A quick note before we get into it:
If you find this useful, sharing it with a peer or within your community would be genuinely appreciated.
Something worth knowing this month
The American Academy of Family Physicians released updated data earlier this year showing that patient awareness of the DPC model continues to grow; particularly among self-employed individuals and small business owners actively looking for alternatives to traditional insurance-based care.
That is, broadly speaking, a good thing for practices operating in this space. More awareness means more prospective patients who arrive with some understanding of how the model works.
It also means the bar for what your website needs to do has shifted or shifting.
When prospective patients were largely unfamiliar with DPC, a website that explained the model clearly was doing useful work. Soon, in many markets, the people landing on your site have already some knowledge about the model and the benefits. They are not trying to understand DPC. They are trying to decide whether your practice is the right fit for them.
Those are two different jobs. And most DPC websites are still built for the first one.
The three primary jobs of a DPC website
In the last edition, I wrote about how the platform your website is built on can become a constraint as you grow. This edition tries to answer a related question: what should the website itself actually be doing?
The short version: a DPC or concierge practice website has three distinct jobs.
It needs to share details of the services and explain the model clearly enough that the right patients recognize themselves in it.
It needs to reduce the friction between initial interest and a direct inquiry.
And it needs to support the enrollment process once someone reaches out, not just hand them a contact form and step back.
Most practice websites handle one of these reasonably well. Very few are built to do all three with any consistency.
If you have been putting time or budget into patient acquisition and the results have been modest, the website is usually worth examining before anything else. Not because of how it looks, but because of what it is designed to do.
Coming later this month in DPC Insights: What Should a DPC Website Actually Do?
That post will walk through each one specifically, including what tends to break in real-world practice settings and how to assess where your own site currently stands.
In the meantime:
If you want to know where your current site stands before that post goes live, a simple Website Growth Readiness Assessment gives you a clear picture in under five minutes.
Until next time,
Thank you for reading.
More importantly, I hope this helps you think about your website in a way that protects your time and keeps your practice sustainable.
Happy growing!
DPC Growth Lab