Sermo Surveyed Physicians on DPC. The Satisfaction Gap Was 37 Points.

In May 2026, Sermo published survey data from its physician community on direct primary care. The headline numbers: 94% of DPC physicians report satisfaction with their practice, compared to 57% in traditional settings. And 49% of DPC physicians report no burnout at all, versus 14% of non-DPC primary care physicians.

A 37-point satisfaction gap. A 35-point gap in physicians who are completely burnout-free.

Those numbers don’t come from a DPC advocacy organization or a conference keynote. Sermo is a physician peer platform with over 900,000 members globally. When the same survey documents both the real benefits and the genuine cons of DPC, its satisfaction data carries more weight than a vendor’s own claims.

What Drives the Gap

Panel size is the most direct cause. DPC practices average around 402 patients. Traditional primary care runs 1,800 to 2,500. That difference changes the entire shape of a practice day. At 2,000 patients, appointments average seven to fifteen minutes and the schedule has no room to breathe. At 400, visits run 30-60 minutes, and same-day access is routine rather than an exception that requires a supervisor’s sign-off.

Overhead tells the same story from the practice economics side. DPC practices run 30-40% overhead. Traditional practices land at 60-70%. The gap comes almost entirely from insurance billing: no claims staff, no prior authorization queue, no revenue cycle management cycling billing errors back through the system. That administrative layer costs both money and physician attention.

One physician quoted in the survey: “Direct primary care…empower[s] us to practice patient-centered medicine without administrative burdens.” For the 94%, that trade cleared the bar.

The Trade-Offs Are Real

The same survey is direct about what DPC asks in return.

Building a panel takes time. Most new DPC practices run 12-24 months before revenue stabilizes and the membership base becomes predictable. Physicians coming from employed positions often underestimate the business ownership demands. Marketing, hiring, lease agreements, and payroll don’t appear in residency training.

The income calculation is more layered than the top-line salary. The average DPC physician salary sits around $217,000 per ZipRecruiter data from late 2025. That compares reasonably to employed family medicine in many markets. But DPC physicians pay their own malpractice coverage, health insurance, and retirement contributions rather than receiving them through an employer. The income ceiling is higher in DPC, and so is the downside risk during the build phase.

Physicians who struggled during the build phase or left DPC almost always point to the same issues: not enough financial runway before opening, underestimating how long patient acquisition takes, or discovering the business management side didn’t fit their actual working style. The model itself rarely comes up as the problem.

What This Means

For physicians considering the transition: the Sermo data provides a useful baseline because the source has no stake in the outcome. A 37-point satisfaction gap from a peer platform is harder to dismiss than the same number from a DPC trade publication.

The physicians who land in the 94% tend to share something specific. They wanted what DPC actually offers: fewer patients, longer visits, no insurance billing, and clinical autonomy. If those things matter enough to take on the financial risk of starting a practice from scratch, the data suggests the model performs as described over time.

For residents earlier in training: this survey exists not to push you toward any particular decision but to give you an accurate starting point. Most physicians who consider DPC spend months trying to piece together how other DPC doctors actually feel about the trade. A peer platform survey of this scale is a more reliable signal than individual practice testimonials.

The burnout gap tells a specific story. One in seven non-DPC primary care physicians reports no burnout at all. For DPC physicians, it’s nearly one in two. That gap doesn’t measure how hard each group works. It measures what the work consists of, and how much of it goes to patients versus the system that surrounds patients.

As more physicians hit year two or three of employment and start running those numbers for themselves, surveys like this one give them a reference point that doesn’t come from someone trying to sell them something.