Today, we're going to talk about the essentials of your DPC practice.
And I was recently on a call with somebody doing a little bit of consulting for them for their DPC practice.
They were starting it up.
And they asked me, they said, do I need an EKG.
And I was like, no, you don't need an EKG.
You can ask the patient to go get one. Or you can wait a week and have them come back later after you've ordered the EKG machine and then do the EKG on them.
And it got me thinking about, well, what exactly is essential to starting a DPC practice?
And this is one of the many fears that I think a lot of my listeners have is I don't know exactly what I need to start my TPC practice. And one of the things that they don't realize is that you have time on your side.
So if you are just starting out brand new and not converting an old practice, then this is kind of especially for you.
Or if you're in residency and listening, this is really for you.
Or maybe you're leaving a practice and, you know, you were like me.
You were leaving insurance practice and you're like, well, do I need to take anything with me, right?
Do I need to load upon supplies or something?
And the short answer is no.
And we're going to discuss what the longer answer is in this podcast.
And the question we're asking is, how do I do better with less?
And this is a kind of a philosophy known as essentialism.
And there's a great book called Eentialism by Greg Mcowan.
And he states that in this example is the basic value proposition of essentialism, only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter?
And he's talking about how there are things that are not within your realm as a doctor.
Okay?
Coding.
Coding is not in the realm of a doctor.
It is something that is imposed on you from other people.
And once you have paired it down to the essentials of being a doctor, you'll see that coding is not necessary.
You'll see that what is necessary is actually listening.
So if I reversed that last phrase, I said, where I said, better, do better with less.
The phrase is actually less, but better.
And the way you do that as a TPC physician is you listen to the patient and you realize that that is the essential thing.
It's not having to code every visit or do your physical exam completely written down on your note.
It's not having to fill out useless forms.
The essential part is actually to listen to the patient and to actually have time to do that, right?
Because that will facilitate the patient actually taking on your ideas to improve their life.
Because many times I mean, I don't know how many times.
I can't I can't even count on both hands. How many times somebody shows up to my practice and I'm like, oh, what brought you here?
And they literally say, my doctor never listened to me or they say that my doctor made fun of me.
And the reason why that other doctor's doing that is because they don't have time to fully process what that patient is saying, okay?
Or why that patient is not going to exercise or not changing their diet.
So I'm a little bit off topic.
But let me ask you this.
And you know this, right?
If you you found yourself, have you ever found yourself stressed too thin?
Have you felt overworked and underutilized and have you ever found yourself majoring in minor activities like we just discussed?
And you feel busy, but you're actually not productive and you're always in motion, but never get anywhere.
This is what essentialism helps you to figure out.
So let's get to the main meet of the podcast, which is your essential things to start a DPC.
And it's not a lot, which you'll find out.
So first thing, clinic equipment.
Let's go over that.
All right?
You need a stethoscope and otoscope and othalmoscope with the speculums. You need a blood pressure cough.
You need an exam table preferably adjustable, but if you can't shell out a thousand dollars because you're just coming out of residency or something like that, then that's okay.
You can get a flat exam table and get some pillows to prop them up when they get down on it.
You need two chairs.
So that way the patient and their family can sit with you.
You need your own stool with wheels on it so you can wheel around and uh get to where you need to be.
You need a um a set of tongue depressors super cheap to buy and really handy on multiple occasions and you need a sink to wash your hands.
Now you notice I didn't say you need fancy other things, right?
You don't need an EKG machine right now.
You can send a patient to go get an EKG from the local hospital.
And this is going to make you feel nervous.
You're going to feel like, well, I'm not providing all of this this value to these patients because I'm having to send them somewhere else.
Shouldn't I have everything in the clinic?
And the answer is no, you are providing your own self phone to them.
You're providing time with them.
And so that is the true value that they're actually looking for deep down inside.
They want somebody to appreciate acknowledge and accept them.
Those are the three A's that everybody wants.
And so if you can give them that, they will feel pretty freaking good.
If you're feeling fancy and what to get stuff for procedures, you can simply because a lot of these things aren't generally cheap.
And so let's say you want to remove an abscess, right?
Are you need to get rid of an abscess.
You can get a tin blade, alcohol wipes, iodine wipes. Um and you're going to need also some anesthetic for that.
So you can order that as well.
And these things are relatively cheap.
I should note that when you order anesthetics from something like McKesson, it will come in a pack of like 10 or 20.
Okay?
So there'll be like 10 bottles of this stuff.
So just be aware that you're you might be ordering something that's very large.
So if you're feeling that, then, yeah, order some things to do certain procedures that you prefer.
And if you want to know like the entire list of that procedure, like what do you need, what equipment, you can look at a book called Fininger and Fowler's procedures for primary care.
And this book is invaluable.
It will lead you through everything.
Or if you're like, I don't know, I still don't know, you know, you want to know, you can you can always get in touch with me either through Instagram or LinkedIn.
You can message me, totally message me on LinkedIn if you want.
And I can walk you through stuff like that.
You can also get things like a skin biopsy kit, right?
You can get that as well.
So, let's move on to the marketing side.
Okay, what you need to market your practice.
You need a one page website, okay?
You just need one page and that's it.
You need your face on the front, what you do, that you're a doctor, the advantages that you provide, there's six of them in general. And you need a separate email for a business email.
You need business cards, and you need some flyers.
And for the website, I always recommend kajabi slightly more expensive.
