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Dr. Paul Thomas on the Soul of Enterprise Podcast

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Dr. Paul Thomas on the Soul of Enterprise

In February 2022, Dr. Paul Thomas was featured in an episode of The Soul of Enterprise with Ron Baker and Ed Kless. In the episode we discuss all things Direct Primary Care! and they plug my book, Startup DPC:

Dr. Paul WROTE THE BOOK on Direct Primary Care. It’s called Startup DPC. Ron recommends this book because you can learn a lot from Dr. Paul’s experience. Here’s the Amazon link.

Here’s the full interview.

Dr. Paul Thomas is a family medicine physician who started Plum Health DPC in 2016, right out of residency. He is a board-certified Family Medicine Physician.

Direct Primary Care (DPC) is a model of primary care that is growing in popularity as an alternative to the traditional fee-for-service model. In a DPC practice, patients pay a monthly or annual membership fee for access to comprehensive primary care services. This fee typically covers all office visits and DPC practices offer at-cost medications, lab work, and imaging services to lower the cost of care for patients.

One of the benefits of DPC is that it allows for more time for the physician to spend with each patient. This is because DPC practices typically have fewer patients than traditional practices, which allows for more personalized care. Additionally, DPC patients often have direct access to their physician through phone or email, which can lead to quicker resolution of health concerns.

Another benefit of DPC is that it can help to lower healthcare costs for patients. By eliminating the need for insurance and reducing the number of unnecessary tests and procedures, DPC can save patients money in the long run.

Dr. Paul Thomas has been offering DPC services for the last 6 years and has seen positive results in the health of his patients. He believes that the DPC model allows for better continuity of care and a stronger physician-patient relationship, which leads to better health outcomes.

A big thanks to Ed Kless and Ron Baker for highlighting the work of Dr. Thomas and Plum Health DPC on The Soul of Enterprise!

-Paul Thomas MD with Startup DPC

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Building Your Personal Brand as a Direct Primary Care Doctor

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As a direct primary care (DPC) doctor, your personal brand is an important part of your professional identity. It helps to set you apart from other family medicine doctors, urgent care centers, and hospital systems in your area, and can attract new patients to your practice. Here are some tips for building and promoting your personal brand:

  1. Define your unique value proposition: What makes you different from other DPC doctors? What are your areas of expertise, and how do you approach patient care differently? By identifying your unique value proposition, you can better communicate the benefits of your practice to potential patients.

  2. Develop a strong online presence: In today's digital age, it's essential to have an online presence that showcases your expertise and personality. This can include a website, blog, and social media profiles. Be sure to regularly update your online profiles with relevant and engaging content, and consider using SEO techniques to increase your visibility.

  3. Engage with your community: Building relationships with your patients and other healthcare professionals in your community can help to establish your personal brand and reputation. Consider speaking at local events, joining professional organizations, or volunteering your time and expertise to organizations in need.

  4. Utilize patient testimonials: Patient testimonials can be a powerful way to showcase the value of your DPC practice. Encourage satisfied patients to share their experiences online, and consider featuring these testimonials on your website or social media profiles.

By following these tips, you can effectively build and promote your personal brand as a DPC doctor. This can help to attract new patients and establish your reputation as a trusted and competent physician.

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Marketing Your Direct Primary Care Practice

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how to market your direct primary care practice

Today I got a wonderful email from a 3rd year resident who wants to start a DPC practice right out of residency. This is commendable! and echoes what I did as a doctor starting a DPC right after residency completion.

He took our Startup DPC course on Writing a Business Plan and his big ask was as follows: “I wrote this long piece of content, what do you think?”

Overall, the content he wrote was good! It explained his ethos and the ethos of his clinic. But, I told him that one piece of content doesn’t move the needle. I asked him:

“can you consistently make a new piece of content each week, every week, for 5 years? That's the real question. I usually spend about 1 hour each week creating a piece of content to support my DPC practice. This consistency is what draws new members to our practice. It's nice to have a short video or blog post that explains your ethos, but can you create a new piece of content each week?”

How to consistently create content

The best way to consistently create content is to take photos of the work you do in your clinic and to take photos of the work you do in the community. Family photos and hyperlocal content does well also.

You should always be thinking about content creation and trying to capture the moments that visually explain what you do in your DPC practice and how you do it and what it means for the community. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words!

Now, take those pictures, add a caption and post them to your favorite social media channels. I use Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok most often, in that order. If you can create an engaging piece of content every month, you will have great success with your marketing efforts for your Direct Primary Care practice.

