Ask a physician what she accomplished today and listen to what comes first. Most of us reach for a number: patients seen, notes closed, inbox

Nearly half of physicians report symptoms of burnout, and the numbers are worse for women. We are more likely than our male colleagues to leave

A pediatrician recently posted in the Pediatricians Who Do DPC Facebook group describing a familiar kind of exhaustion. She’s charging $100 to $150 a month,

Most of us went into medicine because we wanted to take care of children, not because we wanted to become experts in commercial insurance. But

When I first opened my direct pediatric care practice, I discovered a skill that none of my previous jobs had ever required of me: marketing.

One of the greatest promises of direct primary care is that it allows us to practice medicine the way we always imagined we would. We

When I opened my DPC practice, retirement planning was the last thing on my mind. My focus was much more immediate: finding my first patients,

If you’ve spent any time experimenting with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or other large language models, you’ve probably experienced a mixture of awe and unease. The

One of the most interesting transitions that occurs when physicians become practice owners is the gradual realization that business success is not determined solely by

I still remember a stretch early in my career—barely two years out of residency—when I would sit in my car after clinic, hands on the

By Andrew Hertz, MD | Co-Founder & President, Zest Pediatric Network At Zest Pediatric Network, our mission is simple and urgent: Saving Pediatrics. Not just

If you’ve ever wondered why some people will wait in the Costco gas line for 20 minutes to save $2.00 while others won’t blink at

Setting prices for your pediatric DPC practice can feel both daunting and deeply personal. Unlike traditional fee-for-service medicine where insurers dictate reimbursement, in DPC we

I still remember walking into the breakroom of a busy local Ob/Gyn clinic, arms full of catered lunch trays and a stack of carefully designed

One of the most powerful exercises you can do as you design or refine your DPC pediatric practice is to create an avatar of your

By Marina Capella, MD I recall the crisp, fall day in October when I officially opened my practice. I had spent a few months doing

In business strategy, one of the cornerstones of long-term success is creating a model that competitors cannot easily imitate. The more inimitable your practice is,

A few years into running a DPC practice, almost every pediatrician has the same moment. You’re no longer just covering rent and payroll. You’re paying

In my corporate strategy course with Professor Todd Zenger, we explored what makes for a good corporate theory—that is, the set of ideas that helps

I often tell parents that children possess an extraordinary internal world—a landscape where imagination is both vivid and powerful. And every so often, I am

Starting a direct primary care (DPC) practice—especially in pediatrics—can feel like drinking from a firehose. There are dozens of decisions to make before you even

In most businesses, inventory means boxes on a shelf. But in DPC, your inventory is time. Every patient uses a slice of it — not

One of the most powerful shifts that comes with leaving insurance-based pediatrics and moving into Direct Primary Care (DPC) is learning to think like an

The recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) includes long-awaited provisions affecting direct primary care (DPC). Below, we answer the most common questions pediatric DPC

In our last article, we walked through how to design your panel size and pricing using a realistic time-per-patient estimate of about 4 hours per