Direct care is growing fast, and the movement keeps gaining data to prove it. Direct Primary Care Alliance's new State of DPC report, published in July 2026, draws on 465 unique survey responses from physician-owned practices nationwide.
Here's what you need to know.
What is the State of DPC Report?
The State of DPC report is a national survey of physician-owned direct primary care practices conducted by the Member Insights Committee of the Direct Primary Care Alliance, a nonprofit membership organization of DPC physicians. Survey data was collected in October and November 2024 and published in July 2026.
The report defines a DPC practice as a primary care practice that, at least in part, charges a fixed, periodic fee and does not bill insurance for clinical services rendered. Before this study, the last major peer investigation into the distribution and costs of DPC practices was published in 2015, leaving physicians to rely largely on anecdote and word of mouth. Notably, only 63.8% of respondents were DPC Alliance members, indicating substantial participation from across the broader community.
How Fast is Direct Primary Care Growing?
The practice-level data tells a similar story. Our own tracking puts DPC at more than 3,600 distinct practices nationwide as of Q1 2025, both physician- and non-physician-owned, growing at an annual rate above 19% since 2022 — and the DPCA's survey shows what that growth looks like at ground level. Most responding practices are between one and five years old, aligning with the model's rise over the past decade. Practices open less than a year, including a distinct group open less than six months, represent a significant share of the sample, offering a real-time glimpse into how quickly new clinics continue to open.
The physician age data tells a similar story. Respondents reported a mean age of 46, a median of 45, and a mode of 40, with ages ranging from 29 to 73. Nearly 10% of respondents launched their DPC practices straight out of residency, a strong signal that new physicians increasingly view DPC as a viable first-choice career path rather than a mid-career escape from burnout.
Where are DPC Practices Located?
DPC practices now operate in every state except Alaska. The South leads with 46.5% of practices, followed by the Midwest at 22.8%, with the West and Northeast nearly tied at 15.5% and 15.3%, respectively.
The top 14 states by number of responses:
- Texas: 43
- Florida: 42
- Virginia: 26
- North Carolina: 25
- Georgia: 23
- Kansas: 22
- Pennsylvania: 17
- Michigan: 16
- Indiana, Maine, Missouri, and Washington (tie): 15
- Colorado and Oklahoma (tie): 14
Three of the top five states have declined to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, and Kansas stands out with a disproportionately high number of practices relative to its population. By setting, 55% of practices are suburban, 24.4% are urban, and 20.7% are rural, a distribution that likely reflects where physician entrepreneurship, patient affordability, and demand for alternative primary care most frequently intersect.
Who is Practicing DPC?
The report paints a detailed demographic portrait of the DPC physician community:
- Gender: Women make up 67.3% of respondents, roughly double the share of men at 32.7%.
- Specialty: Family medicine dominates at 76.3%, followed by internal medicine at 11.4%, pediatrics at 6.4%, and internal medicine-pediatrics at 3%.
- Degree: 75.7% of respondents are MDs, and 24.1% are DOs, a substantial osteopathic presence.
- Ownership: 82.4% hold full ownership of their practices, underscoring the entrepreneurial independence at the heart of the model.
- Medicare: 80.7% have opted out of Medicare entirely. Another 15.5% have opted in but decline to see Medicare patients, and just 3.9% operate hybrid models that bill Medicare.
The Medicare data highlights a persistent startup challenge: physicians who moonlight while building their panels are unable to opt out of Medicare, forcing a choice between excluding Medicare patients or running a hybrid model that can complicate the DPC experience.
Practices themselves remain intentionally lean. Among the 89.3% of respondents operating a single location, the vast majority are solo physician practices. About one-third run with zero support staff, another third employ a single staff member, and most practices operate without physician assistants or nurse practitioners.
How Big is a Typical DPC Patient Panel?
Most respondents manage panels well below the often-cited benchmark of 600 patients, and only a small fraction exceed it. Context matters here: 68.4% of respondents said their panels have yet to fill, consistent with the relative youth of many practices in the sample.
The picture sharpens when the analysis isolates physicians who report a full panel. Among mature practices, panel sizes cluster in the 400-700 range, aligning closely with the 600-patient benchmark. A small number of physicians reported full panels under 200, which may reflect part-time schedules, side ventures, or a focus on administrative and leadership roles. The takeaway for the community: "full" is defined by each physician's goals, availability, and practice design rather than by a standardized number.
For the two-thirds of practices still building toward full, employer partnerships have become one of the fastest-growing paths to panel growth — our Employer Trends in Direct Primary Care report explores this in depth.
What does DPC Membership Cost?
Across all categories, the national average membership price was $98.64 per member per month.
Pricing varies meaningfully by geography:
- By region: The West is highest at $113.28, followed by the Northeast at $110.44, the South at $98.38, and the Midwest at $80.36.
- By setting: Urban practices average $110 per month, suburban practices $99.78, and rural practices $81.56. The rural discount is statistically significant, while suburban and urban prices are statistically similar.
Panel size shapes pricing as well. Practices with fewer than 200 patients average $105.93 per member per month, those with 201-500 patients average $99.28, and those with more than 500 patients average $77.74. This pattern may reflect natural supply-and-demand dynamics, or it may indicate that older, larger practices have held prices steady over time.
On pricing structure, age-based tiering remains the default at 76.4% of practices. Flat pricing with zero tiering follows at 15.1%, and family tiering, where the per-member price changes based on how many family members join together, is an emerging strategy at 8.5%.
For a deeper look at membership growth, pricing, and market data across the DPC ecosystem, download our 2026 DPC Trends Report.
What these Findings Mean for the Direct Care Community
The State of DPC report confirms what many in the movement have long sensed: direct primary care has matured from a niche experiment into a durable, national model. Growth is broad-based across regions, a new generation of physicians is choosing DPC from day one, and mature practices are validating the economics that early pioneers projected.
The data also gives practice owners practical benchmarks. Whether you're setting a launch price, planning staffing, or projecting how long it will take to fill a panel, you can now compare your assumptions against real numbers from hundreds of peers.
Above all, the report is a testament to the community itself. DPC Alliance credits the survey's reach to physicians sharing it with friends and colleagues, along with distribution support from Hint Health's platform and DPC networks nationwide. That collective engagement is exactly what will keep the movement's data and its momentum growing.
See you at DPC Summit in New Orleans
The best place to dig into this data is alongside the community that created it.
DPC Summit is July 16-19 at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans, co-hosted by DPC Alliance, American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), American College of Osteopathic Physicians (ACOFP), and the Family Medicine Education Consortium (FMEC).
As an exhibitor and sponsor, Hint will be there all weekend — stop by Booth #5P to chat with the team and get a live demo of the new Hint Experience.
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