Steven Schwartz (00:01.215)
Hello and welcome to the Concierge Medical Marketing Podcast. I’m your host, Steve Schwartz, and it’s truly my honor and privilege to have my guest today, Kevin Lutz, MD. Kevin is a concierge medical physician with a full practice based in the Denver, Colorado area. And he’s got a great story to share. In fact, a couple of great stories to share. And Kevin, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today on the podcast.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (00:27.566)
Well thanks for having me Steve, I appreciate it.

Steven Schwartz (00:29.973)
Yeah, absolutely. I know we’ve had a couple of starts and stops trying to get this scheduled. I’m really glad we were able to get it scheduled today.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (00:38.53)
Definitely worth the effort, you bet.

Steven Schwartz (00:40.415)
Yes. Well, Kevin, let’s jump right in. First of all, we’d like our guests who are watching the podcast to get to know you a little bit better. What’s your story, your background? When did you decide you wanted to become a doctor? And just tell us a little bit about your story, please.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (00:58.52)
Sure, absolutely. So my story is really straightforward. When I was five years old, I took my teddy bear and took out his tonsils and decided I was going to be a doctor. And I really have never looked back since five years old. The only thing I ever wanted to do was be a doctor. And for some of your older audience, they will remember a TV show called Marcus Welby.

Steven Schwartz (01:00.297)
My story is.

Steven Schwartz (01:11.037)
Nice.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (01:25.886)
And for the younger audience, we used to watch a TV show called Marcus Welby, which is a completely fictional show about a primary care doctor. When I was a little kid, I thought this was kind of the first reality TV. I thought Marcus Welby was a real doctor and the TV cameras were following him around with real patients and going to a real hospital.

And he knew all his patients on a first name and his patients knew him and they knew his staff and he took good care of them. And so I thought this is how it was really going to be. So when I went off to do my training in medical school and beyond, my goal the whole time was to be just like this TV doctor, Marcus Welby. And it took a while, but I finally made it.

Steven Schwartz (02:11.957)
Nice and share with us a little bit about your first position, your first job or two working in medicine and how you felt and why the, I guess the, way it was actually coming true didn’t quite seem to line up with your vision from your childhood.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (02:33.078)
did not line up at all. So the path was four years of college and then four years of medical school and then three years of what’s called residency, which is training in my specialty, which was adult medicine. Sorry. So adult medicine, internal medicine is just taking care of adults.

So after all of that time, I went out and I got my first job, and I won’t name names, but it was for a huge national organization. And the place was really a factory. They churned the patients through.

Every appointment was the same length. The continuity, the time that patients got to see their own doctors was terrible. The hours were terrible. It was the antithesis of Marcus Welby in every way. It was very much a factory. So I tried a couple positions in other companies after that, kind of at the time, the rage in Denver. This was in the late 90s, early 2000s, was most medical practices were owned by hospitals.

And hospitals real job is to make money. So they were very concerned with the bottom line. And so there was still very much that factory feel and there was very little focus on patients as people. And I did not see Marcus Welby in the mirror when I would wake up each day.

Steven Schwartz (03:58.737)
And what happened that helped you form your own truly concierge or direct primary care type of practice? What happened?

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (04:11.502)
So there was a really pivotal moment in 2008. There are actually two pivotal moments in 2008. One was I was owning my own practice and I am a mid-level provider, so that would be a nurse practitioner or a physician assistant. We were taking care of 3,000 patients. There were 3,000 patients in my practice, which you can tell mathematically is just not the way you take care of people. Like, I didn’t even know all of my patients.

because my mid-level would be taking care of them. So I was getting very, very burned out. I was leaving the home in the morning at about 6 a.m. so I could go to the hospital, take care patients, then go to the office, work through lunch, and I actually had a timer on my computer at 6 p.m. to tell me to stop working and go home and see my wife and kids, and I was really burned out.

