The 8-Hour Truth About DPC

Posted on by

Direct Primary Care won’t erase your workload, but it will change it.

I often struggle when colleagues ask, “How’s the practice going?”

On one hand—amazing. I love being a doctor again. The thought of giving up my autonomy for a salaried corporate job makes me cringe. On the other hand—it’s damn hard. Interestingly, my non-physician friends seem to grasp that balance more easily than many of my doctor colleagues. The short of it? DPC is not for the faint of heart. 

So let’s set philosophy aside and look at what an eight-hour day really feels like in corporate medicine compared to DPC. Of course, no doctor’s workday fits neatly into eight hours—but the comparison is telling. 

Corporate Medicine: The Grind 

This system is built for volume. Twenty to twenty-five patients packed into the day, seven to fifteen minutes each. You move fast, click boxes, chase codes, and pray the insurer doesn’t deny your work. 

When the last patient leaves, you’re still staring down two to three hours of charting, billing, and prior authorizations. The day bleeds into the evening. The paycheck is stable, but the cost is exhaustion, loss of autonomy, and very little room for prevention or nuanced care. 

Direct Primary Care: The Shift 

In DPC, the numbers change. Instead of sprinting through 20+ visits, you may see six to twelve, depending on your panel size (which you decide). Appointments stretch to thirty or sixty minutes when needed. Coding disappears. Billing disappears. But other responsibilities appear. 

Admin work shifts to labs, refills, patient texts, and care coordination. If you’re early in your practice—or doing much yourself—you also handle reconciling expenses, tracking revenue, paying staff (if you have them), even chasing down delinquent accounts. You’re the doctor and the business owner, HR manager, and sometimes the IT department. 

The upside? You choose what gets your time. The downside? Panel growth and revenue depend on you. For those who like variety and a little extra challenge, that’s the joy. 

Side by Side 

                                                  Corporate Medicine     DPC

Patients/day 20–25 6–12 
Visit length 7–15 minutes 30–60 minutes 
Low Value Work High (billing, coding) Lower (arguable zero) 
Autonomy Low High 
Income (early) PredictableVariable, panel-dependent 
Burnout risk High Lower clinically, higher business stress 
Relationships TransactionalLongitudinal, trust-based 

The Takeaway 

DPC doesn’t erase the challenges of medicine—it reshapes them. You trade insurance red tape for patient conversations, and you trade predictable salary for entrepreneurship. 

For some, that shift makes medicine enjoyable again. For others, the business side is too heavy a lift. Either way, it’s worth knowing the “8-hour truth” before you decide which world you want to live in.

Get our awesome newsletter by signing up here. It’s FREE!!! And we don’t share your email with anyone.

 

4

About Angela Andrews, MD

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.