From Zhu et al. in (2025) health matters,
Primary care physicians have expressed increasing interest in concierge and direct primary care practices, which often involve smaller patient panels and greater clinical autonomy than traditional primary care models. We evaluated practice and workforce characteristics using a national sample of concierge and direct primary care practices identified through novel linkage of public and proprietary data. From 2018 to 2023, the number of direct primary care and concierge practice sites increased by 83.1 percent and the number of physicians participating in them increased by 78.4 percent. The share of physicians in concierge and direct primary care practices declined from 67.3 percent to 59.7 percent, while the proportion of advanced practice physicians increased. Nearly 60 percent of these physicians participated in Medicare prescribing concierge or hybrid practices. Independent ownership declined from 84.0 percent to 59.7 percent, while corporate-affiliated practices increased by 576 percent during this period. The growth in these primary care models may provide substantial benefits to patients and physicians, but it also raises broader questions about changing clinical practice and access to care.
You can read the full paper here.
