Growing Your DPC Team with Dr. Phil Hellman

Today’s guest is Dr. Phil Hellman from Paradox Health who shares his journey into Direct Primary Care (DPC) and his experience building a DPC team. Dr. Hellman discusses the challenges and motivations that led him to start Paradox Health in Rochester Hills, Michigan, from his training in Greeley, Colorado, to his early career in Silverton, Oregon. He highlights the impact of treating patients during the COVID-19 pandemic and the significant growth his practice experienced as a result. Dr. Hellman's focus on affordable, preventative cardiac care and patient-centered medicine in the DPC model is highlighted, along with how another physician, Dr. Lyndsi Davenport came to join the practice. This episode provides valuable insights into the operational and cultural aspects of running a successful DPC practice and underscores the importance of patient relationships and transparent healthcare.

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Transcript

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 1:01

Direct primary care is an innovative, alternative path to insurance driven healthcare. Typically, a patient pays their doctor a low monthly membership and, in return, builds a lasting relationship with their doctor and has their doctor available at their fingertips. Welcome to the MyDPCStory podcast, where each week you will hear the ever so relatable stories shared by physicians who have chosen to practice it. Medicine in their individual communities through the direct primary care model. I'm your host, Marielle conception family physician, DPC, owner, and former fee for service. Doctor, I hope you enjoy today's episode and come away feeling inspired about the future of patient care. Direct Primary care

Dr. Phil Hellman: 1:49

Care for me, DPC is the architecture that enables me to practice medicine, how I've always wanted to. Hi, I'm Dr. Phil Hellman with Paradox Health, and this is my DPC story.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 2:08

Dr. Phil Hellman is a family medicine physician in Rochester Hills, Michigan. He had no family in medicine, but for him, the path to becoming a physician made the most sense. He went on to Grand Valley State for his bachelor's and then followed with the MSU College of Human Medicine to attain his MD. He did his residency in Greeley, Colorado at North Colorado Family Medicine. His training there was excellent and is owed in large part to an exceptional group of mentors and faculty on staff there. With his wife, Dr. Hellman relocated to Silverton, Oregon, for his first job out of residency in the summer of 2016. Although they cherished their time there, they made the tough decision a year later to move back to their family in Michigan where they felt they were being called. That year and a half of work in the healthcare industrial complex opened his eyes even further to the deficiencies of modern healthcare. Its clunky, bloated, and misincentivized structure was not something that excited him. He always felt terrible when a patient would get a large medical bill, despite paying large insurance premiums, or was told the most effective therapy for their malady was not an option. In March of 2018, he decided to form Paradox Health and started taking part in the DPC model of healthcare. It is something he thought about since first year of medical school, and ultimately what he had always wanted to do. It just took the right prodding and the right people to tell him he wasn't crazy. He currently resides in Rochester with his wife, Chelsea, and their four children, Merritt, Luella, Hattie, and Hannon. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Hellman.

Dr. Phil Hellman: 3:44

Hey, nice to see you, Marielle.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 3:46

So I will say back at the level three track of the DPC Summit this summer, Dr. Hellman was doing a presentation on lipidology. And I went up to him afterwards and I was like, Are you a cardiologist doing direct care? He's like, No, I'm a family practice doc. And I was like, Oh, my gosh. So this is an example of how, you know, That's

Dr. Phil Hellman: 4:06

because I failed to introduce myself to the whole group.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 4:09

That is one way to think about it. The way that I think about it is that. You have the time because you, you, that you have an interest and you have a desire to know more on, in this case, lipidology, and you have the time to do whatever research you need to do to be able then to take that research to fellow physicians as well as your patients and give them the most up to date information. And it sure as heck has affected my practice. So like, you know, you having the time to do that. is woven in into your story, which we will obviously get to. But, you know, I wanted to, I just wanted to mention that because it is so important that as people listen to these podcasts, you hear how time manifests in people's lives. But I just wanted to really shout out there that I'm grateful that the time you have had Um, has allowed a talk on lipidology and you're, you know, delving into that. So with that, let's get started by, you know, I was really inspired on your website when you said that you didn't come from a family where everybody was doctors. You really got inspired by to, you know, get involved with knowing more about the human body and about medicine when you were in high school. So let's start off with telling us more about what happened in high school that started your journey in medicine.

Dr. Phil Hellman: 5:28

Yeah. So I think like most high schoolers, I didn't know what I wanted to do. So I sort of worked backwards and would just, I kind of knew what I didn't want to do. And then along the way, I had a few positive experiences that kind of pointed me in the right direction. So I was in general. The whole idea of business, just, I had no idea what that meant. And I had kind of a negative connotation with it. And so I thought, well, I'm not doing that now. I own my own practice and, and I took high school anatomy and I really, it just came easy to me. Uh, so I thought, okay, maybe something in healthcare, biology, that kind of thing. And then I also went on a couple of mission trips in high school. And I really enjoyed those experiences because a lot of them involve just directly helping people. So just that kind of hands on being able to have relationships with people and help them in a more direct way rather than in a lot of places where you're kind of helping people indirectly, which I now appreciate, but didn't at the time, I kind of thought I'd really like to do something where I'm kind of more hands on directly helping people. And so that kind of led me down the health care path.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 6:42

That's awesome. And I will put out there, you know, I was just talking to my cousin, Jackson, who is, he's in college, but he was talking to me about how he had this non healthcare related experience in, uh, in doing research in Hawaii this summer. And he's like, well, you know, I know I want to go into healthcare, but it's not really healthcare related. And I'm like, do not sell yourself short because every single experience we have, like for you, it's like at the time thought you like business. That's awesome that you are a thriving business center now. But, you know, you have these experience with what is directly helping someone versus indirectly and it does not have to be in medicine, but don't sell yourself short in terms of all, all experiences that we have going into becoming doctors, going into becoming DPC physicians, it really matters. And for you, you then jumped into, like, once you were, you graduated from medical school, you went to Greeley and my husband and I had looked at the Greeley program, Greeley, Colorado, because it was, One of the, you know, we looked at full scope family medicine, unopposed programs. And Greeley, you know, exemplifies what does it mean to have a full scope family medicine training. So tell us about your experience in Greeley and tell us about especially the people that you studied under, the people who trained you to be thinking and learning like Dr. Hellman does today.

