How one DPC doc got a head start on building his practice

Some young family physicians are so enthusiastic about direct primary care (DPC) they are starting their own DPC practices straight out of residency.

Brad Brown, DO, wasn’t one of them. He started his own DPC during residency—15 months before graduation.

“I do not recommend it,” Brown said of the timing, not the practice model. “It was on accident.”

Launching a DPC practice during residency

Late in his second year at St. Anthony North Family Medicine Residency in Westminster, Colorado, Brown’s classmates were lining up post-residency jobs when he realized he should start laying the groundwork for his own future practice by creating a website and scouting clinic locations.

He noticed a for-lease sign in a commercial building in nearby Eerie, Colorado, and stopped to peek in the window. Brown was surprised to see a leasing agent looking back at him.

“This was during COVID,” he said. “Things were falling through for them, so they were looking for a tenant. They offered me a sweet deal I couldn't say no to. I tried to say no a bunch of times, but they kept making it sweeter. My plan was to start my practice after residency, but the landlord put up a big sign saying, ‘New doctor coming to town’ with my personal cell phone on it.”

Naturally, people started calling. With support from his program, Brown saw his new patients before and after hours and sometimes during his lunch break.

“By the end of residency, I think we had 120 patients signed up,” he said. “I don't recommend that approach to starting a practice. It is a layer of stress that is not necessary, but it got the ball rolling and we've been growing ever since.”

Employed positions growing in DPC

Three months after graduating in 2022, Brown hired one of his classmates. The practice now has three physicians, a physician assistant and a nurse.

“I hired probably a year earlier than I needed to,” Brown said, “but she wanted to do it. I wanted to do it, and it was a ton of fun. It's been a ton of fun ever since.”

Brown said employed DPC roles are becoming more common as the practice model grows.

“When I initially learned about DPC, everyone was starting their own,” he said. “That was the path into DPC. Over the last two years, there's been a switch. There are more practices hiring, so you can find one that fits your vibe, your thinking, your lifestyle goals.”

DPC Summit is the place to learn more

Brown will be one of the speakers July 16-19 at the DPC Summit in New Orleans. His session focuses on how to sign up patients without making it feel like a sales pitch.

“I'm a doctor, not a salesman,” he said. “But anyone who's ever had a job knows that you have to sell and market at some level. A lot of it is understanding sales tactics and applying them to the health world. In DPC specifically, how do you not sound ‘sales-y?’ Early on when you're in the growth mode, you might think, ‘I really could use this family of five. That would be a big deal for us. How do I get them to cross the finish line?’ A lot of it is being genuine, transparent and having good communication skills.”

Brown also will be a panelist for town hall at the DPC Summit. That session will offer an opportunity for the “DPC curious” and those with new practices to ask questions, he said.

“I always tell people, look at who is telling you to do DPC,” he said, “and then look at who is telling you not to do it. The ones swimming in the DPC pool are the ones telling you to jump in. They're the ones saying, ‘Hey, I'm doing it. The water's great. Come on in.’ The ones telling you not to do it are not in DPC, and they're saying, ‘Oh, it's too scary. It's not a good option.’ DPC is a fantastic community. It's like-minded people, and the DPC Summit is incredible.”

Building tech solutions for direct primary care

In addition to his practice, Brown is a medical director for Hint Health, which provides electronic medical records, billing and membership solutions for direct primary care practices. Brown joined Hint’s team when the company purchased an electronic health records system created by Brown and his family in 2022.

“My brother is a software engineer and my wife is the business mind,” Brown said. “She has an MBA. We wanted something we could work on professionally together. In med school, I rotated through a DPC clinic that used a well-known system that is often touted as the best out there. I was using it and thinking, ‘This is the one that everyone uses? There's got to be a better way.’”

Brown, his wife, Dani, and brother Kyle started building their own system for his future practice. During residency, he shared AeroDPC with others at the DPC Summit to get feedback and instead left with customers.

“Six months later we had 80 clinics using it, and we were not scaled for that,” he said. “Hint contacted us, and we joined forces with them because they had the bandwidth and the staff to support that. It's taken off like a rocket.”

Breadth and flexibility drew him to family medicine

Brown said there was never any doubt he would end up in primary care.

“I'm a people person,” said Brown, who also works on an as-needed basis for a local hospital. “I knew I wanted to start my own business, and primary care seemed too good to be true. A family doc came and spoke to my med school class and laid out everything he did: locums, ER, hospitalist, clinic, policy advocacy work. His partner was a family doc who did hospice and palliative care. The breadth of what you could do was eye-opening. I get bored if I do the same thing forever, so the ability to pivot, even mid-career, was attractive to me.”