But again, one of my software rules is, I want help almost immediately, and that's what kajabi provides.
They also help me host this podcast, all kinds of things for a one single price that I don't have to integrate any third party software for.
So highly recommend that business cars, um flyers, things like this.
You can design all of these in uh in PowerPoint or word or numbers or what's the other one?
The Apple version is called Keynote.
And Vista Print is a great website to use in order to get these things printed off very cheap.
An even better thing to do is to look for a local design company that will do it for you.
And the reason is, is that they can turn this around in like one day.
So you're like, oh damn, tomorrow is where I go out to the farmer's market and do my um do my advertising and sit out there with my table and all this stuff.
Well, you may need somebody to turn that around, you know, at the crack of dawn.
So you can call this company up that you've established your relationship with before you've opened your DVC practice and they can turn these things around for you.
And they can help you design them as well.
But you don't need any fancy software for designing.
All this can be done in like PowerPoint or keynote.
Okay, going on to the financial side of the business, what do you need in order to run the finances?
You need a separate business checking account, okay?
And when you're looking for a business checking account and you go to a bank, they should be greeting you like right at the door with a smile, things like this.
And they should not be charging anything for their basic business checking account.
That's what you're looking for, right?
You don't want a minimum balance to keep, things like this.
And so, um that's what you're going to be looking for in a checking account.
You also want a couple other things.
You want things like um Z. It's called ZEL ZE LLE.
And this will allow you to transfer funds into your business checking account from your personal checking account.
And these are these are classified as a certain category by your accountant or by you, uh by your bookkeeper when you're entering this in into QuickBooks.
So you want Zel in other in other words, to facilitate this transfer very easily.
And so speaking of that, um QuickBooks is a fantastic thing to use in order to do your bookkeeping.
And I'm basically just use QuickBooks to do bookkeeping.
That's it.
Nothing else.
I don't use I tried using their checking.
I tried, you know, things like this, but it's not it's not even worth it.
Like it's so convoluted. Because I want a person that I can go to in person to discuss things about my bank account.
Now, you can get an accountant, right?
You can start establishing that relationship to the chamber of Commerce.
You can find an accountant. And you can do this now, which I highly recommend.
Or you can do it a little bit later on once you start once you have money starting to come in.
So that's a financial site.
QuickBooks, business checking account and accountant, okay?
Now, what software are you going to need?
And immediately to my to your mind comes an EMR.
Now, I've tried a lot of the different EMRs and my second rule of EMR, our software, is do not sign a contract, okay?
No contract. Max, if you do sign one, it should should be 30 days, okay?
You do not sign a year long, nothing like that.
That's how they get you.
They say, oh yeah, sign up with us for a year and then you go to sign up and then you call help and nobody answers you for three days.
So the EMR that I recommend as always, is Atlas MD by Josh and Bear.
He's a fantastic physician.
They have never raised their prices in over 10 years and they just continuously add services like cardiology consult for an EKG pharmacology consult.
They have an attorney on there that you can talk with and send things to them for review.
They have an AI notewriter that will process your note after you record it and change it into a physician patient note.
So all these things keep getting at it on and they do not have an increase in price.
So highly recommend doing it and help is instantaneous on Facebook or anywhere else through their support emails.
Second thing you need is a separate phone line.
I recommend ring Central because they've been around for a while and they've established themselves.
Plus it integrates well with Atlas MD.
Another one is spruce, but you want a fax service along with a separate phone that can actually change a fax into an email that is then sent to a Google Drive for your Atlas MD to collect and put in your EMR itself.
So I know it's a little convoluted, but that's the details that result in a good business for you or in a happy day.
In other words, we'll talk about streamlining the software connections later on.
What's the next thing you mean?
An AI Notewriter, okay?
Right now, Atlas MD has an AI Notewriter, but there are a few things that you have to do like record the conversation, then put it into Atlasimity.
So instead, what I use is freed fREED dot AI.
You don't need to talk to anybody to sign up for the service.
You don't need to get with a rep.
You can immediately go to free.I and sign up with them and try, I think it's seven or nine notes.
And again, they don't have a contract, okay?
Neither does uh Ring Central.
I do not sign a contract with them.
So um those are the three softwares that I highly recommend.
Of course, the other one is QuickBooks from the financial side, but these are the three ones that I would recommend to starting out with.
And so the last thing is hardware.
You need a laptop, okay?
I highly recommend, again, getting a MacBook ear.
The reason is, is because it is powerful enough to do everything you need and nothing else.
So it's the basics of the uh Mac lineup and it will do exactly what you want and even more on many occasions.
But you don't need anything fancy.
You can go to apple.com and then there's a refurbished section, I think, uh where I purchase a lot of my stuff right in there.
So it's called uh certified refurbished.
You go to apple dotcom, go up to store, and then go to certified refurbished, and you can click on uh the ones you want.
And many of these things are like hundred fifty, two hundred dollars off, and you can easily uh pick up one there.
So that was everything that I think you need to start your clinic.
I may be off a little bit, but it's a good, good starting list, and I'll put it down in the show notes so you can just reference it. Um if you like what you're hearing, you can always go to dreamDPc.com where I actually discuss the more in-depth financials and a little bit of the marketing.
There's a free weaponar over there.
You can check it out. And um hit me up.
If you have any questions, let me know because I seriously want you to succeed in this.
I want you to be freed from the confines of our corporate overords and be with people that actually appreciate and love what you do.
So keep dreaming and keep building.
Talk to you next time.
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