Dr. Phil Hellman: 7:57

Yeah, Greeley was, was phenomenal. I mean, I, I can tell jokes about it because I had, I had applied to some other programs in that same state and had a friend who lived in, um, Golden, my buddy who lived in Golden. I had, I had interviewed in Greeley and I had interviewed at some programs in Denver and he was like, shoot, man, you better interview well in Denver because you don't want to go to Greeley. And so it's kind of known as like the town in Colorado that's like the ugly stepchild. But it's also one of those towns where when you go there at first, you're like, I can't wait to move, but then after you're there for a couple of years, you really fall in love with it. And you're like, this is actually a great place. So, like you said, the training there is definitely full scope. It's about a 350 bed hospital, North Colorado Medical Center. You know, the only other program there is podiatry. And if you want to, you can train in surgical OB, and you can also get training in scopes, so EGDs and colonoscopies, and I did both of those things, you know, and in large part, I think a residency program is all about the experience, right? And the experience is provided by EGDs and colonoscopies. The type of hospital you're at the location you're at, which kind of determines the patients that you see, and then the diseases that you see. And then it's also about the people that are training you, right? Because they're really responsible for your education and keeping you in line and making sure that you're prepared when you leave. And so we just had some excellent faculty that, you know, themselves were full scope docs and, you know, one in particular had practiced, you know, independently in Kansas for like 20 years and he just had all these crazy stories. He had delivered like 5000 babies and he was actually hit out of him and all the obese that had privileges at the hospital. He was the only one privileged to use forceps because nobody else. basically had used them. Yeah. And he was just happened to grow up in the time when that was sort of trained. And so, you know, we actually used forceps a handful of times during my residency program, which I think even most obese never touched them. So it was, it was really great. And then I continued doing that when I left, when I left residency, I kind of kept up all those

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 10:19

That's awesome. When you were then going from residency into finishing residency looking for what do I do next? Did you always seek to find an employed position or did you seek to do an independent practice given that your initial high school self was like, I'm not a business person.

Dr. Phil Hellman: 10:40

Yeah, I didn't have a, I didn't really have a preference. It was really just about the total, like my first two boxes were really location and privileges. Right. So for all the residents and med students listening, obviously getting privileges for a family doc is, can often be harder than if you're a specialist. And so especially for OB and for scopes, you generally have to be in a more rural area if you want to be doing C sections and scopes. And so, you know, you're kind of limited as to where you can go in a lot of the places that I interviewed at, you know, simply put, it's not great for a spouse to, to be there. And so it's one of those things like, oh, I would love to be there, but, you know, my wife would be pretty miserable. So we got to kind of find a place that's, that's manageable. And the practice that I joined in Silverton, Oregon, just kind of fit that bill. So we wanted to stay out West and still kind of like be in the mountains. Cause we really loved. Everything that that had to offer us, but the pay basically, frankly, in Oregon was like 30 percent more than anything I could get in Colorado. Uh, so it really felt kind of like there was a sunshine tax starting there where, I mean, it didn't matter where I worked or how much I worked did not pay. Well, it was like below national average, even with. OB and scopes. And so I was like, I just, we're going to have to go somewhere else. So I ended up finding that job in Silverton and it was with a group practice. It was a private group practice. Uh, I was actually paid like an employee, you know, sort of treated more like an autonomous physician.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 12:15

That's great. And You know, it speaks to my heart in terms of when you want to maintain full scope family medicine, you know, going to a rural community, that's exactly what, you know, I wanted to do scopes and I wanted to make sure that I could do OB, I don't do deliveries, but to even just, you know, see people for prenatal care. It was very, very difficult in California, even back in 2015 to find places where I could do that. And so, you know, it speaks to my heart that what you were looking for was. To keep being the doctor that you had trained to be. Yeah. And to be, be able to do the things that you have the skills to do. So when you were looking though, how did you find the Silverton group? Because for those people who are not necessarily thinking like, I'm full board DPC, but I'm interested in doing, you know, a practice, I'm, I'm join, interested in joining a practice where. I would be able to maintain my skills. How did you even find that group? Because it's not always, you know, sometimes it's serendipitous, sometimes it's word of mouth, but how did you come to find that independent group? And are they still an independent group as of today?

Dr. Phil Hellman: 13:55

The guy that owned the practice, he was a guy named Rodney Orr. He had gone to my residency program way back in the day. He was like, I want to say one of the first guys out and he emailed the program director and said, Hey, we're looking for another doctor, you know, or any of your, um, upcoming graduates interested. And so our program director would always forward. He would just blast those emails out to everybody. We were constantly getting emails about different job opportunities. And so I was. I think I was like the only one who followed up on that one.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 14:31

And, you know, there's a, there's a golden tip. If you're looking to grow your DPC, especially if you're already practicing and you want physicians to come in, whether you want a physician who does pediatrics and you don't, or you want, like in your case, um, Dr. Davenport, who's your partner, is internal medicine, where your family, You know, if there's different specialties, even that you want to come in, that is a great way to engage with residencies. I, I got an email that was shared with me from my old residency where a particular fee for service job was looking for a program director for a residency that they've already accepted residents to without a program director. They have an interim, like assistant program director, whatever, but it was like the emails that they get. Can you imagine if a program director read like, Hey, you know, like here's a fee for service job where, you know, they're very pro DPC, they're very pro protecting the physician's autonomy, and they're like, But I also have this DPC offer that came in, so like in the email, you know, you can take a look at all these job offerings, but like this would be a great one to look into. And so I think that program directors are not blind. I get that a lot of programs are in, you know, the Kaiser system, the fee for service system, but when it comes to program directors really fighting for their students and their residents, I really think that program directors in general have a really good sense about, you know, You would be a great fit because you love all the things you love, dermatology, you love whatever and sending an email just like how it affected your life, not to say that it was the best because obviously you moved back to Michigan and you changed and you went DPC, but Just in terms of using that as an opportunity to get the word out there about your DPC practice, it's definitely something to consider. So going back to your journey in Silverton, you were introduced to the Silverton practice by somebody who had understood what it meant to be a full scope family physician from your residency. What happened in Silverton that made you come back to Michigan?

