what I want you to be free to do for patients — know them, counsel them honestly, and change their lives over years, instead of processing them and moving on.
Here is the thing no one tells you in professional school: the deliverable is the smallest part of the job. The tax return, like the fifteen-minute visit, is just the receipt. The real work — the part that changes a life — is the relationship around it.
For fifty years I’ve been what you might call a concierge CPA. My clients never really hired me to fill in forms; by April the return was almost an afterthought, because the whole year had already been engineered. What they paid for — and what I loved — was the counsel: sitting with a person and their whole family, year after year, telling them the truth about their money, their business, and their life. How to build something that lasts. How to legally keep far more of what they earn, using strategies a form-filler would never raise. How to find some balance instead of grinding themselves into the ground. Some of those families I’ve now advised across four generations. It is the most satisfying work I have ever done.
That is exactly why I am so passionate about this for you. A concierge telemedicine physician gets to practice medicine the way I’ve practiced accounting — with time. Time to truly know the patient and their family. Time to guide the primary-care doctor on what should happen next, and make sure it does. Time to talk honestly about the options a rushed, insurance-bound system never brings up — the newer, preventive, and elective approaches insurance won’t pay for but that might genuinely change a patient’s life, weighed openly and honestly, together. You stop being a processor of visits and become what you trained to be: a trusted advisor who transforms lives.
And here is what I most want you to have, because I’ve lived it: when you practice this way, everyone wins. The patient gets a healthier, more balanced life. So does the physician — real income, real hours, real pride in the work. My job is the scaffolding that makes it hold: the entity, the tax, and the economics, sequenced so the switch is safe. The medicine is yours. Helping you build a practice you’d be proud to hand your children — that is mine.
A word about the jaguar beside me.
If you've read this far, you already know I don't do things the expected way — and I'm not going to start on my own About page. So let me introduce you to Bond.
The jaguar has been my spirit animal for a long time. In the old cultures of the Americas, the jaguar was the guardian who moved between worlds — the one who watched over people in the dark and carried them safely toward the light. That's quietly been my work for physicians for fifty years, so it never surprised me that he'd be the one standing beside me.
Bond is his name, and he has a story worth hearing. Three thousand years ago, Bond was a god, and his whole purpose was to care for human beings. Time took his divinity — today he's mortal, a talking jaguar walking the earth like the rest of us. But he never lost the calling. Now he offers himself in service to the people who do what he once did: the doctors, the nurses, the healers who look after human beings every single day. He's grateful to them. He watches over them. And he'd ask the rest of us to do the same.
I'll let him tell it in his own voice. It's the most beautiful three minutes on this site.
Bond · in his own voice
Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe, and enthusiastically act upon must inevitably come to pass.
Private equity is buying the practice of medicine. Concierge care is how physicians buy it back.
A different model — not a promise of any particular income. Your results depend on your specialty, your market, and the work you put in.
Don't take our word for it. Hear it from the doctors who did it — and from the people who criticize it.
This is the most important part of the site, and the one we built most carefully. Below are real physicians telling the story of leaving insurance-based or hospital-employed medicine for a membership practice — the good days and the hard ones — alongside the honest case against the model. Nothing here is cherry-picked. Take your time. Watch it with your spouse. Then decide what's right for you.
Why we include the critics. A serious decision deserves the whole picture. You'll find supporters and skeptics here on purpose — coverage of access and equity concerns, the effect on the wider system, and why some of these practices fail. If the model can't survive an honest look, it isn't right for you. We think it can — but that's your call to make, not ours.
In their own voices, on camera.
Most of the honest, first-person "I left insurance" stories come from the Direct Primary Care (DPC) world — the strictly-membership, no-insurance model. Start here.
My DPC Story
The single richest source here: an entire interview series of physicians describing why and how they left insurance-based or employed medicine for direct primary care — including the awkward parts, like telling family, partners, and patients. Dozens of episodes to choose from.