and starting to have doubts about my career choice and would I ever get to be Marcus Welby. At about that time, I received an invitation in the mail to go hear about this new model of healthcare. And frankly, I wasn’t very interested because I felt very hopeless. But to be honest, it was at my favorite steakhouse in Denver. So for the steak, I went and I learned about this thing called Concierge Medical Care, which in essence,

takes the insurance company out of the equation. And without the insurance company being the source of revenue and generating the frantic hectic pace, that just leaves the doctor and the patient. And I was immediately hooked and I immediately saw the value in doing this. So spent the rest of 2008 figuring out how to convert my practice. And then on April 1st of 2009,

We got rid of the insurance companies and started Concierge Medical Care. And the short ending to the rest of the story is, I got to be Marcus Welby starting in 2009.

Steven Schwartz (06:13.801)
Very cool. What a great story. Did the company that hosted the steak dinner want to have you hire them to assist you in the transition? Was that their angle?

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (06:27.582)
Yes, so their angle was they were kind of the first kind of corporate entity in America to try and institutionalize concierge medical care. So their two roles were going to help me usher my patients from an insurance-based practice to a concierge practice. And then they were gonna kind of in quotes, help me take care of my patients. But they were going to charge a…

per patient per month amount for five years, which turned out to be a whole lot of money. So me being a little too overly independent figured out I could do this all by myself, which I did. And we can talk a little bit about why that was a good and not good idea. But the company who bought me the lovely steak dinner and who revolutionized my career, I chose not to work with them because it’s just too big of a chunk of money. And I felt

more importantly than the money, it was another factor in the exam room that I didn’t want to have to deal with. I only wanted to think about patients.

Steven Schwartz (07:34.245)
So they planted the seed of this new type of how to practice medicine where you could truly have more time with your patients and have less, let’s say distractions and interference by insurance companies and other corporate players. And I think it’s magnificent. I think it’s such a great business model for a medical practice so that truly the physician and the patient can spend the time that they need.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (07:37.912)
Yeah.

Steven Schwartz (08:01.779)
and really get to the bottom of the patient’s situations for improved healthcare. It’s just such a smarter way of doing this.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (08:06.602)
Exactly. I’m up, it really is. And I’m very grateful for the company, both for the lovely steak dinner, but more importantly for opening up my eyes to this very exciting and very effective way to take care of patients. So I’m always grateful that they pointed me in a better direction.

Steven Schwartz (08:23.327)
So just as a quick question before we go on, how much time were you allotted or permitted to spend per patient before in the machine factory of the hospital system versus how much time do you typically spend with your patients now, either for the first visit, which I know can be more, or a typical visit?

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (08:34.274)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (08:44.248)
Sure, that’s a really good point. And if you don’t mind, I wanna back up a little bit and tell you why the numbers are the way they are. So in a traditional practice, in what I call an insurance-based practice, doctors are paid per visit. So the goal then for a doctor if he or she wants to stay open and run a business, then is to see as many patients as they can per day because that’s how they get paid and…

business language, they would say they’re getting paid per widget, which is a terrible way to think of your patients, but that’s just the reality of insurance-based economics. You get paid per patient, and we can talk a little bit more about how that negatively affects care, but it really puts the goal on finishing the visit. So at the time back then, and these numbers haven’t really changed much, the average time that a patient is face-to-face with their doctor is about seven minutes.

which is really fast. I don’t even know if you could get your coffee made at a coffee shop in seven minutes. And that’s not counting the time it took to get in to see the doctor. Your audience will know that it could easily take a couple of weeks to get an appointment to see their doctor.

And then when they get to the doctor’s office, they have to sit in this horrible place called the waiting room, which I think is just kind of rude. isn’t kind of rude. It is rude to have a room specifically designed to acknowledge the doctor’s time is more important than your time. So we’re going to have you wait.