Dr. Phil Hellman: 16:31

There was a lot that happened. So right, let's see, about a month into moving there, one of our family members came down with recurrence of kidney cancer, renal cell carcinoma. So it was some small metastases to the lung. And Knowing what I know now, that's actually not the worst thing in the world, but at the time, I was like, oh my gosh, she has stage four renal cell cancer. This is insane. So that was super stressful because it was actually my wife's dad and then they didn't want me to tell her because she was already really sick. Just in a tough spot. We had just had our first child and, uh, went through some things with like breastfeeding issues and weight loss and she was super stressed out. No sleep. And then, yeah, so it was it was one of the most stressful times in my life. So. We kind of make it through that, and then I'd say, you know, two more things happened. One, there was, there was kind of discontent within the group, and so there were some physicians that actually had decided to leave the group and start their own practice and split off, and they're still practicing. They, you know, they're still independent. There's, I believe, two or three docs and a nurse practitioner. And then the old clinic, the, uh, the guy that owned it that had sort of recruited me started practicing again. And then they've subsequently sold to legacy, which is the hospital that had just bought the Silverton hospital. So they're now sold off. Uh, to answer your question from earlier now, we, my wife and I ultimately decided to leave because she became pregnant with our second child and we kind of looked at each other and we're like, every time our parents come out here to see us, it's just rough, you know, they kind of like leave crying and wanting to see us more. It's not an easy flight. It's a three hour time difference. Colorado was a lot easier. Two hours for whatever reason is a lot easier than three. All of our entire family lived in Michigan and none of them were really. Able to move all their jobs were pretty, you know, set in stone in that state. So we were kind of like, look, we moved out here to be in the mountains, but we never go. Like we have a kid now and all we do is hang out in town and hang out with our friends. And we're like, we can do that in Michigan too. And we'll have our, all of our family. So I think it's time to go back. And that was just after a year and a half. Now the story I want to tell, because it's one of the best DPC stories. Yeah. I don't know. Have you had Rob Rossboro on

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 19:07

and yes, indeed, December of 21.

Dr. Phil Hellman: 19:10

So I don't know if he might have told this story. But I was sort of, so he, he was in that group that I initially, that I worked with in Silverton and he, he had already been thinking of leaving the group to do DPC and the straw that broke the camel's back for him was me because little did I know, but the practice manager did not tell the other doctors. That they didn't tell them when I was coming and they also didn't inform them. They were putting my desk in their room, which was already this kind of small office with. four desks in it for four providers. So I was the fifth provider in like a single office and everything was just so crammed. And they gave me the window and he was just like, that's it, you know, like I'm done. And so he, he said that was literally the moment where he's like, I'm out of here. And so he started planning his practice and stuff. And then, you know, Rob and I ended up becoming good friends and he's one of the first people I called when I moved back to Michigan and was considering, uh, starting a DPC practice and I was like, hey, should I do it now or should I wait a year to, you know, take a, you know, kind of standard family job? And he's like, no, he's like, do it yesterday. It's the best thing you'll ever do. So anyways. Just a great story. And he's got, I think, the biggest patient panel of any DPC doc I know.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 20:39

Yeah. Hands down. I mean, it's like, I think he said over a thousand if I'm remembering. Yeah. Now

Dr. Phil Hellman: 20:45

he's got a, he's got a nurse practitioner helping him out now, but even before that he was at like 850, 900. Yeah. I was like, wow, are you doing this?

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 20:54

Awesome guy, full of energy. Definitely take a listen to his episode. Um, but it was the second to last episode of the first season of My DPC Story. So absolutely. But I don't think that he mentioned the, the office situation and the window specifically. I have to go back and listen to it myself, but that is awesome that we're connecting those dots. And now, I mean, you opened 2018, you opened Paradox DPC 2018, and then you've been off and running and now Dr. Davenport's with you, but. I think that's awesome. Let me just go back to your experience in Greeley because you, excuse me, in Silverton because you didn't have the job, you know, like you're saying that just take a family medicine job and then open your DPC when you were in this fee for service job, something that you had written about. And I'm wondering if this came from your experience in Silverton or if this came from the experience in Greeley was that it. You had mentioned in your bio on your website about how it was crushing to you when people would come to you with huge bills, like that wasn't your intention to put people into bankruptcy for paying for their medical care. So I wanted to ask, you know, where did that statement come from?

Dr. Phil Hellman: 22:00

Just having, having people throughout that year and a half in Silverton where you'd order labs on somebody and they'd come back and be like, do you know what those labs cost me? And I'm like, no, I have no idea. Not a clue. And, and how was I supposed to know? Like, I don't know what insurance you have. I don't know what your deductible was.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 22:20

It's so interesting because we're, we're coming off the heels of Dr. James Gore talking about as an emergency medicine physician who's now doing DPC at Halcyon Health in Irvine, California. How, like the number one thing and you and I know this because we lived this when we were on rotation in the ER, but it's like the number one thing you think about in the ER is where's your face sheet? What insurance do you have? And it's like, we all know that life, but in primary care, I don't think I ever had the face sheet as the top page, like in our clinic and fee for service. It was like the demographics, like who the patient is, what's their chief complaint type of thing, but it wasn't like a full face sheet with like, here's this and here's that. And. In no class in medical school are we taught, like, if they have a bucca plan, that means they're coverage for bubba, because there is no transparency. I mean, we're working towards it, great, but Like as you and I can say like on your website, you know, cholesterol, whatever is like 4 to check it, you know, you can't do that. You can't know those things necessarily coming off from the curriculum that we get in medical school.

