Two massive physician surveys (over 500,000) were sent out recently and this is what they found:
As of August 2020, according to two surveys, approximately 14.5% of independent physician practices had either temporarily or permanently closed and roughly 7% of the remaining independent physicians anticipated the closure of their practices before the fall of 2021.
Wow. That’s a whopping 21.5% by this fall!
Well, what about membership based practices?
Results for membership-based practices (e.g. concierge and direct primary care) within the cohort included:
- 0% closure rate
- 24% reported higher revenues in 2020 than any prior year
- 40% reported that their revenue had not been impacted by the pandemic
In contrast, 76% of the insurance-based practices in the cohort suffered losses in revenue, and only 5% were able to achieve growth in 2020.
Here is a quote from the article:
“The performance of membership practices in 2020 speaks shines a light on something that is well understood by these physicians,” said Blue. “The structure of the financial relationship sets the stage for the larger relationship between the practice and the patient. Fee-for-service is transactional. Membership implies a continuous, active relationship.”
To be fair, this article written in Medical Economics was biased by the person writing it because he is the CEO of a big concierge chain. That being said, it is still pretty impressive that DPC docs made it through the pandemic with flying colors. This is what I have been hearing all along inside the DPC community as well.