Examples from Plum HEalth DPC

Here are some examples from my business, Plum Health DPC, from the last 4 months of 2022: 

6 years in business: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cmt81PZL3JB/

Influenza A updates: https://www.instagram.com/p/CmXKf6OvMsu/

House call medicine: https://www.instagram.com/p/ClWl_TrvCC3/ 

Passing of a community physician, friend, and mentor: https://www.instagram.com/p/ClHXhYXvSBa/

Volunteering at a health fair: https://www.instagram.com/p/CjdM4ytL-g3/ 

Teaching other physicians about DPC: https://www.instagram.com/p/CjYJKr_L3Ka/ 

Talking about healthy foods in Detroit: https://www.instagram.com/p/CjBfbA0P7qz/ 

Laceration repair: https://www.instagram.com/p/CiA-KN6O7Or/

Here are a few more blog post ideas for your direct primary care practice:

  1. The benefits of direct primary care for patients

  2. Why you decided to start your direct primary care practice

  3. The differences between direct primary care and traditional primary care

  4. The role of technology in direct primary care (texting patients, emailing patients, video chats with patients)

  5. The importance of preventive care in direct primary care (how you have more time to address preventive medicine issues)

  6. Direct primary care and the opioid crisis (how you can help your patients manage pain more effectively with multiple modalities, rather than with a pill)

  7. Direct primary care and mental health

  8. The impact of direct primary care on healthcare costs

  9. The future of direct primary care

  10. Success stories from patients in a direct primary care practice

Good luck! and keep writing! It helps to keep your audience engaged and it helps to grow your practice when your community knows about you and your ethos.

-Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC

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Are Dachshunds the Unofficial Mascot of the Direct Primary Care Movement?

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Maybe this is the pandemic fatigue talking, but perhaps Dachshunds are the perfect dog breed for an aspiring Direct Primary Care doctor. Perhaps I’m biased, as we have three dachshunds in our family, but I got an amazing email from an aspiring DPC doctor this week that may make the case for dachshunds as the unofficial mascot of the DPC movement.

Here’s our guy, Mr. Fritz, reading his copy of Startup DPC. Fritz is courageous, loyal, and always does the right thing - great qualities for a DPC doctor as well!

According to the internet, the dachshund, is also known as the wiener dog, badger dog, and sausage dog. It’s a short-legged, long-bodied, hound-type dog breed. The Dachshund is described as clever, lively, and courageous to the point of rashness. They’re bred for perseverance, which is another way of saying that they can be stubborn. Dachshunds have a reputation for being entertaining and fearless, but what they want most is to cuddle with their people.

Whenever people pick up a course via our Startup DPC website, I always send a thank you note via email. This time, I got the most delightful response:

Thanks Paul. Not sure if this is an automated email but got your book last year- really well done. Saw you had a dachshund. Here’s a pic of mine reading your book.

Here’s Bella reading Startup DPC - dachshunds are loyal, clever, and lively!

Well, obviously this blog post is just for fun - send your pic of your dog reading a copy of Startup DPC, and we’ll feature them on the next post!
Have a great week,

-Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC

PS. Our Startup DPC book just hit 92 five star reviews on Amazon! Here’s the latest review:

I cannot express enough how helpful this book has been for me and my future plans as a DPC physician. Dr. Thomas explains simply and clearly the steps you need to successfully understand the ins and outs of a DPC practice. Super glad I found and read this book! 10/10 recommend

Our most recent review for the Startup DPC book.

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Paul Thomas MD at Hint Summit 2021

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Paul Thomas, MD will be Presenting at the Hint Summit 2021

This Thursday, I’ll be leading the Direct Primary Care Accelerator at the Hint Summit 2D’21, which will help doctors start and grow their direct primary care practices. I’m really excited to be working with Hint Health and their team to give the best information in a short amount of time to the aspiring and growing DPC doctors. It’s important to know that this conference is FREE for students and residents, so register today!

Dr. Paul Thomas will be speaking at the Hint Summit 2D’21

Here’s what the Hint Team has to say about the upcoming Hint Summit:

Hint Summit 2D'21 is less than a week away, running Thursday and Friday, October 28-29th. Register now and join hundreds of other DPC professionals and business leaders for this year's virtual event! Hint Summit will provide you with the most up-to-date information on alternative primary care payment & delivery models as well as personal stories from pioneers of this movement.

Hint Summit 2D’21 Session Highlights

  • Collaborations Transforming the Health of our Nation, One Community at a Time

  • Forward-looking Care Delivery Models to Serve Your Patients & Grow Your Practice

  • Healthcare House of Cards: A System Ripe for Disruption

  • Advancing Direct Care Models through Employer-Sponsored Plans

  • Digging into the Way We Pay for Healthcare

  • Advanced Primary Care: Integrating Specialties into Your DPC Practice

Audience-favorite DPC Speed Dating is back!