Dr. Phil Hellman: 23:21

Can I tell you kind of a crazy story about this? Please. It just happened to me personally. I kind of like, I actually want to write an article about it. So. My family and I have a health share plan and, uh, it's Liberty Health Share is what we have right now. And my daughter was having some episodes of vomiting and headache. She's five and she had like four episodes in a six month time period and they were getting more frequent. And so I thought she deserves to get a head MRI. Right. And as far as I knew, there were only two places I could get one of those, you know, for a child, because you have to have a special like pediatric certificate for outpatient imaging of pediatrics. And my normal imaging center didn't have one. And I just kind of assumed the other ones didn't either. So I was going through children's hospital of Michigan and a system called Beaumont or what's now Corwell health, but they're, Those are the two big like pediatric systems in the area, and they both can do sedation for MRI, right? Because one of the big issues is kids might move around and can't stay still for 20 minutes. All right, so both of them tell me that I can't write an order for my daughter. And we, we had talked to somebody who works at Beaumont and she said that that kind of just went into place like a year ago. And one person from Beaumont tried to tell me that it was against the Stark laws for me to do that. That's awesome. The Stark law is like, I don't have an investment in the hospital or the MRI machine or like what? So anyways, and they kind of treat you like you're a criminal when you do this, right? I had the one lady from Children's call me, she was a doctor, I think she was a radiologist, and she said, our risk management team won't allow us to, to fulfill this order, you need to get another doctor to. So long story short, we go, we agree to see peds neurology at Children's Hospital, which I thought, okay, that's fine, you know, and, and who knows, maybe they'll tell us we don't even need the MRI and we can save the money. He agrees we need the MRI at the end of the appointment. I tell them we're cash pay and they say, okay, the cash pay rates 479 and I think, okay, for a hospital for an MRI, that's actually pretty reasonable and I'm fine with that. And if she needs sedation, they can give it to her. So we know we're going to get the study we need no matter what. Well, I then kind of tell the lady, I'm like, well, we are cash pay, but we do have this health share plan and they had actually recently sent out an email that said. We have a new vendor and we now can build directly for a lot of things. So I called Liberty Healthshare. I told them what was happening and said, would you like to try to build them directly? And they said, Oh, definitely. They're part of this new network, this vendor. I think it was like, PHCS or something. And then I call children's and I give them the information and they're like, okay, great. Yeah, we can, we can take that vendor. We can build them directly. The cost is now going to be 5, 000. Amazing. Upfront. Right, because they have a policy that for anybody with my type of coverage, they want payment upfront and they want to bill you the maximum amount of your, what is essentially your deductible, but what the health shares call like your initial unshared amount or whatever. So they're going to bill me whatever my initial unshared amount is to the max. And so I try to fight this a little bit and I kind of take it up the chain and I end up talking to somebody who's like manager and the manager comes back and just says, I'm so sorry, but this is our policy and the price is going to be 5, 500. So as I tried to fight it and I had a bunch of people on the way say like, this is crazy that we should be able to take care of you like you talk to my manager, the price goes up. Oh my God. It's like an elevator next next level up next price up. Oh my. It was insane. And so I'm like, Okay, so you guys are just cool with the European neurologist saying she needs an MRI but me not getting one because who has 5500 to just shell out for an MRI. Okay. Nobody, you know, like you see Medicaid patients all day long and don't charge them a dime and you want, you want me to make a, you know, I don't know, 5, 500 used to buy a car back in the nineties. So anyways, we ended up getting one through an outpatient imaging center called RMI that does have the pediatric certificate, but they couldn't do sedation. And luckily my daughter stayed still through the whole thing and it cost us 330 long story. But I mean, it's crazy. Yeah, I was just gonna say that kind of, you know, that explains the whole idea of these, you know, ninja bills and, you know, people not knowing what they're gonna have to pay for stuff and makes me think of Newhoffel's, uh, Ryan Newhoffel's article on, uh, Green Cross Green Shield, your grocery insurance.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 28:18

Absolutely. And, you know, when you talk about lack of transparency, fraud, when it just keeps going up, the more people you talk to, You said something in there's a separate video on your website where you're talking to potential patients. You're like, Hey, this is what we do. If this is a good fit for you, let me know. But one of the things you said in there is that you're somebody's guide in the jungle. And that is real, man. That is so real that like. You and I have these conversations, I'm sure on the daily, where it's like, yes, you could pay for your lisinopril through your insurance or your MRI or your calcium score. However, the calcium score is not covered by the insurance or the lisinopril you can actually get for a year for less than the same price that you're paying through your PBM or whatever. But it's like, I was never, I don't know about you, but it's like, I was never able to say these things. Had I not, you know, been able to log into my, you know, wholesale website and be like the current cost of your lisinopril is like pennies on the dollar compared to what you're paying now or would you like to see the menu of cash pay pricing at our local radiology center? I have that saved on my phone as an, as a graphic so that I can easily like, I mean, people. Like, I picked up free, uh, what is it? Cubicle panels in Sacramento one day, and the dude was, you know, talking, Oh, you're a doctor, boo. I'm like, Oh, you need an MRI for your knee? Well, the price is this. If you go to Modesto and do this and he's like, how did you know them? Like, because I work in cash, I work in transparency. And so when it comes to people who have understood paradox, what are some of the things that you hear? Because there is a montage for those people who have not been to paradox DPC's website. There's a montage that you guys have of your patients, but. One of the things they talk in there about is, you know, that health insurance, there's one patient in particular who said, I'm really understanding that health insurance is not health care. So when you have patients coming into the practice, like what are some of the things that you're hearing from them that Paradox DPC is, is helping with or saving them from because you guys exist?

Dr. Phil Hellman: 30:26

Yeah, so back to the health insurance is not health care comment it, you know, it's kind of a cliche and sort of in a way, but it's super true in that, you know, especially for that particular patient. He had health insurance and then his family member went through a whole bunch of stuff where she needed a ton of health care and they were just getting bills constantly. And so what he realized was this insurance doesn't really buy me anything, you know, it might kind of protect, protect my family members from dying, but if they actually need help when they're not well, I'm going to have to pay for all that out of pocket. You know, so I have to essentially pay in addition for my health care, which is the actual care that you're receiving. And so that's that comment, you know, and I think a lot of people, a lot of people come to DPC for that reason. I have some other friends that, you know, told me stories about going to the ER and, you know, You know, nothing happened in the ER, and then they were admitted, and they got a bill for the ER visit for 3, 000, and they're like, call up the hospital. They're like, you did nothing. What's the 3, 000 for? And so they get fed up with it, and they're like, I want a different, Doc and and frankly, that's kind of like the big reason why I started DPC because I was having these conversations with people and I thought these people aren't just complaining about their health care. They're looking for an alternative option, you know, so I think what paradox health can help a lot of people with it's just kind of the classic. You know, three legs of the stool DPC thing, which is, you know, it's the only solution that can simultaneously solve the problems of quality access and cost, you know, so I think that we do that pretty well. I always kind of when I started this, I didn't want to have just a kind of quick visit clinic, you know, for a low monthly membership fee. I think I wanted to provide the highest possible level of care for still an affordable price and. I still think it's super doable.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 32:28

I love it. I want to ask you about your founding days at Paradox Health, but I want to ask one thing. As I mentioned in these videos, one of the things that I loved at the solo video that you did at the end of it, you said, you know, you want to know more, go to my website or simply pick up the phone and dial this number. So you know, in terms of engaging patients who are potential patients who've never met you before. What was the reason that you said, you know, just pick up the phone and call versus Go through the website. What was the intention there?

