Every one of you who starts out needs to get a local story in your paper. It gives you credibility. It is free marketing for your practice. But how do you do it? You make the effort. You find a reporter’s name and pitch. You pitch the DPC story. You piggyback off a current trend (insurance costs going up, the physician shortage, telemedicine, etc.). You keep trying. Why? Because you never know.

In June of this year there was an article, Can a subscription model fix primary care in the U.S., written about the big corporations pretending to do DPC. Here is your link to my response to it. I was bothered that the writer of this piece only focused on corporations trying to hijack the DPC movement. I contacted Bernard J. Wolfson and asked him to get in touch with the ones on the front line who truly put their own skin in the game. He was missing out on the grassroots movement that actually CAN fix primary care. And guess what? He was receptive to the idea.

I spoke with Mr. Wolfson by phone for a long time. I had multiple email conversations. I gave him a ton of links to DPC docs practicing in California, as that is where he is lives. And yesterday the article came out! Here are a bunch of links:

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/health-and-medicine/article255266266.html

https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article255266266.html

https://www.modbee.com/news/local/article255266266.html

https://www.mercedsunstar.com/news/california/article255266266.html

https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/california/article255266266.html

The article focuses on St. Luke’s Family Practice (a DPC clinic) where they do a “Robin Hood” model. But he also gives a nod to our blog post in June:

Many direct primary care docs scoff at the high-tech investor-owned firms such as One Medical and Forward Health. They are widely viewed as direct primary care companies, but critics say they are more focused on expanding volume than on offering personalized service.

Lastly, he gives Maryal Concepcion, MD (from My DPC Story and a contributor here) a quote:

“Direct primary care is where a physician has a relationship with a patient. We do not have to be accountable to an investor, because our investors are our patients,” said Dr. Maryal Concepcion, a family doctor in the remote mountain town of Arnold, California, who recently left a commercial practice to launch her own one-woman direct primary care practice.

Great stuff. Is it perfect? Of course not. But we take what we can get. And we appreciate Mr. Wolfson’s effort and promise to follow up on his first story.

Now let’s circle back to you. Make sure you make the effort. Put away your shyness or fear and grind. Get your story out there. You can do this.