You’ll meet old friends and make new connections through this fun, rapid-fire networking activity.

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How to Find a Media Release Form for your Direct Primary Care Practice

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How to Make a Media Release Form for your Direct Primary Care Practice

While marketing your practice, you may want to share photos of you taking care of your patients. You can get a verbal consent for this, you can get a written consent for this (via email or text message), but it’s probably best to get a written consent to share people’s likeness on your social media channels. Here’s a sample release that I use for this channel, but it would be easy to update it for your patients in your practice.

If you’d like the PDF copy of this information, please send me your email address, and I’ll send it over! Use the subject, “Please send me your media release form!”

HOW CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT STARTING AN DIRECT PRIMARY CARE PRACTICE?

If you enjoyed reading this blog post and if you want to learn more about starting and growing your direct primary care practice, look no further than our book and our courses on how to start and grow your direct primary care practice. We at Startup DPC have begun compiling some of the best content available on this blog, in our book, and in our courses.

The best place to start is to take our Direct Primary Care Business Plan course, available here. From there, you can learn how to attract new patients to your direct primary care practice and how to find the perfect location or build out the practice of your dreams.

Thanks for reading and watching, and best of luck in your direct primary care journey!

-Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC

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How do you grow your Direct Primary Care Practice in the First Year?

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How do you Grow your Direct Primary Care Practice in the First Year?

This week I got a nice email from someone who purchased our Startup DPC book. Here’s what they had to say:

When you first started out, aside from social media, what do you think is the best way to market to people to gain patients? Which population of patients were you most successful with?

There are so many things that you can do to grow your direct primary care practice in the first year. When it comes to marketing, it’s all about delivering a consistent message through the most powerful channels at your disposal.

For me, I started by leveraging my social media channels, engaging in activities that strengthened my personal and business brand, and leveraged that success and momentum to reach out to journalists and media outlets in my community.

Once the word got out about our affordable and accessible healthcare service in Detroit, the patients followed. Social media channels typically reach a smaller audience, but they can reach a larger audience with a viral post or a post that gets shared several times in the community.

Traditional media outlets can amplify your voice and allow you to reach more people in your community. My strategy is to leverage the small wins, which can build toward bigger wins and bigger media coverage opportunities.

Steps We Took to Grow Our Direct Primary Care Practice in the First Year

Here’s what we did when we first started out to grow our direct primary care practice:

Frankly, you need to hustle. One of the things I write in my book is “If you’re bored, you’re doing it wrong.”

You need to take advantage of the time that you have to get the word out about your practice. You need to fill your calendar with meetings - meet with business owners, political leaders, teachers, librarians, human resource directors, and others - to teach people about your new and different business.

I teach people how to do this in my book and in my courses, so if you want to take a deeper dive and start using these powerful tools, I show you exactly how to do it in my courses.

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful day,

-Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC and Plum Health DPC

HOW CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT STARTING AN DIRECT PRIMARY CARE PRACTICE?

If you enjoyed reading this blog post and if you want to learn more about starting and growing your direct primary care practice, look no further than our book and our courses on how to start and grow your direct primary care practice. We at Startup DPC have begun compiling some of the best content available on this blog, in our book, and in our courses.

The best place to start is to take our Direct Primary Care Business Plan course, available here. From there, you can learn how to attract new patients to your direct primary care practice and how to find the perfect location or build out the practice of your dreams.

Thanks for reading and watching, and best of luck in your direct primary care journey!

-Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC

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Leveraging Your Personal Brand to Grow Your Direct Primary Care Practice

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This week was amazing in that I had a post go viral on LinkedIn. I’ve been posting weekly on my social media accounts for the last 3 to 4 years about my work with Direct Primary Care and our practice Plum Health DPC and this is the first time that I’ve had a post go viral.

Here’s the post in full from LinkedIn. If we’re not connected on LinkedIn, please feel free to reach out:

This focus on virality may seem like vanity, but it has important implications for our business at Plum Health and for the broader direct primary care movement. Here’s why going viral is important:

  • builds awareness for my personal and professional brands

  • gives me credibility as an authority on direct primary care, house calls, and health care in Detroit and beyond

  • increases traffic to our website, Plum Health DPC, as that link is at the bottom of the post

  • I can now use this post as a peg to engage with journalists, generating more news, more engagement, and getting more attention for my business

  • this post has increased new membership/sales for our direct primary care practice, Plum Health DPC

Our viral post about making house calls in Detroit has now reached 1.5 million people via LinkedIn

Our viral post about making house calls in Detroit has now reached 1.5 million people via LinkedIn

With that being said, I’m so excited to launch our newest course, Leveraging Your Personal Brand to Grow Your Direct Primary Care Practice. I want to teach you everything I know about starting and growing a Direct Primary Care practice, and one of the most important lessons that I can teach you is how to use your personal brand to grow your practice. You can take the course, here.

