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. Maryal Concepcion about what it takes to build a DPC practice tha...

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 paying themselves yet. Meanwhile the non-compete case that m...

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. What they say out loud is what most physicians only think: the...

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 as economically diverse as almost anywhere in the country. H...

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-Hodgkin lymphoma at 38, then weathering COVID pneumonia, a heart attack, and adult...

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 fee-for-service family medicine and infectious disease, inclu...

CLOSING SOON! VOTE IN THE 2026 MY DPC STORY BATTLE! VOTE HERE 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 a life sustainable. The throughline is simple. Healthcare be...

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 she found through Cool Blue VA, then hands the room over to Jus...

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 (Blay-kee), through residency in Modesto, into a corporate r...

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 ethnic background. Dr. Khatibi shares how she nearly tanked her ow...