Steven Schwartz (10:10.749)
is rude.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (10:17.324)
The average waiting room time is 45 minutes. Then there’s an average of an additional 20 to 30 minutes with the patient sitting in the exam room waiting for the doctor, all for that seven minute visit. In my practice, in our practice in concierge medical care, our patients can see us today or tomorrow.

and they can see us virtually like you and I are doing right now, or we can do phone appointments. My preference is in person at the office appointments because I’m old fashioned and I like face to face. And the shortest appointment time that we have, if somebody says, I sprained my ankle, which we would consider a quick, easy visit, that’s scheduled for 30 minutes. And when we say 30 minutes, we mean 30 minutes face to face.

If a patient has a three o’clock appointment, they know to come early so that at three o’clock they walk in the exam room, I walk in the exam room, and the rest of their time is theirs. That’s the shortest appointment is 30 minutes. If somebody’s coming in for a yearly physical, we like to book two hours for that. They actually used to be longer than two hours, but I learned after about two hours people kind of…

zone out and have lost their concentration. And then anywhere in the middle. So if somebody says, I have a lot of questions, I have a lot of concerns, then we can book an hour, an hour and a It really comes down to whatever they need, not what our schedule demands.

Steven Schwartz (11:52.341)
Amazing. I love that you could be flexible for the true needs of your patient, which are going to vary over time based on their particular health situation. Business question. You said that you transitioned the practice from a typical insurance based practice of around 3000 patients to your current concierge practice. And based on that,

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (12:04.353)
Absolutely.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (12:16.407)
Mm-hmm.

Steven Schwartz (12:21.909)
Could you tell us a little bit about how many patients you now have for your panel? You said you have another partner in the practice. Tell us a little bit about the structure of your business and if you’re willing, the general numbers for other people to learn a little bit more about what you’re doing.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (12:35.288)
short.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (12:41.102)
Sure. So as you pointed out, when I was in my insurance-based practice, I had 3,000 active patients, defined as in the last two years, 3,000 patients had at least one visit in the office with either me or the physician assistant or nurse practitioner, depending on the year.

And now in the current practice, we have much, much smaller panels so that we can devote that much more time to each patient. So my panel is at about 230 patients, which is just about full. I never want to have more patients than I can know personally. And then I do have a partner in the practice, Dr. Chris Griffith, who’s also an MD. He just joined the practice a year ago in January. So his panel is actively growing.

He’s at about 160 patients right now, so most of the new patients in the practice will go to him.

Steven Schwartz (13:36.519)
Excellent. And what is your annual retainer membership fee for a patient who pays at one number or does it have various versions?

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (13:42.53)
Yeah. Sure.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (13:47.214)
So one of our guiding principles, we have a couple principles that we talk about a lot in the practice. And one of them is to keep things as simple as possible. There’s an acronym, the KISS principle, K-I-S-S, keep it simple, silly. And we apply that to everything we do. And so the simplest way to do this for us is just to have a flat fee, which is $4,200 a year.

Steven Schwartz (13:56.49)
Love it.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (14:13.646)
But then we add one little additional benefit to that. Each additional adult family member in a patient’s family gets a 20 % discount. And then we also take care of kids 16 to 21 for free, mostly because that’s our opportunity to try and teach young people at a still teachable age about healthy lifestyle, healthy habits, et cetera. So really it’s just a tier and then a family, it’s not a tier, I’m sorry, it’s just a flat, easy fee. And then…

a family discount to bring in additional family members. Which, while it’s good business, turns out to actually be a lot of fun. And it turns out to be better business because if I’m taking care of you, Steve, and your wife, your wife is much more inclined to call me and say, hey, Kevin, did Steve tell you about or did Steve mention? So it gives me a better insight into patients. And the other nice thing about that is

If, unfortunately, a family encounters a health crisis, it’s really nice to already know the husband and wife and the kids or the grandparents so that when we engage in a difficult journey with something complicated like cancer, we already know each other. Everyone has already met each other. We already have a rapport and a history, and it makes that journey so much more meaningful and so much more productive. So it’s a long answer for a small fee.