HOW CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT STARTING A DIRECT PRIMARY CARE PRACTICE?

If you enjoyed reading this blog post and if you want to learn more about starting and growing your direct primary care practice, look no further than our book and our courses on how to start and grow your direct primary care practice. We at Startup DPC have begun compiling some of the best content available on this blog, in our book, and in our courses.

The best place to start is to take our Direct Primary Care Business Plan course, available here. From there, you can learn how to attract new patients to your direct primary care practice and how to find the perfect location or build out the practice of your dreams.

Thanks for reading and watching, and best of luck in your direct primary care journey!

-Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC

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You Do Not Need an MBA to Start a Successful Direct Primary Care Practice

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Do I Need an MBA to Start a Direct Primary Care Practice?

Many doctors look at the direct primary care model and practice style wistfully. They see the benefits for both patients and doctors and they aspire to become a DPC doctor. However, they think that this is only achievable after becoming an MBA. But…

You DO NOT need an MBA to be successful as a DPC doctor - if you’re smart enough to finish medical school, gritty enough to complete residency, and compassionate enough to choose primary care, then you have ALL of the ingredients of a successful DPC doctor and business owner. #StartupDPC

Direct primary care is all about removing the middle men and the barriers between doctors and patients. What makes this DPC practice model so unique and so powerful is the doctor’s ability to get rid of the unnecessary steps and intermediaries between doctor and patient, delivering a streamlined and intuitive primary care service to patients.

So doctors, I know that it can be a scary leap to go from an employed physician with no training in branding, marketing, sales, web development, search engine optimization, and other essential skills for a successful DPC practice, but you don’t need to hire an MBA to do this. What you can do is read through the available resources in the DPC ecosystem, learn the new skills that you can, and hire individuals for the skills you don’t have, but you do not need to hire an MBA to manage the entire process.

For example, I needed help designing a logo, so I hired a logo designer to help me get this done. That logo designer gets paid a one-time fee, but does not get paid a percentage of my revenue ad infinitum.

If you’re ready to take the next step, pick up a copy of our book, Startup DPC: How to Start and Grow Your Direct Primary Care Practice. Read more after the break.

You DO NOT need an MBA to be successful as a DPC doctor - if you’re smart enough to finish medical school, gritty enough to complete residency, and compassionate enough to choose primary care, then you have ALL of the ingredients of a successful DPC…

You DO NOT need an MBA to be successful as a DPC doctor - if you’re smart enough to finish medical school, gritty enough to complete residency, and compassionate enough to choose primary care, then you have ALL of the ingredients of a successful DPC doctor and business owner #StartupDPC

HOW CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT STARTING A DIRECT PRIMARY CARE PRACTICE?

If you enjoyed reading this blog post and if you want to learn more about starting and growing your direct primary care practice, look no further than our book and our courses on how to start and grow your direct primary care practice. We at Startup DPC have begun compiling some of the best content available on this blog, in our book, and in our courses.

The best place to start is to take our Direct Primary Care Business Plan course, available here. From there, you can learn how to attract new patients to your direct primary care practice and how to find the perfect location or build out the practice of your dreams.

Thanks for reading and watching, and best of luck in your direct primary care journey!

-Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC

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Freeing Doctors from the Fee-for-Service Rat Race

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Doctors Are Stuck in the Fee-for-Service Rat Race

So many doctors are stuck in the unsatisfying fee-for-service rat race and they need a hand getting out of that cycle. However, they don’t know which resources to use and they don’t know the best tools to help them make the transition from fee-for-service to Direct Primary Care.

I’m really proud of the Startup DPC book and the Startup DPC courses that we’ve put together on this site, and how they’ve helped so many doctors take the leap from an unfulfilling fee-for-service practice to an amazing direct primary care experience.

One such doctor just sent me a very kind email and it made my day:

HOW CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT STARTING A DIRECT PRIMARY CARE PRACTICE?

If you enjoyed reading this blog post and if you want to learn more about starting and growing your direct primary care practice, look no further than our book and our courses on how to start and grow your direct primary care practice. We at Startup DPC have begun compiling some of the best content available on this blog, in our book, and in our courses.

The best place to start is to take our Direct Primary Care Business Plan course, available here. From there, you can learn how to attract new patients to your direct primary care practice and how to find the perfect location or build out the practice of your dreams.

Thanks for reading and watching, and best of luck in your direct primary care journey!

-Dr. Paul Thomas with Startup DPC