Watch the channel →My DPC Story — Episode Library
Every episode, searchable, with written summaries — so you can skim the stories that match your specialty or situation before you spend time watching.
Browse the library →Dr. Josh Umbehr, AtlasMD — on Direct Primary Care
The movement's most quoted voice on why he built a cash-only primary care practice. Energetic and opinionated — big-picture vision more than day-to-day nuance, and a good sense of the model's ambition.
Watch →Explosive growth of doctors choosing direct primary care
A short news-style look at why physicians are moving to the membership model, and what patients get for the fee. Good five-minute orientation before the longer stories.
Watch →How direct primary care can revolutionize health care
A physician's start-to-finish argument for the model — the "why this matters" version, useful for a spouse or partner who's newer to the idea.
Watch →Action Medicine DPC
A working DPC doctor's own channel — the ground-level reality of running a membership practice, not a highlight reel. Useful for seeing the operations behind the story.
Watch the channel →First-person accounts, in writing.
Some doctors tell it best on the page. These are firsthand write-ups and reported stories — quick to read, easy to share with your spouse.
How my life changed: transitioning to direct primary care
A physician's own before-and-after — what actually changed in the day, the income, and the family life after leaving the insurance treadmill.
Read →Why doctors are leaving insurance-based care
The reasons behind the move, from a physician-writer's chair — concise and candid about what pushes doctors out.
Read →Making the switch from hospital to concierge practice
The concierge (not DPC) path, from a doctor who left hospital employment — a useful contrast to the DPC-heavy stories above.
Read →Dr. Lori Martell: switching to direct primary care
One physician's transition told through an interview — the practical decisions and how the practice felt afterward. (Note: Hint is a DPC software vendor.)
Read →Dr. Christopher Garofalo: walking away from employment
A practice-owner's playbook for leaving employed medicine — strong on the business and mindset of going independent.
Listen →Transitioning to Direct Primary Care
A practical, professional walkthrough of the switch from the American Academy of Family Physicians — measured, not promotional.
Read →Why some physicians are opting out of insurance for membership care
Local journalism following real doctors in one region making the move — grounded, on-the-ground perspective.
Read →Books by doctors who did it.
Nothing lends credibility like a physician who wrote the book — sometimes literally. Every title below was verified against public booksellers before it went here. Nine are physician-authored and squarely about the move to direct primary care or concierge medicine; the final three are labeled honestly — two are by physicians but broader in scope, and one is by a concierge-industry editor, not a doctor.
The Official Guide to Starting Your Own Direct Primary Care Practice
The field's best-known step-by-step manual for opening a DPC practice, from the founder of Authentic Medicine. The one most new DPC doctors start with.
Find the book →Slowing the Churn in Direct Primary Care (While Also Keeping Your Sanity)
The follow-up: how to keep members — and your sanity — once the doors are open. Retention and day-to-day reality, not just the launch.
Find the book →Startup DPC: How to Start and Grow Your Direct Primary Care Practice
A build-and-grow playbook from a Detroit family physician who documented his own launch openly. Pairs with his blog and podcast of the same name.
Find the book →Direct Primary Care: The Cure for Our Broken Healthcare System
The argument for the model from the same physician — why direct primary care fixes what insurance-based practice broke, for doctors and patients alike.
Find the book →Concierge Medicine: A New System to Get the Best Healthcare
One of the earliest concierge physicians makes the case for the retainer model and tells how he built his own practice. The concierge (vs. DPC) side of the shelf.
Find the book →Sparks Start Fires: A Guide for Dreamers Who Are Also Doctors
Part memoir, part pep talk from the founder of sparkMD — written for the physician who quietly dreams of building something of their own.
Find the book →Magic, Pixie Dust, and Miracles: A Guide for Direct Primary Care and Employers
A DPC physician's guide with a focus on working with employers to fund memberships — one of the most practical growth channels for a new practice.
Find the book →Private Practice Solution: Reclaiming Physician Autonomy and Restoring the Doctor-Patient Relationship
Two physicians on taking back independence and the doctor–patient relationship across private-practice models — direct and membership care included.