Steven Schwartz (15:40.735)
No, I think it’s a great plan that you have and keep it super simple is the way I always learn that. And there’s one more, the slightly more negative version, but we don’t need to talk about that one today. One thought I had is about having both the husband and the wife or family members as part of your practice is that you could ask, let’s say, the man, how are you sleeping? Do you feel rested and whatnot? I sleep pretty well and things are good.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (15:50.232)
Yeah.

Steven Schwartz (16:09.957)
And if the wife was listening to the conversation, she might say, are you kidding? You’re holding your breath while you’re sleeping and you’re constantly choking and gagging while you’re sleeping. And where the husband may not know that he has sleep apnea, the wife thinks that something worth doctors should be looking into with a sleep study. So I love the idea of having the family all involved. And certainly from a business point of view, as children,

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (16:19.497)
Absolutely.

Steven Schwartz (16:39.669)
see you as their physician and when they hit 22 or 25 or whatever it might be and they’re done with college and they’re moved back to the hometown, they’re probably going to want to come back to you as their doctor and see the value of it and completely bypass the traditional insurance-based medicine entirely. Would you agree?

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (16:46.157)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (16:58.958)
I definitely would agree. It’s nice to be able to, as I said, meet young adults early in their kind of adult medical career. And we routinely will see kids come back from college now they’re 22 years old. And we’ve been their doctor for long enough that it just feels very natural to continue that. So they are sometimes with some help from mom and dad will sign up then at age of 22 as regular paying patients in the practice. And it’s a nice transition.

I also wanted to mention you talked about wives helping clarify and add color to husbands’ health history. And I don’t mean to be sexist, but it usually is that way as opposed to husbands filling in details for wives. When Chris and I meet with patients, excuse me, we usually meet in our offices where there’s enough seating for both the husband and the wife.

Because we want that interaction with the three of us. We value the spouse’s input in the healthcare.

Steven Schwartz (17:58.805)
Sure, I love it. It needs to be a comfortable environment where you can, as we said, take the time and really dig into the issues. I know I’ve been to plenty doctor appointments with my wife and she’s been to plenty with me. And it really is helpful because sometimes when you’re the patient and the doctor’s telling you some things, OK, well, this and this and this and you’re stressed out, you’re worried about your health, you’re concerned, maybe your spouse would pick up on

or remember better some of these items that kind of went by quickly, perhaps even asking additional questions that, you know, let’s say it’s me as the patient, might not think about because I’m in a stressed out situation, right?

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (18:39.218)
You’re absolutely right. me. when we meet, particularly if we it’s going to be complicated, we will encourage a spouse or another family member to come along. And even though it’s old school to have pen and paper, because everyone’s on their phone these days, we have pen and paper handy so they can take notes. And it’s great to have that extra set of ears or multiple sets of ears. We might have husband, wife, and some of their older kids come in so that they all can hear what we have to say.

And then after the visit, if it’s complicated, we will routinely send a follow-up email, bullet pointing the things we talked about, reminding them of appointments and contacts and things they need to do. And usually at the end of the visit, we will have scheduled a follow-up visit to say, go home, process this, let’s take the next step in the diagnostic pathway, and then let’s already have our next appointment scheduled.

So we know when we’re going to get together and you can start your next round of questions and we can talk about what’s next.

Steven Schwartz (19:40.617)
love it. And it just seems like we’re really taking what could be a very stressful situation and making it literally as comfortable as possible under these circumstances.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (19:53.834)
Absolutely, and it brings up another concept that we talk about a lot in our office, which is this very broad concept of patient experience. In the retail world, we would call it customer experience, but these are absolutely not customers. They are patients, they’re people, they’re friends. But we talk a lot in the office about the patient experience.

and try to frame everything from their reference point. So we recognize if somebody’s just had a scary diagnosis like cancer, that they’re gonna need extra time, extra attention, lots of follow-up. And so we gear the patient experience in that direction to help them through a tough time.

