A DPC Practice Won a Chamber of Commerce Emerging Business Award. The Founder Is a Nurse Practitioner.

The St. Mary’s County Chamber of Commerce in Southern Maryland hands out an Emerging Business Award each year. The 2026 winner is a direct primary care practice.

Grove Family Health, founded by nurse practitioner Sheri Dean, FNP-BC, in Leonardtown, Maryland, took the award at the chamber’s annual business luncheon. The kind of recognition that usually goes to a restaurant, a construction company or a tech startup. A membership-based medical practice winning it says something about how the local business community sees DPC.

Who Sheri Dean Is

Dean has been in medicine for more than 20 years. She’s worked in hospitals, urgent care clinics, home health and traditional primary care offices. Her husband served in the U.S. Air Force, and that’s what took the family to Hawaii, where she earned her graduate nursing degree from the University of Hawaii.

She opened Grove Family Health to get out from under what she calls “the constraints of insurance companies and big healthcare systems.” The practice runs on a monthly membership. Members get same-day or next-day appointments, visits that run 30 to 90 minutes and direct access to Dean by text, phone or video. Average wait time in the office is about 10 minutes.

The practice serves individuals, families and small businesses in St. Mary’s County.

The NP Angle

Dean is a family nurse practitioner, not a physician. That matters because the share of advanced practice clinicians in DPC has been climbing.

A Health Affairs study published in late 2025 tracked the concierge and DPC workforce from 2018 through 2023. The share of APCs (nurse practitioners and physician assistants) in these practices rose from 32.7% to 40.3% during that period. Of the new APCs who entered the DPC workforce, 1,139 had no prior employer at all. They went into DPC as their first clinical role.

That shift hasn’t gotten much attention in DPC media, which still skews toward MD- and DO-led stories. DPC conferences, startup guides and EHR marketing materials tend to default to physician-centric language. The workforce data tells a different story.

What a Chamber Award Signals

DPC practices tend to get covered by healthcare trade publications and physician podcasts. Getting recognized by a local chamber of commerce is different.

When a chamber evaluates a business, the criteria are standard: growth, community involvement, financial viability. A DPC practice winning an emerging business award means the membership model is producing results that people outside of healthcare can see and measure.

The timing matters too. Chamber events put the award winner in front of local business owners. Small businesses in Southern Maryland dealing with annual health premium increases of 7% to 9% are in the same room as a primary care practice that charges a flat monthly fee. That’s a short walk to a conversation about employer-sponsored DPC.

What This Means

For nurse practitioners considering DPC, the path exists. Four out of ten DPC clinicians who entered the field between 2018 and 2023 were advanced practice clinicians. The community is already more NP-heavy than most conferences and marketing materials suggest.

Dean’s practice is one data point. She has 20 years of clinical experience and operates in a state where nurse practitioners can practice independently after a transition period. She built a membership model that caught the attention of her local business community.

For anyone weighing the move to DPC, one detail about the St. Mary’s County award stands out. The judges aren’t in healthcare. They grade on business criteria: growth, community impact, financial performance. A DPC practice passed.