The data behind the surge in DPC and concierge practices

A growing number of physicians are gravitating toward concierge medicine and direct primary care as they look for more control over schedules, patient relationships and day-to-day practice decisions.

In an interview with Physicians Practice, Jane Zhu, M.D., of Oregon Health & Science University, details the results of a study she led that looked at just how quickly these practice models have grown since 2018.

Physicians Practice: Tell me about the study. What did you find out?

Jane Zhu, M.D.: So, just by way of background, I’m a primary care physician and a health services researcher as well. And as a primary care physician, I’ve been hearing a lot about interest in these new models of care: concierge medicine, which has been going on for quite some time, and then direct primary care, which is often sold as a way for physicians to take medicine back; to have more autonomy, to be able to dictate their own schedules, to have more stable revenue and to have greater access and attention for patients. And so what my team and I did was we used novel web-based directory data. We linked that to national clinician-level data, and we derived a sample of concierge and direct primary care clinicians. And essentially what we found was that between 2018 to 2023 there was a lot of growth in our sample of these practices. This is not a national census by any means, and we’re likely underestimating the true number of these practices and the involved clinicians, but we found that the number of concierge and direct primary care practices grew by over 80%, and the number of clinicians participating in these models grew by just as much. So that was pretty rapid growth that we’re seeing in a short period of time.