Steven Schwartz (20:33.653)
How do you and your team help coordinate care for your patients, especially when it comes to dealing with other specialists, other locations and practices, dealing with cancer or other major issues? How do you guys coordinate care?

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (20:50.178)
You bet. it varies.

very much by patient. It depends on what they want. Some patients are very independent and they just want to know the name of the consultant that they’re going to go see and then they’re going to go off and make the appointments. in that regard, it might be something as simple as emailing or texting that doctor’s contact information website, et cetera, and then letting the patient run with that. If patients feel more uncertain or if maybe they’re older and not quite as tech savvy,

And we’ll just have our staff call that consultant’s office, that specialist’s office, and make the appointment. And then we can print out a map to say, here’s where your appointment is, here’s where you’re going to go, here’s where you’re going to park.

in some of the less common situations we’ve gone as far as on the day of the appointment, calling and arranging for an Uber to pick up the patient, take them to the appointment, and then Uber them home after the appointment. So again, a long answer. The summary is whatever that individual patient needs to get things done, that’s what we’re going to do.

Steven Schwartz (21:58.613)
Well, mean, that’s essentially the definition of the word concierge. You are literally helping take care of the details and situations for these people who need help and want the help and making it as a pleasant and smooth and easy a process for them as possible. I love it. The Uber’s is beautiful. Give them a ride. One quick business question touching on something we talked about earlier was

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (22:18.462)
Absolutely. Absolutely.

We recognize…

Steven Schwartz (22:28.437)
You had 3,000 patients in your previous practice under the insurance-based plan. You now have 220, you said, 230, something like that. And your partner, MD, has a few hundred something now. What exactly did you do to help transition the patients from the old insurance-based practice to the new concierge practice? And furthermore, not just what did you do,

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (22:34.807)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (22:38.574)
2.30 ish, yeah.

Steven Schwartz (22:58.143)
But of the things that you did, what worked and perhaps what didn’t work as far as the marketing of

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (23:05.752)
Sure. So of all of the things that came with transitioning to a concert practice, the only thing that I didn’t like…

was losing patients that I had known for many years. But this model of care just doesn’t work for everybody. Nothing works for everybody. So that was my biggest regret was losing contact with a lot of people that I’d known for many years. So what we did in 2009 is we sent out a letter to all of the patients explaining why we were making the transition, the benefits of the new model of care, and then some suggestions of doctors in town

that I knew personally and that I trusted and I knew would take great care of the patients. So we made some recommendations. And then as those patients transitioned, if they left my practice and went somewhere else, we made sure that they could get in with that doctor. We sent a copy of their medical records and made that transition as seamless as possible.

Steven Schwartz (24:08.575)
I love it.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (24:08.75)
for the patients who joined the practice, we wanted to get them in quickly so that they could get a feel for this enhanced and improved model of care. So as patients sent in their paperwork to say, yes, I’d like to join this new model of care, we would call them back quickly and say, great, let’s schedule an appointment, let’s get you in. Patients always have something going on, something to talk about. And so we got them in quickly so they could see, wow, we can get in to see Kevin quickly and he’ll have more time and can be even more

involved in our care and so the thing for us was to get them in and engaged quickly and we still do that when patients join now after they finish all of their paperwork the first thing we do is schedule our next appointment so they can get in and see what it feels like to be seen on time and to be really heard and listened to and paid attention to.

Steven Schwartz (25:00.757)
Were you able to basically fill up your panel from the legacy patients, or did you have to do any additional marketing or outreach to find additional folks?

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (25:12.878)
So of course the plan was out of all of those patients to have an immediately full panel. If you think back to 2009 however, that was right after the 2008 economic flash.

