Answer: You can do whatever the f%ck you want.
It’s your practice. You can give as much charity care out as you want. You can give none and still feel good that you are giving great care at an affordable price. That’s the beauty of DPC.
I gave away about 10% free care in my practice. That means people were getting free memberships. They still had to pay for labs.
Is that the number you should use? I have no idea. I would NOT advertise this so that other patients come out of the woodwork.
How will you know who to give free care to? This is not an easy answer. For me, the patients who I ended up helping out just “appeared”. It was a wife struggling with breast cancer. A recent widow with five kids. And on and on. I had no guidelines because I didn’t have to appease and beg some asshole administrator to give that free care. That is the beauty of direct primary care. YOU ARE THE BOSS.
Do you have to give out some free care? No. This is America. Again, you can do whatever you want. Don’t start feeling guilty if you don’t. Some people can’t afford that because their membership prices are so low. Others use “scholarships” with scaled pricing so that patients have skin in the game.
I am open to others’ ideas here because there are no wrong answers. I do love the fact that most DPC docs do some charity care which shows how good we are as humans as well as answers those critics who believe we cherry-pick patients. They can go ______ themselves.