A New Count Puts 1,497 DPC Clinics on the Map. Four States Have Two or Fewer.

Direct Primary Care finally has a running headcount, and the map it produces looks nothing like the “going national” story the industry tells about itself.

A July 2026 snapshot from the BestDPC directory counts 1,497 geo-located DPC clinics across 43 states. Texas leads with 171. Florida sits right behind at 167. Between them, those two states hold more than one in five of every clinic on the list. Now look at the other end. North Dakota has one. Hawaii has one. Alaska and South Dakota have two apiece.

That contrast is the whole story. A model that keeps getting called a national movement is, on the ground, a Sun Belt cluster with long empty stretches in between.

Where the clinics actually are

After the top two, the count falls off fast. North Carolina shows 81. Colorado has 61. California and Washington tie at 59. Ohio and Michigan each list 54, Georgia 53, and Pennsylvania closes out the top ten at 49.

The city data says the same thing in miniature. Austin leads every metro in the country with 15 listed clinics. Tampa has 13, Orlando 12, Jacksonville 11, and San Antonio 10. Four of those five sit in Texas or Florida, both states with fast population growth, no state income tax, and DPC statutes that have been on the books for years.

None of that is an accident. DPC runs on patients who pay a monthly fee out of pocket, so it grows fastest where there are lots of self-employed workers, small businesses, and early retirees who never had generous employer coverage to lean on. Add a legal framework that says a DPC membership is not insurance, and you get the Austin effect.

The count is a floor, not a ceiling

One caveat matters before anyone treats 1,497 as gospel. BestDPC is a directory built from clinics that list themselves plus ones its editors add by hand. It says so plainly. This is a snapshot of who showed up, not a census of who exists.

Other counts run higher. Hint Health’s 2026 trends report drew on more than 2,700 clinicians and 1.4 million members on its billing platform alone. The DPC Coalition has cited north of 3,000 practices nationwide. So the real total is bigger than 1,497. What the directory captures well is the shape of the thing, and the shape is lopsided.

”Inflection point,” meet the map

The mood in the industry right now is confident. “I really do believe we are at an inflection point,” DPC Coalition executive director Jay Keese told Medical Economics, pointing to new HSA rules, employer demand, and a wave of state laws.

He might be right about the direction. The map just complicates the timeline. Tax changes and employer contracts move the total number up, but a clinic still has to open in a specific town with a specific doctor willing to walk away from a salary. That happens readily in Austin and Tampa. It has barely happened in Bismarck or Sioux Falls.

What This Means

If you already run a DPC practice in Texas, Florida, or the Carolinas, the density cuts both ways. You have proof the model works in your market, and you have more competition for the same members than a doctor in Fargo will ever see.

If you are a resident deciding where to land, read the empty states as opportunity instead of warning. A place with one clinic usually means nobody has tried yet, and first movers in a thin market tend to fill their panels fast.

And if you are watching DPC as a category, hold the “national movement” language a little loosely. The growth is real, the legal wins are real, and the money is starting to follow. The geography is telling you that the work of actually reaching the whole country is still mostly ahead.