Dr. Phil Hellman: 33:00

Well, when I made that video, that would have forwarded to me, you know, but I definitely, you know, you're much more able to explain DPC over the phone than you are via website, I think. That's one of the biggest problems that we have is explaining what is direct primary care. I think it's a simple idea, but it's so different. People have a hard time understanding that it's real and they always have additional questions or they think that there's some kind of a catch or a hook. So that's why I think phone conversation is always easier. And it's not like we're getting 100 phone calls a day. So it's pretty easy to field those calls.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 33:35

Love it. And going back now to the opening of Paradox Health. So when you had talked to Rob and he was like, dude, just, just open from day one. Don't, don't waste your time doing other things. Just put all eggs in the basket and open your DPC. How did you go from Silverton to opening? Did you move to Michigan first, take some time off and then open? Or were you like working the, the, the DPC already from Silverton?

Dr. Phil Hellman: 34:01

No, no, it was the former. So I just. Basically moved here. We had some savings. We had sold our house. And we moved right around Christmas time. And so I was like, I'm not in a rush to get a job. I'm just going to enjoy my family and hang out. And, uh, it was really nice. That was a great time. But then quickly, I was like, I need to start working again. So I started doing some locum stuff at urgent cares and. Very quickly realized I didn't want to keep doing that because that's horrible. And I actually, I had called Rob and then I also met with Paul Thomas down in Detroit who started plum health. And we met for lunch. And after that conversation, I was more so, you know, kind of convinced that I should do it and had a much better understanding of what it took to start up. You know, that's always kind of the question that people have is, well, how do I do this? And it's really Not that hard.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 34:55

So going from this place of, you know, experience and being a successful DPC entrepreneur, I want to toss in there a statement that you had made, um, also in your bio that, you know, you were talking about giving care directly versus indirectly. You, you mentioned how in med school you really wanted to, to do this direct care for people, but it took the right prodding and the right people to tell me that you weren't crazy. So when you talk about, you know, meeting with Paul Thomas, meeting with Rob. And, you know, finally coming to this place of like, okay, yeah, I can do this. What was it that, in addition to just the, the sequence of events, what was it that made you say like, today is the day that I am opening?

Dr. Phil Hellman: 35:38

I don't, I mean, I didn't really have a grand opening. I was more so just having conversations with people and letting them know what I was doing. And I have a pretty good network here in Michigan. So it really like, I mean, my first day of opening was probably just the day that I got my. Tax ID back from the federal government, like that was about it, you know, and then I opened up my business bank account and I was like, okay, I'm open. So I didn't really do this big announcement. I didn't, I never had the chamber of commerce come do some grand opening thing. I mean, I should have, but I didn't. And I started seeing people at home before I had an office. So I was doing some home visits and still doing a ton of work at urgent care. And telemed stuff. But that was kind of, it was just like, as soon as I could open, I opened, you know,

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 36:27

love it. And I hope that gives people encouragement in terms of when you're opening, like Dr. Hellman's not mentioning, like, I, I get it. Like, I am totally envious of Dr. Brian Blank's Ember Modern Medicine in Greenville. It's absolutely ridiculously beautiful. Listen to his episode to hear more about that. But I will say that we've talked about this on the podcast so many times. Like if you're wanting to open. Let that drive you rather than, you know, I can't open until I have this until I have this, the people want you, the people want a different way of doing health care, the people love, like I love, I'm super envious of amazing buildings and clinics. However, you do not need that to open and I think that, you know, by hearing your words as to like, it wasn't a grand opening similar and in, you know, my neck of the woods. I didn't have a ribbon cutting or anything like that, other than like buying some ribbon off of Amazon and some big ass scissors and just like taking my kids to the levee and having my tripod like take a picture of me and my husband, my kids and my dog, but it means so much to you as the doctor opening and doing DPC. That's the thing that matters. That's the things that your stories are going to be around. That's the thing that you're going to tell your kids and your grandkids about. So when we talk there about you opening, and I love that you, you know, just did it. You did telemedicine visits first. At what point did you decide to open a physical location?

Dr. Phil Hellman: 37:48

I always wanted one. It was just kind of a matter of finding a spot that I could afford. So I rented a room from a friend who's a chiropractor. That was my first office and I was there for two years and it was super cheap, really low overhead and great visibility. It was in a really high end strip mall. You know, so plenty of parking and I just had one room and I had everything in that one room. So I mean, and a lot of people do that. I'm not, I'm definitely not the only one who does that. So, you know, and for me, I, I'm not like a huge risk taker. I already had a ton of student loans. I didn't want to take out a big loan and, you know, rent some massive building and hire a bunch of staff. And, you know, that's just not really my style. So just started out kind of, kind of slow. And I think what it also really helps to work the kinks out. You know, if you just start kind of low profile and you see some people and you know, you're printing scripts and you're, you know, you're kind of working through, okay, what are the hiccups? How do I do this? What are the nuts and bolts of how I'm actually going to do this? You know, those first 2050 patients are kind of like your beta testers.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 38:54

Definitely. And when you decided to open and you finally opened your doors, you're doing medicine, just about a space initially, and then moving into this one room clinic in the chiropractor's office, how did patients find you? Did you, you know, have all your family tell everybody they knew, or did you, did you do an open house even with the space you had? How did you get patients in?

