As I approach my second year of running my DPC practice, I’ve found myself at an exciting turning point. With a nice steady state of patients and even a small waitlist, I’m considering phasing out those initial meet-and-greets. It’s something I never thought I’d do, but as I’ve looked into it, I realized it’s not uncommon for DPC practices that have found their footing.
Of course, one thing I’ve thought about in making this transition is losing the opportunity to ensure they’re a good fit for my practice. To help with that, I’m planning to use a simple intake questionnaire. This will let me get a sense of what new patients are looking for and whether we’re aligned. And if I see someone who might need a bit of extra discussion, I’ll still offer a follow-up chat selectively. That way, I can keep that personalized touch where it’s needed without having to do a meet-and-greet for everyone.
So that’s my plan! And I’d love to hear from any of you who’ve gone through something similar. Did you phase out meet-and-greets? Did you use a questionnaire or another method to keep things running smoothly? Or maybe you still do them and have a good reason for it—I’d love to know your thoughts!
Dr. Angela Andrews is a board-certified Internal Medicine and Pediatrics physician, health coach, wife, mom, and lifelong athlete. When not spending time with her family or caring for her patients, she is training for her next competition. Dr. Andrews graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering in Biomedical Engineering and worked at General Electric Healthcare Wisconsin for nearly five years before returning to her dream of becoming a doctor. She received her medical degree from Michigan State University College of Human Medicine. She completed her Med-Peds residency at the Detroit Medical Center & Children's Hospital of Michigan in Detroit, MI.
After 8 years in the system, Dr. Andrews opened Seeds of Health Direct Primary Care in Grand Rapids, MI in February 2014. Her personal journey with fitness, nutrition, and lifestyle medicine training was a key factor in her decision. She spent years trying to figure out how to incorporate this experience into a “standard” clinical practice, before finding a natural fit within Direct Primary Care. Dr. Andrews is passionate about helping patients address the root cause of their mental and physical conditions and guiding them to cultivate healthy habits around exercise, good nutrition, and mental well-being.
Dr. Andrews lives in Byron Center, Michigan, with her husband and exercise companion, Joseph VanEss, their son, Myles, and her two bonus children, Griffen and Quinne. She engages in various fitness activities (CrossFit, running, swimming, yoga, and bodybuilding) and enjoys gardening, tackling projects around the house, and building things out of wood.
10 thoughts on “Practice Evolution: Phasing Out Meet-and-Greets”
First pass is by the staff who do a fantastic job “triaging” potential new patients. Still doing meet-and-greets as that adds a “human element” to things
Agree. Hence some of my pause. So maybe just do away with them all together. Most people generally get it by the time they reach out to us and the call is a formality because we haven’t turned anyone away (except one person looking only for pain medications).
We do a “Wellness Evaluation” which is a 1 hour appointment for a fee. A pretty extensive questionnaire and health history is filled in ahead of time and prospective practice members are asked to view our introductory video on our website. At the end of the visit, we outline how we might approach their situation and they decide if they feel we are the right team to help them. The staff does a Discovery Call before booking this Wellness Evaluation, so most poor fits are weeded out by themselves. This has worked out great and if they decide to sign up to be members, they are usually very excited and happy to come aboard!
We stopped meet and greets years ago. Nurses do a great job w telephone conversations explaining exactly what we do and how we do it. We are alwasy a happy to take sick complicated patients, but those that think its an “24hours, Al-a-cart , all you can eat doctor buffet , at your service” tend to get weeded out early on.
Thank you! This is also great. We take on a lot of complicated patients and those don’t give us pause, it’s the later ones you mentioned. The ones that don’t really value us or looking for services we don’t provide.
Never really did them. takes time I don’t have and I don’t want to be accused of cherry picking the healthy. We just let people sign up, and when they come in to establish care, if they were an obvious bad fit (they don’t understand the model, are drug seekers, etc.) then I just wish them well and don’t charge them anything But TBH that maybe happened twice.
At almost 10 years in practice I still find them valuable. It is an opportunity to humanize the expectations from both sides- what patients can expect from me, and what I expect of them.
By the time patients get to me they’ve learned about DPC from my staff, and since it is not a “medical” visit, it’s really about getting to know each other and building the foundation of a doctor-patient relationship.
I did them initially and found they were not worth my time. If patients are still on the fence about me after reading our extremely thorough website or after talking to people who know me (I’m born and raised in my town and been a doctor in it for 20 years), then they weren’t serious about joining the practice in the first place.
First pass is by the staff who do a fantastic job “triaging” potential new patients. Still doing meet-and-greets as that adds a “human element” to things
i worry this could be viewed more as filtering out sick patietns vs matching up ‘good fits’ for the practice.
Agree. Hence some of my pause. So maybe just do away with them all together. Most people generally get it by the time they reach out to us and the call is a formality because we haven’t turned anyone away (except one person looking only for pain medications).
We do a “Wellness Evaluation” which is a 1 hour appointment for a fee. A pretty extensive questionnaire and health history is filled in ahead of time and prospective practice members are asked to view our introductory video on our website. At the end of the visit, we outline how we might approach their situation and they decide if they feel we are the right team to help them. The staff does a Discovery Call before booking this Wellness Evaluation, so most poor fits are weeded out by themselves. This has worked out great and if they decide to sign up to be members, they are usually very excited and happy to come aboard!
We stopped meet and greets years ago. Nurses do a great job w telephone conversations explaining exactly what we do and how we do it. We are alwasy a happy to take sick complicated patients, but those that think its an “24hours, Al-a-cart , all you can eat doctor buffet , at your service” tend to get weeded out early on.
Thank you! This is also great. We take on a lot of complicated patients and those don’t give us pause, it’s the later ones you mentioned. The ones that don’t really value us or looking for services we don’t provide.
Never really did them. takes time I don’t have and I don’t want to be accused of cherry picking the healthy. We just let people sign up, and when they come in to establish care, if they were an obvious bad fit (they don’t understand the model, are drug seekers, etc.) then I just wish them well and don’t charge them anything But TBH that maybe happened twice.
This is great. That sounds so much more simple.
At almost 10 years in practice I still find them valuable. It is an opportunity to humanize the expectations from both sides- what patients can expect from me, and what I expect of them.
By the time patients get to me they’ve learned about DPC from my staff, and since it is not a “medical” visit, it’s really about getting to know each other and building the foundation of a doctor-patient relationship.
I did them initially and found they were not worth my time. If patients are still on the fence about me after reading our extremely thorough website or after talking to people who know me (I’m born and raised in my town and been a doctor in it for 20 years), then they weren’t serious about joining the practice in the first place.