In this episode of the Concierge Medical Marketing Podcast, host Steven Schwartz interviews Dr. Penni Vachon, a nurse practitioner and owner of DPC Launchpad. Dr. Vachon shares her journey from traditional insurance-based practice to establishing a Direct Primary Care (DPC) model, emphasizing the importance of holistic care and patient relationships. The conversation covers the challenges of transitioning to DPC, marketing strategies, and the significance of mentorship in the DPC community. Dr. Vachon also discusses the recent DPC Launchpad conference, offering insights into the future of healthcare and the growing trend of DPC practices.

 

Chapters

 

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Dr. Penny Vachon
01:31 Transitioning from Traditional to Direct Primary Care
05:56 The Benefits of Direct Primary Care
09:29 Advocacy and Coordination of Care
10:34 Managing Patient Panels and Complexity
12:54 Marketing Strategies for Growth
17:32 Challenges in Starting a DPC Practice
19:20 DPC Launchpad: Educating Future Practitioners
24:16 Advice for Aspiring DPC Practitioners
28:13 Setting Boundaries with Patients
30:09 Finding Work-Life Balance
34:00 The Future of Direct Primary Care

 
Steven Schwartz (00:24)
Hello and welcome to the Concierge Medical Marketing Podcast. I’m your host, Steven Schwartz. It’s my privilege and pleasure to have Dr. Penni Vachon here as my guest today. She is a doctor of nursing practice with the Lowcountry Wellness Center, and she’s also the owner behind DPC Launchpad. Penni, thank you for joining me today.

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (00:44)
Thank you for having me.

Steven Schwartz (00:46)
Wonderful. Thank you. So you’ve got a great story. You’ve got a lot of experience under your belt. Let’s jump right in and give some background to our listeners about who you are and kind of where you got started. Why were you? Why medicine to get you to where you are today?

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (01:03)
Yeah, so I’ve been a nurse practitioner for 15 years. I started in the traditional, you know, regular model, right, working for an insurance based practice. And when I went back to get my doctorate, I knew that I wanted to do something different. And it definitely wasn’t DPC at the time. I didn’t know what that different looked like. But I know I wanted to be my own boss. I knew I couldn’t continue to work for a system that I didn’t believe in.

And so I opened my own practice, I guess it was summer of 17. Finished my doctorate at the same time. over the years it evolved into what it is now. So a little different way to get into it than what people get into it.

Steven Schwartz (01:30)
Nice.

When

you say into a system you didn’t believe in, could you elaborate on that just a bit more, please?

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (01:42)
Yeah, the traditional allopathic system. So I’m very much an integrative practitioner. I believe in mind, body, spirit medicine. I believe in using food as medicine. I believe in botanicals and herbals and homeopathy and the traditional major healthcare system that I was in here. It’s a regular allopathic practice and we just didn’t have the same belief system and how things should be treated.

Steven Schwartz (02:04)
Nice. And what led you to DPC?

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (02:07)
So I became a patient myself. I became an autoimmune patient in the spring of 18. And I realized that holistic autoimmune care in Charleston didn’t exist. And if it didn’t exist for me with my alphabet soup, then nobody else was getting it. And so I closed down my original insurance-based practice, completely rebranded and reopened as a direct primary care practice because I knew I wanted to be able to give the care that I wanted to be receiving as a patient.

and I couldn’t do that in a fee-first service or a traditional insurance model.

Steven Schwartz (02:39)
Right. Did you hear about DPC from a friend or in the industry or LinkedIn? How did you learn about it first?

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (02:46)
Yeah, I kind of been following the movement online. It was pretty new still back then seven years ago. It was kind of some inklings about this non-traditional method and I loved the concept of it. It was a little scary to divorce all of the insurance companies originally, but I did it and I would never go back in any other way. But I remember it took a lot of education in the beginning of…

People had never heard of this, right? Everybody knew the insurance-based model. You make a doctor’s appointment, you go in, you pay your copay and blah, blah. In 15 minutes later, you’re out the door. And this was a different thing. This was come in and spend 90 minutes with me your first two visits. And then after that, spend 30 minutes with me and text me and email me and call me if you need me. And so it was a lot of unlearning on my part and relearning. And then taking that education.

to my patients as well and having to retrain them into, I know this is how it was, I know you never had access to your providers, but now you do. So I don’t want to hear about things after the fact. Let’s be pre-active, let’s be proactive, and get away from the reactive model that is the traditional medical model.

