Hint Direct Primary Care Blog

Hint Ranks #1 for Membership Billing & Payments Among DPC Physicians

Written by Haley Wilson | July 22, 2026

For more than a decade, Hint has helped Direct Primary Care practices grow with software purpose-built for memberships, billing, and payments.

 

That long-standing focus was recently acknowledged in My DPC Story’s 2026 Battle of the Support Stack, where Hint earned 1st place in the Membership Billing & Payments category, receiving the most votes from practicing DPC physicians. Hint was also recognized across several additional categories, reflecting Hint’s strength across its EMR-related capabilities.

According to the survey, physicians consistently praised Hint's all-in-one approach to membership management and billing, highlighting recurring memberships, packages, automated billing, payment processing, late payment notifications, and reprocessing. One physician summed it up simply:

 

I can set up multiple memberships and all of the billing is done through HINT including late notifications and re-processing. I feel like this takes a lot off of my plate."

 

That's exactly what we've set out to do since day one: help practices spend less time managing the business of medicine and more time caring for patients.

 

Recognition across the practice

In addition to taking first place in DPC Membership Billing & Payments, Hint was a top-contender in several other categories of tech in the DPC support stack:

  • 1st place Membership Billing & Payments
  • 1st place Scheduling & Access
  • 2nd place Patient Communications
  • 2nd place Practice Ops & Admin
  • 2nd place Overall DPC Tool

 

Scheduling & Access

Hint was the top-named product in Scheduling & Access, while the survey also found that many DPC physicians simply expect scheduling to be built directly into their core platform rather than managed through another system. That philosophy has guided our product development.

 

Practices using Hint can manage scheduling from the same platform they use for charting and billing, with features including:

  • Self-service patient booking
  • Integrated Google Calendar
  • Online appointment scheduling based on provider availability and appointment type
  • Patient cancellation and rescheduling
  • Integrated clinician calendars
  • Automated reminders and scheduling workflows

 

Instead of managing another calendar or integration, scheduling becomes a natural part of the patient experience.

 

Patient Communications

Hint took 2nd place for the Patient Communications category of the contest.

 

With the recent addition of Hint Chat, Hint has worked to bring secure messaging, texting, phone, and fax into one communication workspace where every conversation stays connected to the right patient and the right team, all within the Hint EMR with features like:

  • Secure member chat via portal
  • Team messaging
  • Staff-only team notes
  • Practice phone line
  • SMS
  • Voicemail in-inbox
  • Unified inbox
  • Assignment & visibility
  • Patient-record context
  • Notifications (labs, forms, messages)

 

 

Practice Operations & Administration

Hint also finished as the runner-up in Practice Operations & Administration, after Google Workspace.

 

Running a successful practice requires far more than clinical documentation. That's why we've continued investing in the operational workflows teams rely on every day, including:

  • Practice-wide scheduling
  • Team task management linked directly to clinical context
  • Patient self-booking
  • Internal team chat and secure messaging
  • Practice reporting and operational dashboards
  • Configurable practice settings and administrative workflows
  • AI task generation

 

As practices grow, these small efficiencies compound into meaningful time savings for clinicians and staff.

 

#1 tool DPC physicians would keep

At the end of the ballot, physicians were asked to strip the stack down to a single tool: the tool your DPC practice cannot physically run without.

 

Hint was the runner-up for this question and when asked why physicians would keep Hint over all other tech tools, it was clear that Hint’s all-in-one EMR + billing solution is the backbone of many DPC practices.

 

Voters who would keep Hint were blunt that it is the tool they cannot get paid without, the billing and membership engine underneath everything. One estimated 90% of patient care and office administration runs through it.

 

Building on the category we helped define

While memberships and billing remain at the heart of Hint, they've become the foundation for something much bigger.

 

Over the past year, we've continued expanding Hint into an all-in-one platform that brings together the clinical and business sides of direct care.

 

One platform for your entire practice

We recently introduced a unified Hint experience that combines a clinical EMR, charting, memberships, billing, scheduling, patient communications, AI, and practice operations in one platform.

 

Instead of stitching together separate tools for clinical care and practice management, practices can manage everything from one login, one patient record, and one platform.

 

AI that works inside your workflow

We've continued investing in AI that helps DPC clinicians save time without changing the way they practice.

 

Recent launches include:

  • AI Scribe
  • AI Chat
  • AI Analyze
  • AI Fax Summaries
  • AI Templates
  • Clinical summaries and intelligent workflows

Because these capabilities are built directly into Hint, practices can document visits, review patient history, summarize records, and complete routine work without switching between applications.

 

A growing Marketplace

This year also marked the launch of Hint Marketplace, giving practices a single place to discover, activate, and manage the growing ecosystem of integrations and embedded applications that work with Hint.

Recent additions like Fullscript help practices extend their workflows while keeping the patient experience connected.

 

Mobile access for modern care

The launch of the Hint iOS app gives clinicians secure messaging, scheduling, patient context, billing information, and AI-powered documentation tools wherever care happens, whether that's in the office, on a house call, or between appointments.

 

Thank you to the DPC community

The Battle of the Support Stack is unique because it isn't based on analyst reports or paid awards. According to My DPC Story, only practicing DPC physicians were eligible to vote, and winners were determined solely by the community's responses.

 

To everyone who voted for Hint, thank you.

 

Your feedback continues to shape our roadmap and inspire the work we do every day.

 

Being recognized as the leader in Membership Billing & Payments is an honor. Continuing to earn your trust across every part of running a direct care practice is what motivates us next.

 

Want to see why DPC practices continue to choose Hint?

Book a personalized demo to see how Hint helps practices manage memberships, billing, charting, scheduling, patient communications, AI, and practice operations from one platform.