Making his fourth appearance on The Soul of Enterprise is Dr. Paul Thomas of Plum Health DPC. Ron and Ed ask him how he scaled his practice from one to know three offices and what the implications are for his subscription model. In addition, we ask what regulatory barriers to providing care this way should be removed.

Below are the show notes. Use them to follow along while listening to the podcast:
It seems to Dr. Paul that Operation Warpspeed and 3 different vaccination options have helped with Covid. Omicron hit hard over Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. Things are starting to fortunately slow.

Does mRNA technology mean vaccinations can be developed faster? Dr. Paul believes this remains a political question due to the regulatory bodies and their ability to streamline the approval process.
Use the car analogy (Dr. Paul is based in Detroit), mRNA technology is the chassis with an ability to build out capabilities as a delivery mechanism. Think cancer, cystic fibrosis, and many others.
Did you know that you can join us at Patreon.com/TSOE for commercial free episodes AND bonus episodes? At a certain level you can get a shout out like Mark Gandy (@g3cfo) of CFOBookshelf.com. Mark recently interviewed Ed - go check it out!
How can you scale a Direct Primary Care business? Doesn’t it suffer from the same challenges as other subscription services? It comes down to serving one patient at a time with excellent medical care, forming deep relationships, and delivering on our promise.
Dr. Paul WROTE THE BOOK on Direct Primary Care. It’s called Startup DPC. Ron recommends this book because you can learn a lot from Dr. Paul’s experience. Here’s the Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Startup-DPC-Direct-Primary-Practice-ebook/dp/B0886GYD9Z
During the second segment of the show today, Dr. Paul talked about what he looks for in new hires coming out of residency and how the compensation model works. Admittedly , it’s a bit more detailed than what is manageable in a tweet.
How does Dr. Paul reduce churn? It starts with overdelivering on what you promise. Some churn is unavoidable but most patients stay with the practice because they get more value than what they pay in.
Dr. Paul mentioned Ikigai. It is a Japanese term that means a reason for being and refers to something that gives a person a sense of purpose, a reason for living. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai
After a long five years, Dr. Paul modestly increased the price of his services. While increasing business costs were a part of this, he has significantly increased the level of services offered by bringing on new doctors with specialties. Churn was minimal.
What can be done to lessen the regulatory issues to make it easier to get access to DPC? The DPC Coalition was formed specifically for this and other DPC access issues that need to be addressed. Find them at @dpccoalition or https://www.dpcare.org/
Above and beyond DPC, Dr. Paul recommends that patients hold a catastrophic loss policy as well. However, Dr. Paul firmly believes that low cost, high quality medicine is the guiding light for much of his work.
What does Dr. Paul measure as KPIs that you might not find on an income statement? He looks at new enrollments as a lagging indicator. Number of social media posts, number of blog posts, number of speaking events, and excellent Google reviews are all leading indicators.
Of the 1,636 DPC practices as of today, is there one near you? Check out the DPC Mapper to find out: https://mapper.dpcfrontier.com/
A masterclass in starting a Direct Primary Care practice? Yep! Dr. Paul now offers a DPC Master Class directly from his website, https://www.startupdpc.com/masterclass
A big THANK YOU to Dr. Paul for being transparent and sharing what he has learned about starting a Direct Primary Care business based on solid subscription pricing practices. Check him out at https://www.plumhealthdpc.com/ and, if you live in Detroit, consider becoming a patient!
Bonus link: Here is an interesting article on how to hire salespeople and ensure they are “accretive” under a subscription pricing model - https://www.saastr.com/a-framework-and-some-ideas-for-your-first-sales-comp-plan/

Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

This week was bonus episode 376 - “Olympic Thoughts” — Here are some of the links discussed: