Two-Thirds of DPC Doctors Are Women, and the Average Membership Is $98 a Month

Two-thirds of DPC physicians are women, according to the largest survey of Direct Primary Care practices ever published. Across U.S. medicine as a whole, that number is closer to 38%.

The 2026 State of Direct Primary Care Report, released today by the DPC Alliance’s Member Insights Committee, drew 465 physician responses from 49 states. That sample represents roughly 13% of all physician-owned DPC practices nationwide, based on Hint Health’s estimate of approximately 3,600 total practices. The survey was chaired by Kenneth Qiu, MD, with statistical analysis by Shikha Chandarana, PhD.

The full report covers demographics, pricing, panel sizes, staffing, and geographic distribution. The last survey of comparable scope was published in 2015 by Eskew and Klink in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.

Who’s Running These Practices

The median DPC physician in this survey is 45 years old, practices family medicine, fully owns her practice, and has opted out of Medicare.

The specialty mix is heavily concentrated: 76.3% family medicine, 11.4% internal medicine, 6.4% pediatrics. Full ownership runs at 82.4%. Medicare opt-out stands at 80.7%. DOs make up 24.1% of respondents, roughly double their share of the overall physician workforce. And nearly 10% of respondents launched their DPC practice straight out of residency.

A decade ago, no one graduated residency and opened a DPC practice as plan A. Now roughly one in ten DPC doctors did exactly that.

What They Charge

The national average DPC membership price is $98.46 per member per month. That’s the first rigorous pricing benchmark the industry has produced since 2015.

Where you practice changes the number. The West is the most expensive region at $113.28/month. The Northeast sits at $110.44. The South comes in at $98.38, and the Midwest is the most affordable at $80.36. Urban practices average $110, suburban $99.78, rural $81.56.

Panel size affects pricing too. Practices with fewer than 200 patients charge an average of $105.93. Those with more than 500 charge $77.74. The survey doesn’t explain why, but the authors note it could reflect supply-and-demand dynamics, older practices not raising prices, or geography.

76.4% of practices use age-based pricing tiers. Flat pricing across all age groups comes in second at 15.1%.

Room to Grow

Most practices are still growing. 68.4% of surveyed physicians say their panels aren’t full.

Among those who do report full panels, patient counts cluster in the 400 to 700 range. That lines up with the commonly cited 600-patient target. But most practices are still building. Nearly half of all respondents have panels under 200 patients, which tracks with how young many of these practices are.

The geographic distribution is uneven. The South holds 46.5% of surveyed practices, with Texas and Florida leading the raw count. Three of the top five states by response volume haven’t expanded Medicaid under the ACA. Practice settings lean suburban: 55% of respondents are in suburban communities, 24.4% urban, 20.7% rural.

Most DPC practices, 89.3%, operate a single location with a solo physician. About a third have no support staff at all.

What This Means

This report fills a data gap that has been open for more than ten years. Since 2015, the DPC community has relied on platform billing data from Hint Health and mapper counts from DPC Frontier. Both are useful. Neither is a physician-reported survey with this sample size.

The gender data should shift how the industry talks about DPC physician recruitment. If two-thirds of the doctors choosing this model are women, conference programming, marketing, and startup resources should reflect that.

The pricing data gives physicians starting a practice a real reference point. And it gives employers evaluating DPC a number they haven’t had before: roughly $80 to $113 per month per member, depending on region and setting.

The DPC Summit opens Wednesday in New Orleans. Four hundred physicians are expected to attend. This report is a new piece of shared vocabulary they can carry into those conversations.