Steven Schwartz (25:27.325)
Yes, what happened back then? yes.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (25:29.294)
Yes, so that was the great recession. And so it was terrible timing. And people who were advising me during that transition said, Kevin, this is not a good time to do it. And it wasn’t, but I was so burned out. I was just desperate for a better way to take care of my patients. So in spite of how bad things were, I forged ahead. So we did not fill up immediately, which then transitioned to a long path of getting to 230 patients.

and trying everything we could possibly think of to get the word out about what we were doing and get patients engaged in joining the practice. Because back then, as I said, there were only two other doctor practices in Denver that were doing this, and most patients had never heard of this alternative way of practicing medicine. So getting the word out and getting people into the practice turned into a real struggle at times. It was hard.

Steven Schwartz (26:28.213)
Right, I think part of it, especially 15 years ago, approximately, there was a lot of education you would have to do before someone could consider joining as a patient of your practice. You need to educate them. What is this thing? Concierge medicine, never heard of it. What’s this all about? At least now in 2024, you mentioned concierge medicine to people and maybe out of 10 people you talked to, five or six have heard of it and four look at you with a blank stare saying, huh?

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (26:46.283)
Exactly.

Steven Schwartz (26:58.047)
Kind of funny, I got to tell you, last night I was at a Chamber of Commerce after hours mixer type event and it was great seeing a lot of my colleagues in town here. And at the event, I mentioned my marketing business, Concierge Medical Marketing, and some people said, wait, Concierge, wait, what? And they literally just didn’t get it. And another person, I got to tell you, it’s a really funny story.

a lady who I’ve known for quite a few years. I told her about Concierge Medical Marketing as a company. And she says, I don’t like Concierge Medical Doctors. I don’t like it. I don’t like the whole idea of it. I said, really? I mean, what could you not like about it? She said, I had the most amazing doctor for 20 years and she left and became a Concierge Doctor and I had to go find a new doctor. So that was literally the only thing.

a had to complain about was that her doctor left the quote rat race of insurance based medicine to become a concierge doctor. And so she lost her doctor. I said, well, you may want to sign up with her. I know the lady and you know, her rates are reasonable, but she didn’t have any of it. If you know what I mean.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (28:13.238)
Yep, I understand that. And everyone has their own sensibilities about these, not everything works for everybody. It is sad though when somebody is upset that their doctor has transitioned to concierge because they really liked them, but then they choose not to stay with them. That’s a decision on their part and it’s a sad one. And going back to your question about patient awareness, it’s really transitioned from…

Back when I first did all of this in 2009, maybe 10 % of people had heard about what I’m doing and 90 % looked at me like I was befuddled. So we talk about the elevator speech when somebody asks you what you do and the time it takes to ride the elevator to the next floor, you need to be able to quickly convey what you do. And it just wasn’t possible. could not convey quickly what I do. Now when people ask, I say concierge medicine, they either know immediately

Steven Schwartz (28:53.002)
Yes.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (29:04.85)
Or then I’ll say, know, like DPC, which is another name for the same concept. And almost everyone now between those two names understands what we do and either has had a doctor who does that or knows somebody who’s in a practice like this and they’re really happy. So the messaging has really changed over the years and it’s much easier now.

Steven Schwartz (29:24.597)
Right. And direct primary care seems to be more along the lines of the physicians who don’t want to deal with any insurance. They say, I don’t want to touch it. I don’t want to deal with it. Just pay us our annual membership fee and we’re good. Versus a, concierge practice, many times are willing to also accept insurance in addition to the annual fee. Is that generally how you see the industry today?

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (29:52.654)
So generally in 2024, those descriptions are accurate. It wasn’t so long ago when concierge practice meant no insurance, patient fee only.

And then somewhere along the way, I don’t know when this happened, but somewhere along the way, that became the, we still take insurance moniker and DPC became the non-insurance title. And it brings up an interesting point about all of this, which is because doctors usually own their own practices under these models, they can really fine tune it the way they wanna do it and they can call it whatever they wanna do it.

