Dr. David Cameron is a board certified family physician who has a wealth of experience in health technology and in direct primary care. Dr. David Cameron is the clinical leader of Hint Connect, a management services organization (MSO) that contracts with direct primary care (DPC) doctors and networks to bring a plug-and-play DPC primary care benefit to employer groups and benefit advisors. Prior to stepping into his role as President and Chief Medical Officer at Hint Connect, Dr. Cameron was a medical executive at Paladina Health.
David Cameron, MD first learned about direct primary care at a conference in Washington state where he heard Dr. Garrison Bliss give a talk on it in 2011. After learning about DPC, Dr. Cameron knew he wanted to be a part of this movement and joined 6 months later.
There are so many advantages to direct primary care including the fact that it “aligns incentives, so that doctors and patients both want the same thing.” There are no competing motivations because of the way that doctors receive compensation. In DPC, clinicians have the time and the autonomy to truly be an advocate for their patients, making referrals and doing procedures only when necessary and getting the best value for their patients for any referrals. Dr. Cameron is enthusiastic to lead Hint Connect and help make direct primary care the standard of healthcare in this country.
“Health insurance should be more like auto insurance, where the insurance is intended to decrease risk when there is an accident, it is not intended to be used for oil changes, gas and tires. Everybody pays cash to buy gas, you don’t have it run through insurance. If we used insurance for our gas, our gas would be $12 a gallon.” - Dr. David Cameron
Dr. Cameron admits that there are some challenges to achieving this goal of making DPC the standard of care, mainly because there is considerable risk for doctors to make the transition from the traditional fee-for-service system. To convert to DPC usually means becoming an entrepreneur and small business owner, which is a big leap for doctors and clinicians working in a hospital system or medical group. There's also financial uncertainty about when clinicians will break even and earn back their salaries since there is no guaranteed timeline to have a full panel of patients.
Therefore, the vision for Hint Connect is to help DPC clinicians mitigate financial risk by securing contracts with employers, providing DPC as a benefit to their employees, and in turn allowing new DPC practices to fill their patient panel early on. Hint’s membership platform, Hint Core, eases the administrative burdens by automating the management of a DPC practice. Additionally, Hint Health offers its clients a DPC how-to-guide and expert learning sessions through its DPC Accelerator courses.
Dr. David Cameron understands firsthand the risk and uncertainty that comes with starting a direct primary care practice, because he launched his own new DPC practice this year in Littleton, CO. He has received a lot of support from the Hint community and partners with 2 other physicians at Pure Family Medicine.
“I love practicing in a DPC because I get to focus on the patients and what’s best for them - no longer limited by billing restrictions.” - Dr. David Cameron
In addition to DPC, Dr. Cameron has a passion for international medicine, and has experience working as a clinician in Kenya and Papua New Guinea. During the COVID pandemic, David lived in Nairobi, Kenya with his wife, Sonya and their two teenage kids, where he volunteered at the Jacaranda Medical Clinic in service of patients who could not afford medical care.
Now settled in Littleton, CO, Dr. Cameron enjoys skiing, hiking, fishing, paddleboarding, and spending time with his family, friends and two dogs, Jessie and Max. You can get in touch with Dr. David Cameron via his website or on LinkedIn.