MDVIP Collected 68,801 Survey Responses and Reported a Record Net Promoter Score. Its Physicians Bill Insurance. Most DPC Physicians Don't.

Competitor Watch by DPC Insider — Market Desk
#MDVIP#concierge-medicine#membership-medicine#private-equity#patient-satisfaction#outcomes-data
Sources: MDVIP's 2026 Patient Satisfaction Survey Shows Record Member Loyalty and Stronger Year-Over-Year Satisfaction · MDVIP | Charlesbank Capital Partners · The Economics of the MDVIP Model | MDVIP Physician Resources · Hint Health 2026 DPC Patient Experience Benchmark Report · State of DPC 2026: Key Takeaways From DPC Alliance's Physician Survey · HCUP Statistical Brief #311: Costs of Treat-and-Release Emergency Department Visits in the United States, 2021 | AHRQ

MDVIP published its 2026 patient satisfaction survey on August 25. The dataset covers 68,801 current members and reports a Net Promoter Score of 79. According to MDVIP’s press release, that’s the highest in the survey’s history, up five points from 2025.

Ninety-five percent of those members said they are satisfied with MDVIP. Ninety-seven percent said they are satisfied with their physician. Ninety-one percent said they are likely to renew.

What MDVIP Is

According to MDVIP’s 2026 press release, the network includes more than 1,400 affiliated physicians and more than 430,000 members. Its physicians accept insurance and bill for services. Patients pay an annual membership fee on top of their insurance—typically $2,400 or more per year, according to MDVIP’s physician FAQ—in exchange for enhanced access: same-day appointments, longer visits, and direct physician availability by phone. In October 2021, Charlesbank Capital Partners and the private equity business of Goldman Sachs Asset Management jointly acquired shared control of MDVIP.

That ownership structure is relevant because MDVIP is, at its economic core, a recurring-revenue business. The membership fee is the product. The physician conversion model—in which a primary care doctor reduces her panel and joins the MDVIP network—is the distribution strategy. The satisfaction survey released last week is partly a retention instrument.

None of that makes the numbers wrong. It is context for how to read them.

The Model’s Structural Difference From DPC

DPC physicians typically opt out of insurance billing for primary care services. The monthly membership—averaging $98.64 per month according to the DPC Alliance’s 2026 physician survey—covers primary care services. Patients keep their insurance for specialists and hospitalizations, but no claim is filed and no copay is owed for the services the membership covers.

MDVIP physicians stay inside the insurance system. They file claims, receive reimbursements, and add the membership fee on top as the structural mechanism for reduced panel size and enhanced access. The annual membership buys the relationship. Insurance pays for the services.

The practical effect of this difference shows up in two places: what happens when a claim is denied, and what happens when a patient’s insurance lapses. In the MDVIP model, the physician still has a billable relationship with the patient’s insurance. In DPC, the physician’s relationship with the patient runs through the membership, not the insurer. The monthly fee works whether or not the patient’s coverage changes.

The Clinical Outcomes Data

Alongside the satisfaction survey, MDVIP released findings from a 2026 analysis with Arcadia. The analysis found that Medicare patients in MDVIP-affiliated practices had 15 percent fewer emergency room visits than expected and 13 percent fewer hospitalizations than expected.

Fifteen percent fewer ER visits is a meaningful number, and the mechanism behind it is intuitive. When a physician serves a smaller panel—MDVIP-converted physicians typically see fewer patients than their pre-conversion caseloads—she has more time to return calls, manage chronic conditions between visits, and catch small problems before they become emergency ones. Both DPC and MDVIP use reduced panel size as the structural basis for that kind of attention.

The outcomes data has a limitation the press release does not address: the comparison population. Medicare patients who pay a substantial annual membership fee are not a representative cross-section of Medicare beneficiaries. A program charging $2,400 or more per year selects for patients with discretionary income—and higher income correlates with lower emergency department utilization, a pattern documented in federal health services research. The release describes the comparator only as “expected” utilization—without publishing the Arcadia methodology or specifying whether that expectation was constructed through risk adjustment, actuarial modeling, or a matched comparison group.

The gap in ER visits and hospitalizations may reflect the care model. It may also reflect the economic selection effect of a program that requires an upfront payment many Medicare beneficiaries cannot make. Without a controlled comparison group, that question stays open.

The Denominator Problem

The satisfaction numbers have a parallel issue. The 68,801 members in MDVIP’s 2026 survey are current members—the ones who stayed. Former members who left the network are not in the dataset. Patients who joined and quietly let their membership lapse, who found the annual fee too high after the first year, or who moved to a different model are not included in the 91 percent renewal figure or the 79 NPS.

This is not a flaw specific to MDVIP. Any membership medicine satisfaction report faces the same constraint. The Hint Health 2026 DPC Patient Experience Benchmark Report, which found an 85 NPS across twelve DPC clinics, shares the same denominator: the members who were present and chose to respond. The six-point gap between MDVIP’s 79 and DPC’s 85 is narrower than the structural gap between the two models, and both numbers are measuring the same thing—satisfaction among the patients who stayed.

What either survey cannot tell you is what happened to the patients who left, or why. The survey captures stated intent to renew, not an observed renewal rate. And it captures only the members who participated. The members who left—whether in the past year or at any earlier point—are not in the data.

The equity question runs through both models the same way. The monthly fee that makes the DPC model financially viable for a physician is the same barrier that limits access for patients without discretionary income. The annual MDVIP fee creates a steeper version of the same barrier in a system that still accepts insurance. Neither model has a structural answer to the patients who need relationship-based primary care the most and are least positioned to pay for it, because the payment is what creates the relationship.

The clearest thing MDVIP’s 2026 survey establishes: patients who gain sustained access to a physician they chose, and who can afford to keep that access, report high satisfaction. What produces that access—insurance billing plus a membership fee, or a flat monthly membership without insurance—is a different question from whether the person is happy with the arrangement once they have it.