Steven Schwartz (03:55)
How did your patients react when you basically said, I’m closing this, I’m starting that, and here’s how it’s different.

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (04:03)
Well, fortunately, I didn’t have a large practice. I’d only been in practice about six months when I got sick. So it was really easy. The patients knew that I had been really sick and I had had to close temporarily anyway while I was dealing with my health stuff. So when I reopened, it wasn’t a surprise to anybody. You know, I sent letters out saying, hey, here’s what’s happening. I’m making this transition. I’d love for you to stay. Here’s how it’ll benefit you.

and you do what feels right for you. And like I said, it was a lot of education in the beginning and I didn’t know the right things to describe it. And that’s evolved over the years. And so I probably didn’t get as many patients as I could have because I didn’t know how to sell it, so to speak.

Steven Schwartz (04:45)
How, what percentage of patients from the old practice to the new DPC stayed with you? Was it 10%, 50%, don’t recall? Okay.

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (04:54)
No, no, I’m single digit. I mean,

truly I could count on maybe 10 patients. Yep, exactly, yeah. And they joke that they call themselves the OGs because they’ve been with me from when the original practice opened. So, yeah.

Steven Schwartz (05:00)
say Bob and Sally and Jennifer.

Love

it. Love it. I assume those that transitioned over with you have been very happy with the new model.

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (05:17)
Yeah, very much so.

Steven Schwartz (05:19)
and any of them want to go back to the old way of doing things?

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (05:22)
Oh my gosh, no, gosh, you’re a bit, you know, if I have to send somebody to a specialist and they have to get into the traditional allopathic system, you know, I hear about it. Oh my gosh. Do you know how long it took me to get an appointment? Do you know how much time they spent with me? Do you know what they didn’t do? And I’m like, remember, you know, I’m here for everything else, right? I can’t do all of it though. And that was another learning curve, right? Of what am I comfortable with and what really needs to be referred out, you know?

doing a little bit more for our patients than a traditional primary care would because in a 15 minute spot, maybe I don’t have the time to do a biopsy of something or run an extra test. But in the DPC model, I’ve got the time to do the biopsy. I’ve got the time to do your procedures and suture. I don’t have to send you to urgent care if you need stitches. I’ll just do it myself.

Steven Schwartz (06:08)
I love it.

I love it. What a difference in delivery, a delivery of that service. And do you establish relationships with other specialties in your area? How does that work?

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (06:12)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, very much so.

Well, fortunately, I was in practice for years before I went off on my own, so I’d already built a name for myself. So when I opened my own practice, I went calling on those doors and I said, hey, remember me? Now I have my own practice, so I need you to work out a self-pay rate for my patients that are coming to you uninsured. And so I did that with cardiology and GI and DERM and kind of the bigger groups, you know.

And I generally send patients to the providers that I see or that I know really well because I’m not your typical provider. I am a very out of the box thinker and we’re doing very atypical things and how we approach life and how we approach illness and stuff like that. And so I need a provider, a specialist who knows, you know, I’m not your norm and my patients therefore are not going to fall under that norm as well.

Steven Schwartz (07:15)
Right, it sounds like the coordination of care is an area that you’re much more involved in rather than a traditional practitioner.

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (07:18)
Yes.

Yeah, I’ll give you a quick little story on that. I had a gentleman

a few years ago who I diagnosed with a tongue cancer and his children didn’t live here. He’s an older man and so he was living here alone and was struggling to, you know, manage oncology and surgery and everything. And so I had said to my staff, make sure that I’m available for all of his appointments. He just wasn’t remembering things.

I had the opportunity to go to the surgeon with him and go to the oncologist with him and do all of these appointments with him and then come back and sit down and have a video chat with his sons and we kind of have a meeting of the minds and I say, all right, here’s what happened today at dad’s appointment. Here’s what’s changing. Here’s what’s not changing. I’ll let you know when you need to come to town kind of a thing. So we were able to do that right up until the very end when he went into hospice and just a few weeks before he passed.

