My DPC Story

When Dr. Laura Petrescu opened Athena Direct Primary Care & Lifestyle Medicine, she was the only Direct Primary Care physician in the Rochester, NY metropolitan area. Health system leadership thought she was out of her mind. Colleagues told her nobody would pay a membership on top of insurance. The advice everywhere was the same: New York is too restrictive, and DPC will not work here.

Today there are seven or eight DPC practice...

Direct Primary Care no longer disqualifies patients from HSA eligibility. As of January 1, 2026, DPC membership fees are a qualified HSA expense at or below $150 per month for one person and $300 for a family. Above $150 you are not in violation. You are in the same gray zone DPC lived in for a decade, and the tax position belongs to the patient and their accountant, not to you.

Dr. Phil Eskew (DO, JD, MBA) of DPC Frontier joins Dr....

Dr. Kyle Rickner heard about Direct Primary Care in a side room at the AAFP National Conference in October 2014 and committed to it 50 minutes later. Today Primary Health Partners cares for employee lives in 30 states, and it started with a patient named Jason who owned a 22 person company and handed Dr. Rickner a check covering every employee for a full year, six weeks after opening.

In this episode, Dr. Rickner talks with Dr. Mary...

Two months after opening Amity Creek Primary Care in Duluth, Minnesota, Dr. Nyasha Spears returns to My DPC Story with the real numbers, the real costs, and the parts of a Direct Primary Care startup nobody puts on a slide.

She and her DPC partner Dr. Kristin Lusian hit 130 patients six weeks in, with no advertising beyond a website and word of mouth. As of June they are covering overhead, rent, and debt payback, though they are not...

Recorded LIVE on the floor at the AAFP Co-sponsored DPC Summit in New Orleans, Dr. Angela Andrews of Direct Primary Care of West Michigan and Dr. Nicholas Jones of Clear Health Direct Primary Care in Eugene, Oregon sit down with Dr. Maryal Concepcion for an honest roundtable on what changes between year one and year three of direct primary care practice ownership.

Both opened in November 2023. Both came to New Orleans with a list. W...

From physician assistant to DPC physician, Dr. Reid Lancaster took the long road on purpose. In this episode of My DPC Story, he sits down with Dr. Maryal Concepcion to trace his journey from PA to DO and the moment a three-minute news clip about direct primary care planted a "worm in his brain" he couldn't shake.

Dr. Lancaster is the founder of Ethos Modern Medicine in La Quinta, California, just outside Palm Springs in a community...

When Dr. Timothy Blain opened his direct primary care practice in the middle of COVID, he finally felt like a “real doctor” again — after two decades of employed medicine, five-year burnout cycles, and the constant ache of knowing he could help patients but never had the time.

In this honest and moving episode, Dr. Blain shares his full journey: graduating in 2000 as hospitals bought up practices, surviving non-Hod...

What does it look like to build a Direct Primary Care practice that protects your health as fiercely as it protects your patients? In this episode of My DPC Story, Dr. April Soto of Love and Light Integrative Medicine in South Pasadena, California shares how she systematically exited corporate medicine over three years and built an integrative DPC practice rooted in authenticity, boundaries, and healing.

After more than a decade in ...

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When most physicians hear the word sustainability, they think about keeping the doors open. But after a weekend with more than 80 doctors at the California DPC Summit, our host Dr. Maryal Concepcion came away certain it means so much more. In this episode of My DPC Story, five voices from the Direct Primary Care community share what makes a medical career, a practice, and...

What if you could get back fifteen hours of your work week without seeing a single extra patient?

In this special episode, recorded live in a breakout room workshop following the California DPC Summit, Justin Lam, CEO of Cool Blue VA, sits down with a room full of physicians to talk about getting real help in your practice and in your life. Dr. Maryal Concepcion opens by sharing her own experience working with a virtual assistant sh...

What happens to a family physician when the system that trained him decides he no longer has value? In this deeply personal episode, Dr. Maryal Concepcion hands the introduction to a special guest, then sits down with her husband, Dr. Jeremiah Fillo of Big Trees MD, for an honest conversation about sustainability, not just as a doctor, but as a whole person.

Dr. Fillo shares the path from rural Nebraska training under Dr. Tim Blecha...

What does it take to make women's healthcare access sustainable, not just for patients, but for the physician carrying the mission? In this episode of the My DPC Story podcast, Dr. Maryal Concepcion welcomes back Dr. Esther Khatibi, family physician who does surgical obstetrics, and founder of My DOC, a nonprofit delivering high-quality, evidence-based obstetric care to women regardless of their social, economic, religious, or ethn...

In this June sustainability episode, Maryal sits down with Dr. Daniel Hochman, a psychiatrist in private practice in Texas and the founder of Self Recovery, an online addiction curriculum built from thousands of hours of one-to-one clinical work.

Dr. Hochman left the insurance model early, around 2014, because the deep, philosophical therapy he wanted to practice could never be reimbursed in a fee-for-service system. His definition ...

Can Direct Primary Care really pay off for a physician family carrying student loan debt and no employer match? In this episode of the My DPC Story podcast, host Dr. Maryal Concepcion talks with Dr. Manuel Vogt of Texas DPC about the real financial tools behind building a thriving practice.

From a billboard at a railroad crossing to a 220-patient pre-enrollment list on opening day, Dr. Vogt shares how he and his wife built two separ...

Dr. Emily Holt returns to the podcast one year after opening Poppy Direct Care in New Orleans, and the landscape around her has changed dramatically.

When Maryal last spoke with Dr. Holt, Poppy was just months old and DPC Summit attendees were touring her 100-year-old clinic house. A year later, her panel has more than doubled, she's about to opt out of Medicare, and she's a named plaintiff in a lawsuit against Louisiana's Attorney ...

What if your new patient visit didn't start with a 200-page ER record dump, scattered portal logins, and a patient saying "I think mom had some kind of cancer"? In this episode of My DPC Story, Dr. Maryal Concepcion sits down with Anna Smith, RN, MPH, CEO of Vivid Vault Health Solutions, to talk about a patient-owned, multi-generational health navigation platform built to strengthen the physician-patient relationship, not replace i...

This month on the My DPC Story podcast we are talking about the tools that serve us, and Dr. Michael Hobbs is a voice you do not want to miss.

Dr. Hobbs is a pediatrician and founder of Lakes Pediatrics, the first pediatric Direct Primary Care practice in the Minneapolis area, serving families across Edina, Wayzata, and the western suburbs. He brings over twenty years in Twin Cities pediatrics, more than a decade as an adjunct profe...

Dr. Maryal Concepcion welcomes Dr. Nyasha Spears, family physician and co-founder of Amity Creek Primary Care in Duluth, Minnesota. After her century-old community clinic was closed by a corporate hospital system with just 36 days notice, Dr. Spears took her former employer to court, won a temporary injunction against her non-compete, and opened the doors to Amity Creek alongside her partner Dr. Kristen Lusian.

What You'll Learn

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Dr. Courtney Barrett, founder of True Insight Direct Care in the Raleigh, North Carolina area, opens our May theme, The Tools You Use, with a conversation that redefines what tools means in a Direct Primary Care practice. As a DO offering osteopathic manipulative treatment alongside full-spectrum primary care, Dr. Barrett shares how OMT functions as both a clinical tool and a front door to membership.

We dig into her EHR vetting pro...