Dr. Phil Hellman: 39:17

I never did an open house. I still think I might at some point. For my 10 year anniversary, I'll do a ribbon cutting. So most of it was just word of mouth at first, just telling friends and family, hey, spread the word and that kind of thing. Had some stock cards made up, went around to some businesses, had some actually had some really good conversations with businesses at first. And then the thing that really helped was joining. I joined a BNI group for those that don't know business networking international. It's kind of this cliche taboo group that people join. That's really kind of corny. You get up and you do a presentation for 30 seconds at the beginning of every meeting. It's once a week, but it was great. And I met some awesome people. So a lot of it, I think it just depends upon the group that you get in with. But I'm still friends with a ton of these people, even though I'm not doing it anymore. And at one point, 10 percent of my patients were direct result from that B and I group. Wow. Which is huge. You know, you think that's thousands of dollars of income just from that one decision. And you know, the group costs like five, 600 bucks a year to be a part of. And then I was doing the chamber of commerce stuff, going to those events, going around, talking to people, got a business out of that. So I think You know, and you don't see a direct result from that kind of stuff right away. It's, it's the long game. It's conversations you have with people. And then a year later they call you and say, Hey, I saw you at this event a year ago, thought about calling you, but I never did. But now I am. And it also just helps to keep you busy because early days of DPC are pretty dejecting. You're just sitting around doing a whole lot of nothing. And you don't have a lot of patient appointments, you're not doing podcast recordings, and uh, you just need something to fill your time with and it is productive even if you're not getting patients right away, you got to kind of look at it as like planting the seeds and and eventually it will pay off.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 41:14

I loved, you know, because I technically I was doing podcast recording while I was waiting for patients to join the practice, but you're

Dr. Phil Hellman: 41:22

smart,

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 41:23

but what I will say is that just even, you know, like I will throw a big shout out to Dr. been on the podcast. Um, she's in Spokane, Washington at Thread Health, but she is a perfect example of how when you have the time, like similar how to eat, how we talked about, like you dove deep into lipidology. She delved deep into. How do I do DPC? What are all the questions I have DPC? And I love that because there's so many resources that we have now, especially compared to when you opened that the, the resources are endless in terms of opinions on how to open, how do you do your overhead? How do you do your PNL? Who do you hire for a coach? Do you hire a coach? All of these things, like, There's all of these resources that are in existence because there's more and more of us out there who have stories and have stories that have been shared. So I think that, you know, as you're sitting there waiting for those patients, planning for those patients to come. It's, it's definitely a time that I miss sometimes because I'm like, man, I wish I had more hours in the day to do X, Y, Z, you know, putting specialists into my EMR so it's ready to be used for referrals and all these little, you Little bits there, but um, it's definitely it's something important to hear because if you're expecting like dr Kissy Blackwell, I'm gonna have 278 patients on day one. It's like awesome. Go go for it If that's you you do you but I will say for those people who might not be in that same boat. It's okay It's okay. Like we are still alive We are still open and we are having patients who like you said like They, we planted the seeds and then they come later, like I saw one of those patients yesterday. She was talking about how she did not realize how important it is in rural America in our case to have access to a physician when you need it. And unfortunately, something had happened with this person's spouse where there was, you know, a need to contact the doctor after hospitalization and there was nobody. There was nobody. And so I love that as patients find us, it speaks a lot to the patients who understand what we're doing, who want us. And then they become our patients. Those are the people that they might be skeptical. Like, I think Dr. Emily Scott said one of her first patients was like, Am I on candid camera? Like, is this real? And it's like, yes, this is real. And yes, we are here for you as long as you have openings in your practice. So I say that because it is like you said, you know, if, if people are thinking about like, Oh, these first days, they might be scary. It's okay. I just wanted to put a word of reassurance there. Yeah. Now, when it came to you, you said that in 2018, like you were open for two years in this chiropractor's office, what happened after start of the pandemic? So March of 2020 hits, how did your practice fare in terms of, did your practice grow and that allowed you the income to then go into a space or what, what did your, what did Paradox Health experience during the pandemic?

Dr. Phil Hellman: 44:16

Explosion of growth. I'm trying to think about how many patients I had pre pandemic and then post pandemic. What I can say is I was doing some telemedicine still pre pandemic. And then I was actually doing it. They had up the rates that they were paying. So I kept doing it at the beginning of the pandemic, like a ton of it. And I mean, it was great. I mean, I made a lot of extra money that year from doing that. But then You know, I think I probably stopped doing that stuff towards the end of 2020 because I had so many new patients that had signed up and the reason was we were treating people for COVID and nobody was so, I mean, we even had doctors coming to us asking to be treated and, you know, it was just kind of the same, uh, the same line at every other clinic was, you know, stay at home. Good luck. If you can't breathe, go to the hospital. And so we were seeing people, we were closed for the first, like, maybe two months of it. I was still seeing some people in person had a guy like slice his knee open with an axe on Easter. So I came in and sewed him up, but I wasn't doing physicals for like, you know, the first two months, two, three months when everybody was kind of really unsure as to what the heck COVID was. But then once we had a better understanding of it, We opened back up and that was it. I mean, we just, like I said, we just exploded with members. I had to close to new patients for a little while because I was so busy treating people for COVID and then also seeing my own patients. So, February of 2020, I was at 351 patients and then this would be like February of 2022, I was at 701 patients. So, that's basically doubled my patients in two years.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 45:58

That's some Rob Ross reaction right there, man. That's crazy. That's crazy. So let me ask you there because, you know, the word was getting out and especially because you were treating COVID and people were finding you and then I'm guessing learning more about the practice and then deciding like, I can't not have access to this amazing doctor. You know, whether there's a pandemic going or not, but at what point did Dr. Davenport join your practice? Was it during that time to help you, you know, get all those patients on boarded?

Dr. Phil Hellman: 46:28

I met Dr. Davenport towards the end of summer, fall of 21. I remember because it was like, I play in this like Friday night hockey skate. And it was like the first, the day that I met her was like the first skate of the fall. So it was like late September, early October of 21, and she ended up joining, I want to say it was March of 22. That was kind of her timeline for when she could come. Yeah, and then how I met her was, she just, she had been interested in DPC for a while, and While still is a part time program director for an internal medicine residency in Pontiac, uh, McLaren Pontiac internal program, and she just been kind of looking to get out of it. And so she met with actually Paul Thomas or called him and had a conversation with him and then Paul directed her to me and said, Hey, if you live, I mean, she happened to live like a mile from from me, he said, Hey, if you live up there, you should just give, you know, Phil Hellman a call and talk to him. And so. So we met for coffee and, you know, hit it off.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 47:37

That's awesome. I will drop here. I sent a message before the podcast, but I will drop this here the first time. And I don't know if she remembers. So when she hears this, she's going to probably die laughing. But I was quickly going down to, I think, set up like the My DPC Story banner or something at the DPC Summit in Kansas City. And I was in a back to the future sweatshirt and socks and sandals. And she's in her tank top going to the POCUS workshop. And I was like, Hey, what's your name? And so she was, Oh, I'm Lindsay Davenport. I was awesome. It wasn't a big conversation. It literally was that this is what happens when I meet people. The first image I have of you is that you're the 301 session. And the first image I have of Lindsay Davenport is I don't look like a doctor, but I really am like, it's a good time, but so when you guys connected and I know that she was. Wanting to do DPC, as you mentioned, but how did the conversations go to bring her into Paradox Health?