Steven Schwartz (08:15)
I love it. What an amazing service that you offer for especially something as scary as cancer. actually did an interview recently of the team behind OnCare, O-N-C-A-R-E, and that organization basically provides what you just shared for other practices. In other words, they partner with lots and lots of different medical practices, concierge and DPCs across the country.

so that they can be the ones who help walk that particular patient through their cancer journey in concert with the local oncology practice that they’re working with. And it’s a beautiful thing. I just love seeing the folks work together and truly providing the concierge level care that people so desperately need, especially when you’re dealing with a life threatening, scary diagnosis like cancer.

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (08:53)
it is.

Yeah, it was funny. His first oncology appointment, the oncologist just assumed that I was his daughter and was talking, lay person talk. And then I started to ask questions and he said, well, we’ll have to talk to his primary care person and see what he wants. And I said, well, I’m her and this is what she wants. And the look on his face and he said, what do you mean you’re her? And I said, I’m his PCP. I came with him so that I could be his advocate. So talk to me.

It blew his mind away. And I’ve done that with several other patients with specialists over the years. And it always blows the specialist mind like, you left clinic to come and do this? Yes, I did. Absolutely. Sure did.

Steven Schwartz (09:44)
I love it. Based on that level of care, obviously we only have 24 hours a day and only a portion of that we’re in our offices ready to see patients. Now for me, digital marketing clients, but you get the point. What would you consider for your practice is a full panel?

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (10:02)
So it’s different for each provider. So I have three providers, including myself. I take care of the very advanced, very medically complex patients. So for me, I’ve got some of the sickest people in Charleston. So 200 is about my number. My goal is get them well enough that I can transition them over to the other nurse practitioners that work for me. Their patient panel will go, depending on complexity, to about between 400 to 500.

Steven Schwartz (10:26)
Nice. That’s good. So it gives you a chance to have fewer patients, more time with those sicker patients, those that truly do need more time, and gives your other NP’s a chance to have plenty of wonderful folks to see and still make a huge difference.

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (10:31)
Yes. Yeah.

Yep, absolutely.

Steven Schwartz (10:44)
Now when you started your practice, was just you, correct?

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (10:47)
Yes, it was me alone for three years, I think. I think three years, yeah.

Steven Schwartz (10:53)
And at what point did you determine that I need help? I need to have another specialist.

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (10:59)
Yeah,

I want to say I was probably I was scheduling out new patient appointments about two months and I had gotten up to about 300 or 350 on my panel and I said, yeah, this is this is more than I can manage on my own, especially because I have such medically complex patients. So I hired a nurse practitioner and handed her my healthy people basically.

I sent a letter out to the practice and I said, hey, I’m bringing somebody on. If you’ve gotten this letter, it’s because you don’t need my level of care. And I’m super proud of you for that. Would you please mind seeing this other gal so that I can have more time to designate to these very ill patients? And only a handful of patients said, no, I want you. And that was perfectly fine. But I was able to quickly transition about 150 patients over to her. So that made a huge dent in me.

Steven Schwartz (11:50)
Yeah,

that would get you pretty much where you wanted to be around 200. And so as new patients come to the practice and they’re healthy, they go straight to one of your NPs.

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (12:03)
Yep,

exactly. Yeah. So I only accept new patients now on a case-by-case basis.

Steven Schwartz (12:09)
I love that. It sounds like you’ve got a really good plan. Based on the growth that you experienced, what method or methods of marketing helped you grow? What was the most effective?

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (12:21)
Yeah. Well, my daughter from day one has always managed

the social media. That’s just not my thing. I’ve got other things to do. So she’s always done that. So it was a combination of that. And like I said, I’d been in practice in the area for a while. So I had brand recognition. My background is orthopedic surgery, and that’s where I spent the bulk of my career. So when I first opened that first practice, I opened as a holistic, non-surgical orthopedic office.

offering plant-based injectables and things like that. So word got out that there was this non-steroid injectable office. And so to this day, I still get referrals from other practitioners to see ortho patients, which I love, but a lot of referrals from the chiropractors in town, from the massage therapists, from the acupuncturists and different specialties that way. It’s interesting, now I get

even referrals from infectious disease on patients that they just can’t figure out. And so I get those unique, really hard ones now. But in the beginning, it was really built on word of mouth and whatever Caitlin did in terms of social media. I didn’t really monitor the social media piece very much. That’s what her college degree was in. That’s her thing. And so I think it was the combo of the two, getting out and, you know,

getting to meet who my referral base was. for me, originally it was a lot of chiropractors and complementary practitioners and stuff like that. I did do some network marketing in the beginning, but I am your typical extroverted introvert. And so I would rather not go and meet people in a marketing meeting. I would rather sit in my office alone with nobody. So that was really hard for me to go and actually join the chamber and different things like that. So was like,

I don’t want to talk to you. Like, why are we here? I don’t want to be here. for me, it was, yeah, I’d say probably 75 % word of mouth, 25 % actual marketing effort.

