The First Sold-Out Pediatric DPC Conference Just Wrapped. Here's Why That Matters.
A DPC conference sold out. That’s not unusual in 2026. But this one was specifically for pediatricians.
The DPC Alliance’s Pediatric DPC Conference wrapped yesterday in Savannah, Georgia, after a four-day run at the Westin Savannah Harbor. Every registration slot was filled. And the person delivering the keynote wasn’t a DPC evangelist or a tech founder. It was Susan Kressly, MD, a past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
That combination tells you something about where direct primary care is heading.
Why Pediatrics, Why Now
Pediatrics has always been one of the most financially squeezed specialties in traditional medicine. Reimbursement rates are low. Visit volumes are high. And the administrative burden of coding well-child checks, vaccine documentation, and insurance prior authorizations makes 15-minute slots feel like a sprint.
DPC offers a fundamentally different structure. Panels of 400 to 800 patients instead of 2,500. Visits lasting 30 to 60 minutes. Monthly membership revenue instead of claim-by-claim billing. For pediatricians watching their colleagues in family medicine and internal medicine build sustainable DPC practices, the question has shifted from “could this work for kids?” to “how do I start?”
The sold-out conference suggests plenty of pediatricians are now at the “how” stage.
What Filled the Agenda
The conference wasn’t an introductory pitch for DPC-curious physicians. The sessions assumed attendees were either already running pediatric DPC practices or actively building one.
Breakout tracks covered AI and automation tools for small practices, financial management for solo and micro-group operations, legal and marketing strategies specific to pediatric membership medicine, and practice launch timelines. Clinical sessions addressed pediatric-specific topics including self-hypnosis techniques for anxious children and podiatric care guidance.
The sponsor list read like a roster of DPC infrastructure. Hint Health held the diamond sponsorship. SigmaMD was a gold sponsor alongside Practice Pro Healthcare, myDPC, and Religen. Silver sponsors included Freedom Healthworks, Turnkey DPC, and Goodman CPA.
That depth of vendor participation at a specialty-specific DPC event would have been hard to imagine three years ago.
A Signal, Not an Outlier
The pediatric conference sits within a broader 2026 conference calendar that reflects how much DPC has grown. The DPC Alliance is also hosting a DPC Masterminds session in June and a full DPC Summit in July. Hint Summit drew CMS leadership earlier this month in Nashville. These aren’t scrappy meetups anymore. They’re industry events with institutional sponsors and federal attention.
DPC now serves roughly 1.4 million members across approximately 2,800 practices, representing about 1% of the U.S. population. The number of DPC practices has grown 135% since 2020, and more than half of all DPC memberships are now employer-sponsored.
When a specialty as traditional as pediatrics gets its own sold-out conference within that movement, it stops being a signal from the margins.
What This Means
If you’re a pediatrician exploring DPC, the infrastructure is catching up to the demand. Vendors are building pediatric-specific workflows. Conferences are addressing your clinical context, not just the generic “how to leave insurance” talk track. And with HSA eligibility for DPC memberships now settled and employer adoption accelerating, the financial model for family memberships has fewer friction points than it did even a year ago.
If you’re already running a DPC practice in family medicine or internal medicine, watch the pediatric side of the movement. Families who join a pediatric DPC practice become natural candidates for adult DPC memberships. The growth vectors are starting to compound.
The DPC Alliance hasn’t announced dates for next year’s pediatric conference yet. Given the sold-out status of this one, you might not want to wait for the announcement.