Find the book →Living and Practicing by Design: Saving the Hearts That Care for Our Lives
A direct-care physician on designing a practice — and a life — around the patient relationship rather than volume and the clock.
Find the book →The Long Fix: Solving America's Health Care Crisis with Strategies that Work for Everyone
Broader than concierge: a physician-executive's plan to fix how American health care pays for care. Useful context for why the model exists — not a personal-transition story.
Find the book →Pet Goats & Pap Smears: 101 Medical Adventures to Open Your Heart & Mind
From the leader of the "ideal medical care" movement — physician-designed community clinics. Adjacent to DPC's reclaim-your-practice spirit rather than a concierge how-to.
Find the book →No More Waiting Rooms
A patient-experience playbook for membership practices. Included for completeness, and flagged honestly: the author is a concierge-industry journalist and editor, not a doctor.
Find the book →How we vetted this list. Each title and author was confirmed against public booksellers (Amazon, Goodreads, AbeBooks, and others) as of July 2026 — nothing here is invented, and we stopped at the titles we could verify rather than padding the count. Editions, availability, and prices change over time. Links go to third-party retailers and are neither endorsements nor affiliate links, and listing a book is not agreement with everything in it.
The case against — and the hard questions.
We put this here on purpose. These are critical, skeptical, and cautionary pieces — on access and equity, the effect on the broader system, the private-equity money moving in, and why some of these practices fail. Read them before you decide, not after.
The Concierge Catch: better access for a few, disrupts care for many
The central criticism, well-reported: when a doctor downsizes to a membership panel, the patients who don't pay have to find new care. Sit with this one.
Read →Better access for patients who pay, but disrupts care for many
The same trade-off on national television, with patient voices on the losing side of the switch. Worth seeing how the public hears this.
Watch / read →Doctors switching to concierge medicine may worsen physician shortages
The macro critique: smaller panels mean each doctor sees fewer patients, straining an already short-staffed system. The strongest societal argument against the trend.
Read →Hospitals cash in on a private-equity-backed concierge trend
A reminder that "concierge" isn't automatically physician-freedom — big systems and private equity are moving into it too. Useful context for why the ownership structure matters.
Read →In rural Massachusetts, weighing the trade-offs of concierge medicine
An even-handed look at both patients and physicians in one community — the trade-offs stated plainly, without a thumb on the scale.
Read →Why direct primary care practices fail
The most useful cautionary read for you: an insider's list of how these practices go wrong — undated finances, too-fast growth, weak marketing. Failure modes to avoid.
Read →Pondering direct care? 13 potential benefits and drawbacks
A straight ledger of upsides and downsides from the AMA — a level-headed checklist to weigh against the enthusiasm elsewhere on this page.
Read →Concierge medicine: exclusive access or equity dilemma?
A physician wrestling with the ethics out loud — the argument doctors have with themselves before making the move.
Read →A fair way to reach your decision.
- ✓ Watch and read both sections. The stories and the criticism. If the model only looks good when you ignore the critics, it isn't the right choice — and it will hold up better if it survives them.
- ✓ Do it with your spouse or partner. This is a household decision as much as a career one. Watch a few together and compare reactions.
- ✓ Know the difference between the two models. Direct primary care is strictly membership, no insurance; concierge often layers a membership fee on top of insurance billing. Most of the candid stories here are DPC — and for a primary-care physician, the clean, insurance-free structure is the one we favor.
- ✓ These are other people's practices and markets. Their numbers aren't yours. Your specialty, your city, and the work you put in decide your result.
- ✓ Before any final decision, talk to a healthcare attorney licensed in your state — including about whether to go strictly membership or membership alongside insurance. That choice carries real legal and tax implications, and it's worth getting right before you build.
About these links. Every item above is a third-party website, video, or article that we do not own or control, offered here so you can research honestly — not as an endorsement, and we are not affiliated with or paid by any of them. Several are openly critical of the concierge and direct-care models; that is intentional. External content can change or move over time, and the views expressed are the authors' own. This page is educational and is not medical, legal, tax, or financial advice.
