Episode Details

What should a direct primary care physician actually pay themselves? On this episode of My DPC Story, Dr. Maryal Concepcion sits down with Nate Goodman, CPA, founder of Goodman CPA, the accounting firm that works exclusively with direct primary care and direct specialty care practices.

Nate is also a DPC patient. His family's experience with direct primary care in the Black Mountains of North Carolina is why his firm stopped taking non-direct care clients in 2024.

Together they walk through 10 questions, each with a real number attached, that every DPC owner should be able to answer.

In this episode:

• How to set a DPC membership rate using your household budget and local census income data
• Why most physician owners are 30 to 50 percent underpriced once discounts and free memberships are counted
• Where an enrollment fee should sit (one to two months of membership) and what it funds
• The profit margin to target with employees (about 30 percent) versus a solo micro practice with no payroll (up to 70 percent)
• How many months of cash to hold before raising your own pay
• The Profit First method for DPC: 20 percent to owner's pay and 15 percent to taxes from day one
• What has to be true in your numbers before hiring a second physician, and the marketing signal most owners miss
• The true loaded cost of a hire (1.25 to 1.4 times base salary)
• What a normal annual termination rate looks like and when churn means something is wrong
• LLC versus S corp: the 15.3 percent self-employment tax and where the break-even point sits
• Year-end tax moves to make before December, including the 401(k) setup deadline

Free calculator: Nate and the My DPC Story team built a free DPC financial calculator so you can run your own membership pricing, enrollment fee, owner pay, and hiring numbers. Get it at mydpcstory.com.

Listener offer: My DPC Story listeners get 25 percent off onboarding fees for Goodman CPA's full services, including tax advisory and fractional monthly accounting. Use the links at mydpcstory.com.

Ways to work with Goodman CPA:

• The DPC Circle community with monthly live Q&A ($10/month)
• Launch Pad for physicians opening a new practice ($2,500)
• Fractional accounting and payroll team (starting around $1,250/month)

This episode is sponsored by Goodman CPA. Nothing here is legal or tax advice. Talk with your own CPA about your practice.

Leave a voice message at mydpcstory.com/contact and you might hear your question answered on a future episode.

Follow My DPC Story on social media and find The Toolkit Magazine, free resources, and The Physician Owner's Planner at mydpcstory.com.

Support the show

GET your FREE MONTHLY BUSINESS TOOL DOWNLOAD

Become A My DPC Story PATREON MEMBER!
SPONSOR THE POD
My DPC Story VOICEMAIL! DPC SWAG!
FACEBOOK * INSTAGRAM * LinkedIn * TWITTER * TIKTOK * YouTube