Happy National DPC Day: How Far Direct Care Has Come — and the Numbers It Still Doesn't Have

Happy National DPC Day.

Today is the second one. The first was November 1 last year, and the date isn't an accident: it lands at the start of open enrollment, the week most of the country is staring at a premium notice and wondering what they're actually paying for. Direct care owners already answered that question for their own patients. Today is a good day to step back and look at how many of you there are now.

So I want to do three things in this post:

1. Put real numbers on how far the movement has come.
2. Name the one set of numbers Direct Care owners still don't have.
3. Ask you to help build it.

How far direct primary care has come

When I started working with DPC practices, the most common question I got from other accountants was, "Is that a real business model?" Nobody asks that anymore.

Here's what the industry data says. I'm quoting the sources directly because these numbers deserve to be cited correctly.

• Membership grew 837% per capita between 2017 and 2025, and the clinician count grew 555% per capita. That's from Hint's 2026 Direct Primary Care Trends Report, built on data from more than 2,700 clinicians and 1.4 million members.
• There are DPC practices in all 50 states, per the same report.
• Hint projected more than 3,600 distinct DPC practices nationwide as of Q1 2025, growing at more than 19% a year since 2022. That's cited in the DPC Alliance's State of Direct Primary Care report, published this July.

Those are big numbers. But the one I keep coming back to is smaller. In that same DPC Alliance survey (465 responses), nearly 70% of practices said their panels weren't full yet.

That's not a warning sign. It's a growth stage. Most of this movement is still in its build years. Owners are still filling panels, adding a first provider, signing a first employer contract, figuring out what to pay themselves. Which is exactly when good numbers matter most.

The numbers Direct Care still doesn't have

Here's the gap.

A clinician who wants to know how their practice compares has decent clinical and membership data to look at. An owner who wants to know how their business compares has almost nothing.

What's a normal operating margin for a two-provider practice? What do owners actually pay themselves? How many months of cash do practices like yours keep on hand? What does churn look like in year two versus year five?

Most of the surveys we have ask owners to remember their numbers. Recollection is a rough instrument. Owners round. Owners quote margin before they've paid themselves. Owners remember the good quarter.

And most of the data is family medicine. When I was preparing for the Pediatric DPC Summit this summer, I went looking for pediatric benchmarks. Pediatrics was 6.4% of the largest DPC survey, and there was no pediatric breakout at all. Two of the numbers a pediatric owner most needs (churn, and children per household) just weren't published anywhere.

So the picture isn't "Direct Care doesn't have data." It's "Direct Care has clinical data and growth data, and almost no business data." Very different thing.

Why we're building a benchmark

We work only with Direct Care practices. Every week we sit with owners who ask some version of the same question: "Is this normal?"

Sometimes I can answer from experience. But experience isn't a benchmark, and "it depends" isn't an answer. I always say we want to replace guesswork with a clear framework. A framework needs a reference point.

So we're building one: the Direct Care Financial Benchmarks 2026.

It's a short survey for Direct Care practice owners. DPC, functional, integrative, pediatric, adult, family, in-office, virtual, home-based, and pre-launch practices too. It asks for the numbers that actually run a practice: membership, pricing, margin, owner pay, cash, churn, staffing.

Here's how it works:

• It takes about five minutes. Answer from your P&L if you have it handy. You can skip any money question you'd rather not share.
• Any group with fewer than five practices is left out. If there are only four pediatric practices in a region, that group doesn't get published. Full stop.
• No practice is ever named. Results are shared only as group figures.
• Everyone who responds gets the full report free, plus a private comparison of your own numbers against practices like yours, if you want one.
• It's open through January 31, 2027, and the report comes out before the DPC Summit next July.

What you could do this week

Two things. Neither takes more than an afternoon, and the first takes five minutes.

One: take the survey. goodmancpa.com/benchmark. The more practices in it, the more groups clear the five-practice line, and the more useful it is to every owner, including you.

Two: pull your own three numbers before you answer. Operating margin after you pay yourself. Months of operating expenses sitting in cash. Members today versus January 1. If you can't find one of those in under ten minutes, that's useful to know too. It's not a failing. It's a to-do.

The movement got here because owners decided they'd rather build something than keep working inside a system that wasn't built for them. The financial side deserves the same kind of building. A benchmark is how you know whether the thing you built is working.

Happy National DPC Day. Thanks for building this.

— Nate

Take the Direct Care Financial Benchmarks survey → goodmancpa.com/benchmark

Rather talk through your own numbers now? Book a Free Tax Strategy Session.

Sources: Hint Health, "The Data Behind DPC's Next Phase of Growth" (2026 Direct Primary Care Trends Report); DPC Alliance Member Insights Committee, State of Direct Primary Care (published July 2026; survey fielded October 2024, 465 responses).