Be a mentor; be a mentee.

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Farrago has been posting about how awesome the DPC Summit has been. He’s underselling. Full stop. When I started my DPC journey, Doug told me I needed to attend the Summit. I waited until 3 years into my DPC journey to attend my first Summit. That was a BIG mistake. Doug told me it’d be like no other medical conference I’d ever attended. There’d be happy and helpful folks. Yada, yada… I thought it was hyperbole.

I was surprised to find mainly two groups of folks at my first Summit: those happy to be free of our broken, fee-for-service, third-party payer “health care” system and those desperately seeking a way out because they couldn’t stand it anymore and they knew that they needed to do something different. They were checking out DPC but had the appropriately skeptical attitude, “This seems too good to be true.”

At the first lunch, I found myself at a table of ten and the only one practicing DPC. Questions and some fantastic discussion ensued. Jeff Davenport, the current DPC Alliance president, walked by and patted me on the shoulder, smiled wryly, and informed me that I was now “an expert” who needed to keep doing what I was doing.

Right. Three years in. “Expert”. Of course, there were others who had been doing this for a decade, but a lot of us on the journey are just a few years in. Turns out that one learns a lot in 3 years of DPC, more than one may realize… It was so enjoyable to see the light bulbs, the new smiles, the hope, etc. as we discussed all sorts of myths, concerns, strategies and (yep) struggles of starting a DPC journey.

Last year, I saw the DPC Alliance put out a call for mentors. I took the plunge. Same great experience. “What’s involved with mentoring?”, you may wonder. Well, you get paired with 3-4 mentees anywhere from med students to fellowship trained, decade in the fight colleagues seeking to learn more about DPC. An introductory email. Meeting a few times to answer questions, smash assumptions and strategize for their success and help connect them with other resources and folks. The conference is designed to have plenty of breaks for this.

This is my third conference and second year volunteering as a mentor. It’s so encouraging seeing these folks leave the conference with rubber meets road next steps, new connections, and most importantly, a “Hell yes, I can do this!” swag in their step.

Take homes for those on their DPC journey:

  1. Join the DPC Alliance. There may be other big name national organization sponsors, but the DPC Alliance is the heart of the mission of this conference and sets the vibe. They organize the “formal” (I use that term very lightly) mentor/mentee program.
  2. Be a mentor. There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that you’re doing DPC without some guidance AND there’s no scarcity (except of other docs doing DPC). You aren’t going to run out of patients. If an average DPC practice is ~600 patients, the city and surrounding suburbs I’m in would need just over 300 DPC docs. We have 5 (excluding a few DINOs 😉 And, you know and have learned more than you realize. Some failures, some successes.

Take homes for those contemplating or newly into DPC:

  1. Join the DPC Alliance. They have scads of resources to really help you.
  2. If you haven’t been to a DPC Summit, get to one. You’ll be anywhere from pleasantly surprised to outright flabbergasted at the DPC communities’ passion and willingness to help; it’s a generous community. Repeated from the main podium: A rising tide lifts all ships. There’s no scarcity.
  3. Ask to be mentored. No shame. No embarrassment. No stupid questions. There’s a lot of misinformation, disinformation, myth, gaslighting and naysaying out there about what DPC is, what it’s trying to do, how it should be done, etc. Plenty of friendly folks to help you get started and progress on your journey. You don’t have to wait until the next DPC Summit – the Alliance has opportunities all year long.

Disclaimer: I get nothing from the DPC Alliance for plugging them. (Although I would not be opposed to a conversation! 🙂 I’ve just found them to be such a fantastic resource. Just one beggar showing another where to find some bread…

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About Dan Swartz, MD

Dr. Daniel J. Swartz, M.D. (Dr. Dan) earned his Bachelor of Individualized Studies in Biology, Chemistry and Kinesiology (Exercise Science), summa cum laude, from the University of Minnesota in 1996. He earned his Medical Degree, summa cum laude, from the University of Iowa College of Medicine in 2002. His residency training occurred at Mercy Medical Center – North Iowa in Mason City, IA. Dr. Dan is board certified in Family Medicine and holds active medical licenses in the commonwealth of VA and the state of MN. After residency, Dr. Dan practiced “full scope” Family Medicine with Olmsted Medical Center in Rochester, MN for over a decade. While there, he joined the nonprofit Season’s Hospice as an on-call physician. He later joined the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN as a consultant and instructor in the Mayo Clinic Medical School. Dr. Dan and his family moved to Forest, VA in 2017 to join the faculty of Liberty University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine as an Assistant Professor of Family Medicine. In connection with his academic appointment at LUCOM, he was deployed to the Lynchburg Family Medicine Residency where he was awarded the rank of core faculty with the residency and earned adjunct faculty positions with the UVA and VCU Schools of Medicine during his time in academic medicine. In addition to practicing at Forest Direct Primary Care, which he purchased from Douglas Farrago, MD, he continues to serve as an on-call hospice physician for Season’s Hospice in Rochester, MN.