Steven Schwartz (14:13)
Nice. And just to dig into the social media a bit more, obviously your daughter took care of that. That’s great. What platforms were used and were these just typical posts or were there ads spend, know, spending money behind the posts targeting? you know any of those details?

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (14:29)
So

I would say super rare that we ever did any paid advertising, very, very rare. I would maybe say two or three times over the last seven years we’ve done any paid advertising. So it was mainly Facebook and then she added Instagram later. And she just posted consistently, shared a lot of education about what DPC is, comparing the DPC model to the traditional model or the fee for service model and

why the DPC model is a superior way to get care and really just used it as an educational platform for patients. So I think maybe we used to have a magazine in town that was a franchise of like a holistic magazine. And I had a half page printout that ran in that for a few years. But it was just basically my picture. And here’s what the practice does. We didn’t do any

particular advertising or anything. I think that’s really the bulk of the paid advertising that I’ve done over the years was that one ad that I ran and I just auto-renewed it annually.

Steven Schwartz (15:25)
Were you able to track the benefit of the print ad to see we’ve got 20 new folks? Nothing?

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (15:32)
No, there was,

there, mean, I can’t ever think, my daughter and I talked about this, I said, I don’t know that I ever actually got a patient from that. I did it to support the woman who owned it, who had become a friend and, you know, it’s a few hundred dollars a year, sure, I’ll do it. But I don’t know that I ever got anything out of it.

Steven Schwartz (15:50)
Right. It’s a bit of a kind of a no brainer. It’s like, look, it’s hardly an investment. And to have a half page in a rag is great. Whether or not it led to any direct business. Sometimes in print ads, you can use a special website address or a special QR code or a special phone number. And if people connect through those, you track that and you can say, OK, got you. They scan the one in the XYZ magazine.

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (15:53)
Yeah, exactly.

Steven Schwartz (16:16)
and that turned into a patient. What kind of challenges did you experience as you started your new practice, trying to get things up and running, only had a handful of folks at the beginning? What challenges did you experience?

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (16:28)
Yeah, well, I intentionally wanted to grow

slowly. I didn’t want to grow fast because I knew I was doing things so different. So, but I was coming out of that orthopedic office. And so I had a lot of equipment. Right? When you’re an orthopedic office, you need, you know, digital x-ray, for example, and that was a waste of about $90,000 that cost me.

When I first opened, I had a big staff. I had a chiropractor that I worked, that I employed. I had a physical therapist, a massage therapist. So I had a lot of salaries that I was paying upfront. So when I made the transition, everybody had left and then it was just me. didn’t even have, I answered the phones. I did everything. It would always throw patients off when I’d answer the phone and they’d say, can I talk to Dr. Penni? And I said, this is me. You got me. I’m the only one here. So.

So, you know, in hindsight, if I had to start over, I would not go into it with all of that overhead, right? You know, it was overhead that I absorbed from practice number one. And I teach people all the time, you know, to open a DPC doesn’t require much, you need a stethoscope, an autoscope, an ophthalmoscope, and a way to check vitals. If you have all of those, and if you’re a practitioner, you better have all of those, then you have everything you need to start a DPC practice. Everything else is fluff.

Steven Schwartz (17:51)
it. Do you have a particular electronic medical records system that you like and recommend?

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (17:56)
Yeah. Yeah, so we use Atlas MD. It’s

one of the more common ones. I’m sure it’s come up in your previous things. About half of the DPCs in the country use Atlas right now.

Steven Schwartz (18:06)
So let’s transition our discussion just a little bit. Now, obviously, you are a practitioner. You have a bustling, busy office. You’re helping patients get great outcomes. You’re employing other people. And now you’re moving into a new area, helping other people start their own DPC practice, helping them with education, helping them with coaching and mentorship. This is DPC Launchpad. Tell us.