The titles aren’t really that important. It’s the concept of doctors working directly with their patients without interference from insurance companies. Call it whatever you like.

Steven Schwartz (30:42.207)
With regards to trying to fill up your panel when the letters didn’t quite do it, you said you tried everything and anything you could think of to educate and get folks to learn about and then sign up. Did you make the effort to do this marketing yourself? Did you hire one or more digital marketing agencies or somebody’s nephew? Just briefly, what did you actually try and what worked and what didn’t work?

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (31:10.998)
Yes, well, unfortunately, I didn’t know you and I didn’t have access to Conteer’s Medical Marketing or I would have called you guys. Back then, I didn’t know, I asked around a little bit. I really couldn’t find anyone who could help me. honestly, didn’t occur to me to go to like a marketing firm to help me launch all of this. And that was a mistake. I should have recognized that we learned nothing about this in medical school and we learned nothing about this in our internal medicine training afterwards.

So I didn’t always approach it the correct way. So we tried everything. We tried word of mouth, which was and is still our best source of new patients. had a website guy that I still work with all these years later who does a fabulous job at making website, but the content of the website wasn’t great because I came up with most of it and I didn’t know what I was doing. so I didn’t understand that marketing needs to be about

Steven Schwartz (31:52.424)
Absolutely.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (32:10.952)
what the audience wants versus what I perceived that they would want.

Steven Schwartz (32:16.47)
yes.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (32:17.43)
And then in terms of things that we tried that did not work well, we tried going out to the media. And on our website, you can see I had a very nice interview with a local TV station and a local radio station. And there was some newspaper coverage. And they were very kind and very generous in their coverage. And after each piece would come out, I’d go and I’d stare at the phone. And I think, this is it. This is it. I got my big break. And none of that brought in any patients. We tried print ads in some of the local papers.

We tried print ad in one of the cultural arts magazines thinking these would be people who are a little more targeted with a little more discretionary income and maybe a little more open to a higher level of service. That didn’t bring anything in. I tried doing talks where I would go to…

nursing home and assisted living facilities and talk about what we do thinking these are people who definitely need what we offer. They’ll be very interested. And to be really honest with your audience, the reason that the rooms were packed when I gave talks at nursing home and assisted living had nothing to do with me or my engaging speech. It was, I was tonight’s entertainment. Last night it was bingo. And tomorrow it was Billy Bob on the piano.

Steven Schwartz (33:29.226)
Yes.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (33:33.782)
and they just showed up for the show, but that didn’t generate a lot of new interest either. So it was a lot of trial and error. And it finally settled on the only two things that really worked for us are number one, word of mouth, and number two, a website that engages and that answers the audience’s questions, not what I perceived they would want.

Steven Schwartz (33:57.447)
Excellent. And the thing with marketing is, you you can try multiple things and if something works, great, do more of it. And if it doesn’t work and you gave it a good college try, shelf it and say, okay, we’re going to try something a little bit different because the people are out there. They need the service. It’s a great service. It’s a service that most people can afford. We just got to get the right message to the right eyeballs. And that’s part of the fun of being in a marketing business. So great.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (34:23.66)
Definitely. About four years ago, I did engage a marketing service. Again, I didn’t know about UN Concerts Medical Marketing, or I probably would have gone to you. This is just a local marketing firm that I knew socially. And they completely revamped our logo and our message and our everything. Completely redid the website from top to bottom, changed what we tell people about what we do.

changed that 30 second elevator speech that we do. And people now will comment, the website is so informative and so engaging and answered all their questions. So that was a really useful business owner investment was to go out and figure out how to do it right. And we engaged a professional copywriter to fill the on the website and professional photographers to take the pictures and made sure that it conveyed the message that people were looking for.

Steven Schwartz (35:07.221)
Ahem.