Dr. Phil Hellman: 48:27

Well, it wasn't that difficult. She was pretty much said, look, I want to do DPC, you know, can I join your practice essentially? And so it was really just a matter of kind of ironing out the contract and, and that sort of thing. And, and it was very easy because she said, I don't, I don't want to be a partner. I don't know anything about business. I just want to see patients. And I said, perfect. Cause I'm not, you know, struggling with the business aspect of things. We've got tons of patients coming in. And I was at that point where. You know, if you've been open for five years and you're a male only practice, you get a ton of patients who say, Hey, you know, I'd really like my wife to join, but she really wants a female and Hey, have you ever considered hiring a female? Yes, I have. It's not as easy as you think. So yeah, it was perfect. And it would be nice if she could see kids, but I'll take it. So awesome. So yeah, it worked out really well.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 49:20

And when she immediately came on as she did, did, did you just have her come on as a 1099 then? So she was able to,

Dr. Phil Hellman: 49:29

yeah, I mean, she, she probably doesn't care me saying she still gets paid as a 1099.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 49:33

Well, that's how Dr. James Gore and Dr. Emily Scott do it at Halcyon Health. And they spoke to that on the podcast, because like, there's different ways of bringing people on. But I think that from a, How do we get you, you know, your feet wet and you going to see patients and you're doing, you know, what you need to do in DPC as soon as possible. I think that's a very reasonable and easy way to do it, relatively speaking. So when she came on, how did you manage your patient panel versus her patient panel? Because on your website, you have the option, like, are you looking to see Dr. Hellman? Are you looking to see Dr. Davenport? And then I'm assuming you have different sign on links on the back end from that, that part of your webpage. Okay.

Dr. Phil Hellman: 50:12

Yeah, well, not different sign on links. It's the same link, but you just click a drop down box and they can pick which doctor they want. So at first I was essentially, when she came on, I like closed to new patients. And then it, so on the website it said, join Dr. Hellman's wait list or join Dr. Davenport's practice. So I was trying to funnel people towards her. Mostly just because I was so busy, but also because I wanted to fill her up. We also had a waitlist from COVID. And so we called on that waitlist. It was about 60 people. And I don't know, maybe a third of them, you know, ended up following through and signing up. So that worked well for a little while. But then, you know, there is attrition in DPC. You know, you have people that drop out for whatever reason. Uh, I think the number one reason here is people move to Florida. As funny as that sounds, this is pretty true. A lot of people move into Florida. So you do have to replace those patients. And I finally got to a point, uh, maybe six months back where I just said, you know what? I need to open back up because I also started finding out about people who had chosen not to join our practice because they really wanted me as their doctor. They wanted a male doctor. And they're like, well, he's not available. So I got to find somebody else. And, you know, a lot of these people are, they'd be great patients. And so I opened back up and now we kind of have it as, you know, you pick your doctor. The other, I think the longterm benefit of that is that you want patients to be with who they want to be with, not who you want them to be with. And that, you know, in the longterm, that's always going to work out for the best.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 51:46

But I think it's awesome that you know that the patients are asking for options and you have provided options, so I think that's great.

Dr. Phil Hellman: 51:53

Sorry, the other thing I didn't mention was we gave, we sent out an email and basically gave all of my patients the option to switch over to her. So, especially a lot of the female patients have chosen to do that throughout time.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 52:04

Gotcha. Gotcha. And in terms of just looking back on that experience, you know, thankfully, Dr. Davenport was there. She was wanting to do this. She was like, I want to get started as soon as possible for people who are not necessarily as lucky or as fortunate. What advice would you have to people who are looking to hire physicians into their practice in the future?

Dr. Phil Hellman: 52:27

Well, as far as where to look, as far as I know, I mean, You know, uh, residency programs are a great option. Like we kind of talked about before, you know, emailing program directors that are local, uh, or even ones that aren't, if you know, people that are, you know, maybe from your neck of the woods, but they're doing residency elsewhere in the country, as well as just, you know, hiring a recruiting firm or posting on Indeed. I mean, those are all kind of the, I think the standard ways of doing it. I'm yet to do that, although I might be there at some point. And so I'll probably have to learn more about that process. But the, the, the biggest thing I'd say, and this is more so coming from a lot of other people I know who own businesses is, It has to be a good culture fit and I think now more than ever in medicine with it being so politicized and divisive post COVID, you really want to make sure that this is somebody that you can work with long term. So instead of just looking at. You know, kind of what do they look like on paper? Is this somebody you want to spend time with and that you can work with easily?

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 53:28

Absolutely. And I think that that is such a powerful statement. It might be a general statement, but it is very powerful because culture speaks to so many things. You know, how do you cover call? How do you take care of each other's patients? How do you you know, the culture of the office is a uniform culture. And this is like, Some people might argue that, but for me, it's like, that's the clinic where there's a lot of time with patients, or that's the clinic where it's relationship based medicine, not transactional based medicine, like you put in your video. But I think that, you know, the clinic being uniform really helps also. Build the word of mouth for the culture that you're bringing to the community, so I think that's that's really important. Yeah,

Dr. Phil Hellman: 54:10

and I I can say that I know at least a handful of fee for service docs that have left their practices because they had no choice over the staff that was hired and the staff just destroyed the clinic.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 54:22

Absolutely. I, I think we can all think of, uh, you know, people who we've worked with in our training up until now that it's just like, Oh, my gosh, like, I am so glad to be working with another person rather than that person. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Like, for me, it was somebody, one of my M. A.'s at my fee for service. She's like, You know, I can set the stuff up for you and like, well, I was not used to having anyone set up my procedures for me. So it's like, you know, things like that, where if you're in one culture, there is a way to think about could it be done differently? And then those are the types of questions also to ask, you know, if there's a DPC practice that you're looking to join or you're interested in joining, you know, ask about like, How do you guys do specific things? Like how do you guys cover each other's call? Like, you know, what, what happens if in this situation or that situation? Those are ways to learn about the culture if you're looking to, to join. For you, you guys have Mia. Is, is Mia your only staff member in addition to the two of you?