Where did that come from and how’s it going?

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (18:35)
Yeah.

So I’ve been running a Facebook group for a few years called NPs and PAs and DPC and have been toying around with the idea of a conference for years. And then one of my now besties reached out to me at the beginning of last year and said, I really think you should do a conference. I’m willing to help. And I said, are you willing to help? Are you willing to like do it? And I’ll just show up.

kind of a thing because I wasn’t looking to take on any more projects at the time. And so it originally started as this idea of there was a group of about eight of us originally that got together on a zoom and said, what would it look like if we put a conference on for DPC, how to start one, how to grow one, how to maintain in the churn mode, right, because we are all in different levels. And somehow it became DPC launchpad that ended up landing in my lap.

And I think it’s because I own the Facebook group and that has almost 4,000 members in it. So it’s a very active group. It’s a very active but very supportive group of both NPs and PAs. So we had thrown a poll out to the group and I said, hey, if we were to put a conference on how many of you would show up? And got a quick response and I said, okay, if you were to show up, where would you like to be?

got the feedback and then I said, and what would be an appropriate price point for the ticket? And we got the feedback and then it just became. And so our original thought was Nashville. And then the consensus ended up being Charleston. And I said, all right, Charleston, it is, I’ll do it here in my backyard. So yay for me. But because it was here in my backyard, it ended up being more on me than anybody else. And so

I bought the business, I registered the business, I own the business. And the planning committee kind of dwindled down over time and there really ended up being about three or four of us that were the crux of it. And now going forward in DPC Launchpad 2026, there will just be three of us.

Steven Schwartz (20:34)
What a great story. Let’s talk briefly about the topics that were covered at the conference that you held just literally a couple of weeks ago. What were the topics?

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (20:43)
Yeah, yeah.

So we had Brian Fretwell, who’s a PA up in Tennessee, he did, are you an entrepreneur? Should you even open a DPC practice? Because it’s not for the faint of heart, right? Opening a primary care practice is not an easy task. So he covered, are you an entrepreneurial person? And what does it look like to actually open a practice? We had Dr. Shane Grindle who covered

really using the technology for marketing like AI and all of that type of stuff to your advantage. And Dr. Alicia Logan did the 100 patient playbook, how to get your first 100 patients. had Dr. John Rothwell, he did how to target employer groups. We had Amanda Price, who has been my counterpart in all of this. She talked about transitioning your fee for service into a DPC model.

So that rounded out day one. Day two, I started it off with the integrative approach to healthcare. And then behind me was Kat Nichol, who is a healthcare attorney who really heavily works with DPC practices across the country.

Steven Schwartz (21:52)
sounds like an amazing lineup. I’m going to actually be interviewing John this week. So I a wonderful conversation with him the other day. were on the phone when we were done. It was like an hour and a half or something. We were on the phone. It’s like, man, I like this guy. Yeah, super guy. So let’s just kind of, as we kind of wrap up our discussion here, if somebody is considering starting a DPC practice, do you have maybe, I don’t

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (21:54)
It was great.

Good! Yay!

Easy to do.

Steven Schwartz (22:19)
two or three points or suggestions for them that would help them either make the decision to get started or encourage them like these are like pitfalls or holes that I fell in. What would you encourage people?

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (22:30)
Yeah. Yeah, I mean,

the first thing is, are you entrepreneurial? Right? Because if you’re not a business minded person, then you shouldn’t own a business. Secondly is what does work life balance mean to you? Because in the DPC model, our patients have extended access to us. And that might mean nights and weekend text messages or phone calls. That might mean that you show up at your office on a Saturday morning to stitch somebody’s thumb back up. So if you’re looking for a nine to five,

DPC is probably not your world. But if you’re looking to have this unique relationship with your patients where you get to be so invested in their health that you really are the leader of their team, then DPC might be for you.

Steven Schwartz (23:12)
Very cool. One topic that seems to keep coming up is that work-life balance. And well, if my patients have my personal cell phone number and they’re calling and texting and they know they can call or text at three in the morning, how do I manage that and still get enough sleep and get to be in a position where I’m 100 % fully aware and cognizant for giving my very best the next day at work? Do you have to ever

I don’t know, help draw the boundary lines with your patrons? How does that work?