Steven Schwartz (35:18.259)
Love it. So many great nuggets that you shared today. As we wrap up here, where do you see the DPC and concierge medical industry going in the next five years, the next 10 years?

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (35:32.738)
That’s a very good question. And if I were that good at predicting the future, I’d probably be in different job. So I’ll tell you where I would like it to go. I would like it to thrive. I would like it to flourish. I would like the words to get out. I would like more people to have access to this type of care.

One of the things that I enjoy doing when I’m not seeing my patients is I’ve mentored a lot of other DPC and concierge doctors start their practices so that we have more and more resources available for patients. So I see this getting better. I see this growing. I see more and more people recognizing that an insurance coverage is nice for big things, for catastrophic things, but for day-to-day medical care, patients deserve better care than an insurance

company can offer. So the more practices that are doing this, the more people we can help.

Steven Schwartz (36:26.325)
Kevin, I love it. Especially your willingness to help other doctors to learn about, to transition and grow in this space shows your giving heart and your true care for not just the industry, but the people that they are going to be able to serve, elevating healthcare for all of those folks. And the fact that you’re treating these other people as colleagues.

as opposed to competition for the same business dollars from potential patients. I think it’s marvelous and I applaud you for that.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (37:02.914)
Thank you. I appreciate it. I do have some colleagues that definitely see us as competition and have told me so under no uncertain terms. And I see this very, very differently. I see this as collaboration. And if I can be a force multiplier to get more people getting better care, then that’s a time well spent.

Steven Schwartz (37:23.477)
Well, we need to wrap up. This has been a wonderful discussion. If people would like to get in touch with you personally, whether to ask about your experience or, you know, if they want to come see you as their doctor, how can they get in touch with you?

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (37:42.562)
So the easiest way to find us is on the internet. Our website is conciergemedicalcare.com because that’s simple. They can remember that, conciergemedicalcare.com. On there, they can learn more about us. They can email us. They can call us.

And my partner Chris and I both are happy to meet with new people for an hour at no expense so they can come in, meet with us, meet our fabulous staff, kind of try the place on and see how it fits before they make any commitment. We’re easy to reach.

Steven Schwartz (38:14.205)
Love it. So kind of like a one hour, no charge meeting greet with you and your team and to really see if this is a good fit personality wise as well as medically, correct?

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (38:23.246)
Exactly, and in fact that’s what we call it, a meet and greet. It’s perfect.

Steven Schwartz (38:25.801)
Love it. Love it. Well, great. Just one little suggestion that I have for our audience listening to the podcast today, as well as those people, Kevin, that you’re helping to consider transitioning or starting up of a DPC Concierge practice. I wrote a book called the definitive guide to winning with digital marketing for concierge medical practices. The book is absolutely free and it’s available for download from our website conciergemd.marketing.

Just go to the homepage, scroll down a little bit, and there’s a place where you can put in your email address, click the submit button. It’ll send you a link where you can literally just download the book as a big PDF. like 90 or 100 pages. hopefully that you and the folks listening to this could get some value out of the book on how they can grow their practices to take their career, their practice to the next level.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (39:20.546)
That sounds like a great resource and very nice of you to offer that for free. That’s great.

Steven Schwartz (39:24.373)
Truly my pleasure. I’m actually working to get the final version ready for Amazon so people can have a hard copy who want to buy the hard copy and be able to market up with Penn and highlight and whatnot. So again, Kevin Lutz, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your time and sharing your heart with me and our audience today. just say God bless you and your efforts and helping the folks that you come in contact with in the Denver area. And this has been Steve Schwartz with the Medical Marketing Podcast. I’m so…

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (39:35.554)
Wonderful.

Steven Schwartz (39:53.319)
So grateful for your time.

Kevin Lutz, MD FACP (39:55.416)
Thanks, Steve. I enjoyed meeting with you. You too.

Steven Schwartz (39:57.097)
Yes, have a great day and we’ll talk to you soon. Thanks everybody.