Dr. Phil Hellman: 55:20

It's Mia, and it's me when she's on vacation.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 55:24

Love it. Love it. So, let me ask you, how did you find Mia, and what role does she serve at Paradox Health?

Dr. Phil Hellman: 55:31

So, Mia is my good friend's daughter. And, uh, basically, I was kind of having a nervous breakdown during COVID at one point because I was just, It wasn't so much the volume of work or the time, but just the amount of phone calls I had to field every day was just driving me insane. And so I was, I was actually at the gym on a Sunday, and Mia had just finished a phlebotomy course, uh, maybe like two months before. And she had actually asked me, like, are you looking for anybody, you know, to work at the clinic? And I was like, no, not really. But that was before I got really busy. And so it was Sunday. You know, we're at the gym. Her dad's there. Her whole family's there. And I was like, I just kind of had this epiphany of like, if she comes to work with me tomorrow, I'm going to survive. And so I was like, can you come to work with me tomorrow? And she didn't have a job at the time, or she did, but it was, uh, I think she was, she was like waitressing at night or something. And she was like, Oh my gosh, yeah, I would love to. So love that. And, and from there, I kind of just looked at it as like a temporary thing, but then we got so busy and I got so many new patients. I was like, if you want to keep working here, I still need you, you know? And so it was really, I've been really fortunate, really kind of blessed that I haven't had to do a whole lot of interviewing and the people have just kind of fallen in my lap. I actually did interview One MA for the position, she had lost her job because she wasn't getting the COVID shot. And she was really experienced. She was like 20, 30 year ma really good. I made her draw my blood on the spot and she was like really nervous, but she did it perfect. And she ended up saying, no, she's like, no, I couldn't pay her enough. It was kind of a long story short. So anyways, uh, hired Mia and that's where we're at. And she does everything. She answers the phone. She draws blood. She does vitals. She gives shots. Yeah.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 57:29

Very cool. And in terms of with you having Dr. Davenport, with you having Mia and you having, you know, not the crazy of the pandemic happening right now, like it was back in 2020, I want to ask you, what has DPC allowed you to do differently? Like clearly talked about lipidology, but what has DPC allowed you to do differently, whether it be your professional practice or your personal life?

Dr. Phil Hellman: 57:53

Everything. Do you want to have a whole another podcast just on that? I like Josh umbers and statements. I don't know if you're familiar with this, but you know, I can see fewer patients and spend more time with them and spend more time with my family and take more vacation and make more money. You know, and be happier. All of the things, you know, one, I think one of the coolest things about being a DPC doc is that you get to block off your schedule. You know, if you have something going on, you just say, you know what, I have something I need to do. That time is blocked off. I can see patients, you know, for the rest of the day. And we don't have so many patients that that's actually a problem. You know, you're not seeing 20 people a day. And so you're not saying no to 10 people. You're saying no to like two people, three people. Yeah. And you've got plenty of other openings, the second half of the day and the day after and the day after. And so I think, yeah, I read a, I read a book recently called the Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. And I think one of the coolest things that DPC allows you to do is to not be hurried. And hurry really is kind of to me like the root cause of all evil. Whenever we're hurried, we're not spending enough time with our patients. Whenever we're hurried, we're short with our spouse. For Whenever we're worried, we're stressed out. And so if you can eliminate that, it really just makes a world of difference. And I think DPC is the only tool that allows docs to do that.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 59:21

I love that. So let me ask you in closing, when you think about the future, is anything coming down the pipeline for Paradox Health?

Dr. Phil Hellman: 59:28

No, you know, actually, I didn't mention this to you before. I looked at buying a building. And then I found out what the property taxes were, and I was like, well, I guess I'm never doing that. So that, that was going to be a big change. I was really thinking about that. And I think that that might actually be part of like a DPC education that would be useful for people because it's such a, the world of commercial real estate is so different than residential. So no, for the foreseeable future, we're just going to be probably in this office. We could probably take on another doc, but we kind of need, well, we would like Dr. Davenport to be a little bit more full before we kind of pull that lever, you know, but I think that that's probably the next step would be to find a family practice doc, somebody who can see kids and, uh, and go from there.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 1:00:14

For sure. And did you want to mention the transition from lab to lab?

Dr. Phil Hellman: 1:00:17

Oh yeah, sure. So one other thing that's not like super interesting but really important is we're switching from Quest to LabCorp. Quest has been really great and I'm like, we're in general, we're pretty happy with their labs and what they offer, but they increase their prices every year. So they have like a seven percent, I want to say, Inflation rate that they just add on to your prices every single year. And so it's gotten to the point where some of the labs are just kind of ridiculous. And my standard panel, I order on people now it's close to like 180. And I really like to lower the cost of that. So, you know, we're going to do kind of a, a legacy price increase. So some people that came in early to the clinic. are in like a lower price tier than what our current prices are. So we're probably gonna try and catch those people up to current pricing. But then we're also introducing the switch from quest to lab core, which will in the end, if you get your blood drawn with us, just once a year, we'll end up saving you money in the long run. So, you know, even though your monthly membership fee might go up slightly, If you get your labs drawn with us once a year, you're still saving money out of the whole deal. So I really like the idea of just looking wherever you can to save money on overhead and save money on costs for patients. I think a lot of people get a little bit too lazy and complacent about their practice and stop looking for savings for patients. And we should just always kind of be, be looking for that kind of similar to how, you know, Costco hasn't raised the price of their hot dog. They started their own hot dog factories.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 1:01:53

I love that. That's the understandable because I can totally relate. Like we've been, you know, Price Club members since 1984. So amen, like everyone can understand that. Thank you so much, Dr. Hellman for joining us today.

Dr. Phil Hellman: 1:02:04

Yeah. Thanks for having me. It's been, it's been a lot of fun.

Dr. Maryal Concepcion: 1:02:10

Thank you for joining us for another episode of My DPC Story, highlighting the physician experience in the world of direct primary care. I hope you found today's conversation insightful and inspiring. If you want to dive deeper into the direct primary care movement, consider joining our My DPC Story Patreon community. Here you'll have access to exclusive content, including more interview topics and much more. Don't forget to subscribe to My DPC Story on your podcast feed and follow us on social media as well. If you're able, I'd greatly appreciate if you could leave us a review. It helps others to find the podcast. Until next time, stay informed, stay healthy, and keep advocating for DPC. Read more about DPC news on the daily at dpcnews. com. Until next week, this is Mariel Concepcion.