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (23:41)
Yeah, that’s

exactly what you do. So you draw a very clear boundary and you say, here’s what’s appropriate to text me. Here’s what warrants a phone call. And chances are if it’s 3am and you’re calling me, I’m sending you to the emergency room anyway. And being very realistic with those expectations, right? If you text me at 7pm and I don’t think it’s anything that’s urgent, I’m going to answer it tomorrow.

If it is something that I think needs to get addressed tonight, I’ll answer you tonight. And so just setting that expectation, you you might text me at 8 a.m. and I might be with a patient, I might not get back to my phone until 11 or two in the afternoon. So having again that realistic expectation of here’s how I’ll get back to you. If you need an emergent thing, then you probably should call the office. Don’t text me because I might be away from my desk for hours at a time.

And then, again, having that conversation up front of here’s what warrants an after hours text message versus a phone call versus just let me know later that you went to the ER.

Steven Schwartz (24:43)
Nice, and that seems to be well received by your patients.

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (24:46)
Yep, and definitely take some education. For example, I should be within reasonable hours, the first choice, if something emergent comes up. Urgent, I should say, not emergent. I’m not in an emergency room, nor am I in urgent care. But if somebody’s just dehydrated, needs fluids, that’s me all day. Call me, get on my schedule, we’ll stick an IV in you, we’ll throw some fluids in you. You don’t need to go take up a hospital bed for that. So I get so frustrated with patients and…

And I scold them after and I say, why did you go to urgent care for a UTI? Why didn’t you call me? I would have had you go get a home UTI test, text me a picture of the test strip and I’d have sent an antibiotic if it was needed. Why did you waste the money going to urgent care and putting yourself at that exposure risk of all those other germs? So there’s an education piece that comes with that. But then also the flip side of that always is why are you texting me at 2 a.m.?

And I tell my patients my phone is on do not disturb from nine to eight. So if you’re meeting me after hours and it is urgent, then you better call me because I’m not answering your text messages once I leave this office.

Steven Schwartz (25:53)
Yeah, it’s nice that you can sort of train them on these are the boundaries, these are the lines. We understand we’re available to you 24 seven, but here’s the parameters of the engagement so that everybody wins.

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (26:08)
Well, when I tell everybody starting, don’t use that 24-7 terminology. It’s going to get you in trouble. You can say, you have expanded access to me and don’t give a time frame on it. Because are you really available 24-7? If you’re in the shower and somebody calls you, are you going to answer it? Probably not. So don’t say that, right? But do say that you have expanded or extended access or liberal access if you want to go that way, whatever. But get away from the stigma of that 24-7 terminology.

Steven Schwartz (26:37)
love it. That’s a huge nugget right there. And speaking along those lines, when you need to get away for a weekend or a week vacation and your practice was just you as the doctor, were you able to get away and or how did you manage that?

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (26:53)
Yeah, fortunately, I had a friend in town who had a traditional insurance based primary care. And so we covered each other. So if I was off, I forwarded my phones to her and I would tell all the patients, hey, Dr. Jackie’s covering if you need anything, you know, she’ll answer my phone. And then she would do the same in reverse. And then, you know, if I was just going away for a weekend, but I was staying in South Carolina, I would just tell patients, listen, I’m out of town, but feel free to text me if something comes up. You know, I’ll answer your message. I’m just not here in Charleston.

So now it’s a lot easier. I’ve got a full staff and I can come and go as I please.

Steven Schwartz (27:26)
My wife and I just had our anniversary and we were floating on a cruise ship for a few days and I purposely had not, you know, I did not get the Internet plan for my cell phone because I don’t want to be working when I’m on my vacation. I need to unhook, unwire, whatever you want to call it and get some downtime and just enjoy being with my wife and enjoy the view of the water going by and eating great food and sitting on a beach. Do you?

As a DPC, are you able to get away and truly unplug from time to time?

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (27:58)
Yes,

I’ll be doing the same exact thing next Saturday. So I will forward my phones and my emails to one of the nurse practitioners that works for me. And I’ve told them, unless the building is burned down, I don’t want hear from any of you. And of course they can all reach me if they need me. However, the expectation is don’t need me. You can all figure this out.