Other ways to make the switch.
You don't have to do this with us. If you'd rather hand the whole conversion to an established firm — or keep your practice and simply buy the marketing — here are the main players, shown honestly so you can compare what they do and what they charge.
Turnkey conversion partners
They convert your practice and market it to bring members — a hands-off path where an established firm handles the switch and the patient acquisition for you. These are independent companies, listed for comparison.
MDVIP
Conversion partnerFranchise / revenue share
The largest membership-primary-care network — reported 1,400+ affiliated physicians across about 45 states. Handles the conversion, national and local marketing, and member acquisition; panels are capped around 600.
Pricing: partnership model; MDVIP shares in membership revenue. Patient fee reported ~$1,800–$5,000/yr by market. Visit →
SignatureMD
Conversion partnerRoyalty share
Helps independent physicians add a membership tier while continuing to bill insurance. Provides marketing, technology, and training to launch and grow the panel.
Pricing: takes a royalty share of membership revenue; patient fee ~$1,500–$2,000/yr. Visit →
Specialdocs Consultants
Conversion partnerCustom engagement
Practice-management consultants offering a turnkey conversion playbook plus ongoing operational and marketing support for independent physicians going membership-based.
Pricing: custom per-physician engagement; not published. Visit →
Castle Connolly Private Health Partners
Conversion partnerCustom engagement
Positions itself as a physician-equity conversion specialist — you own and build equity in a concierge practice, with launch support and marketing.
Pricing: custom per-physician engagement; not published. Visit →
Concierge Choice Physicians
Conversion partnerProgram administration
Pioneer of the “hybrid” concierge program: offer a concierge tier to some patients while continuing insurance-based care for the rest. Works with solo doctors and large groups.
Pricing: administers the program; pricing not published. Visit →
These are independent, third-party companies, listed for comparison from their own public materials — not endorsements, and we are not affiliated with any of them. Pricing shown is what the company advertises or what public sources report, and it varies widely by market, specialty, and package; confirm current pricing, terms, and business-model details directly with each company before relying on them.
Hire an established marketing firm
Unlike the turnkey partners above, these firms don't convert or take a share of your practice — you keep and own it, and they run the marketing for a fee. A straightforward snapshot of agencies operating in this space today; pricing is shown where a company publishes it.
Healthcare Success
Marketing agencyCustom proposal
Full-service concierge and membership-medicine marketing: brand strategy, web design, SEO, paid media, content, and analytics. Works with groups, PE-backed platforms, and health systems.
Pricing: custom — request a proposal. Visit →
PatientGain
Marketing agencyFrom ~$999 / month
Digital marketing for DPC and concierge practices: AI-driven patient engagement, local SEO, Google and Facebook advertising, reputation management, and texting/chat tools.
Pricing: advertised from ~$999/month; Gold / Platinum / Platinum+ tiers. Visit →
Direction.com
Marketing agencyCustom
Concierge-focused SEO, PPC, AI-search visibility, and website design; reporting is built around consultation requests and enrollments rather than just clicks.
Pricing: custom — book a consultation. Visit →
ConsultingMDs
Marketing agency“No cost to practice” (verify)
Concierge marketing across branding, Google and Facebook ads, reputation, and content, plus offline corporate outreach and community partnerships.
Pricing: advertises a “no cost to practice” model — confirm how they are compensated. Visit →
Hint Health
Platform + marketingCustom
A DPC platform — membership billing and EHR — paired with DPC-specific marketing services to help practices grow their membership.
Pricing: custom — contact for a quote. Visit →
These are independent, third-party companies, listed for comparison from their own public materials — not endorsements, and we are not affiliated with any of them. Pricing shown is what the company advertises or what public sources report, and it varies widely by market, specialty, and package; confirm current pricing, terms, and any business-model details directly with each company before relying on them.
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