Steven Schwartz (28:01)
Nice.

Right, and

even if the building did burn down, there’s nothing you can do about it while you’re floating on a boat.

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (28:21)
Right, that’s why I just let me know later

so I can file the insurance claim. It’s good, whatever. Yeah.

Steven Schwartz (28:25)
working

with. This has been truly a pleasure. has been really a great conversation and just want to share a little bit about my agency, Concierge Medical Marketing. Our goal is to help concierge and DPC practices with whatever the marketing that they need to achieve whatever area of their business or struggles in their business that they’re facing. We do have three programs that we offer.

And the first we call transition. Somebody has a traditional insurance based business and they want to become a DPC or a concierge practice. There’s different marketing that’s required to help educate the patients on the value of switching to the more personal touch. So we can help with that. Number two is growth. This is a situation where someone may have 10 or 20 or 50 patients and they want to get to the 200 or the 300 or the 500 mark.

different techniques that we can do with digital marketing to help that happen as quickly as possible. And as you said, I wanted to grow slow. You want to grow at the speed that our physician or a nurse practitioner or a PA wants to grow their business. And third and final, call nurture. And this program is all about organizations that may have already hit a full panel, but they said, look, I’ve got a waiting list. I’m full. I don’t need any more patients. But how important is it

to nurture your existing patients, to let them know what’s going on or suggestions for diet or cooking or allergies or things that are happening in the community, whatever. Just the idea of staying in touch with your patients with digital marketing techniques and methods so that they feel recognized, they feel loved and appreciated and remembered. And so that between that, plus the excellent care they get at the practice, every month, every year they’re gonna renew.

and stay with the practice. Now in marketing, we always know that it’s so much easier to keep a happy customer happy than it is to find a new one. And so our goal with Nurture is obviously to keep people happy and keep them renewing year after year. I wrote a book called The Definitive Guide to Winning with Digital Marketing for Concierge Medical Practices. That book has over 100 pages of actionable information. It’s ready and available for free. It’s a download from our website, conciergemd.marketing.

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (30:23)
Mm-hmm.

Steven Schwartz (30:45)
Simply go to the homepage, scroll down until you see the cover of the book, put in your email address and click the submit button. Our system will send you a link to your email where you can then download the book for free. Again, tons of great information. Please read it with my compliments. And if you struggle with anything, if you need any help, whatever, you know, somebody doesn’t make sense, please reach out to me. I’m happy to spend a few minutes with you and try to answer your questions. You can schedule a time on my calendar, cmmkg.com.

slash schedule for a free 15 minute consult and can help get you untangled. Other than that, Dr. Penni Vachon, this has been truly a pleasure speaking with you. So proud of you for building a business from really yourself and a handful of patients to several practitioners and now teaching other folks how they can have their own practice successfully. I’ll give you the final word. Any final comments or information you’d like to share with our audience.

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (31:39)
Yeah, I think, you know, it’s just we’re seeing the shift in health care in America. And I think this model, the direct primary care model is the model that gets us back. Right. It’s the model that recoups the damage that’s been done. It’s the model that reestablishes the true patient provider relationship. And I hope that we’ll see more and more and more of these types of practices popping up across the country, giving patients the amazing access to high quality care while still keeping it affordable.

Steven Schwartz (32:07)
I love it. I saw an article maybe about a year ago now that said that in 2023, this industry was approximately $6 billion in the US alone, and it’s forecast $13.5 billion by 2030. So literally more than doubling in the next five years. And it seems every time I open our local newspaper, there’s an ad for a new direct care type practice. And it’s exciting to see this happening.

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (32:18)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s how we change healthcare in America is we’ve got to get away from the insurance companies dictating health and bring it back to the practitioner who knows their patient.

Steven Schwartz (32:42)
I love it. Dr. Penni Vachon this has been my pleasure having you as my guest on the podcast today. This is Steve Schwartz, Concierge Medical Marketing and the Concierge Medical Marketing podcast. We thank you folks for listening in. Please follow, like, subscribe, share, help us get these wonderful information out for so many more people to learn from and grow and be encouraged. Thanks for being here today and wish you all the best.

Dr Penni Vachon, APRN (33:04)
Thank you.

Thanks so much.