Kansas Wrote DPC Into Law in 2015. A McPherson Practice Opened the Same Year and Just Won a Chamber Award.

Practice Spotlight by DPC Insider — Practice Desk
#Kansas#practice spotlight#panel size#membership pricing#Medicare#HSA
Sources: Great Plains Family Medicine named Hutch Chamber Small Business of the Month · Great Plains Family Medicine: Healthcare Benefits & Fees · Great Plains Family Medicine: About Our Medical Practice · DPC Frontier: Kansas · AAFP: Direct Primary Care · Treasury, IRS provide guidance on new tax benefits for health savings account participants under the One, Big, Beautiful Bill · IRS Publication 969: Health Savings Accounts and Other Tax-Favored Health Plans · DPC Frontier: Dispensing Medications

Kansas wrote direct primary care into its statutes on May 7, 2015, when the governor signed HB 2225. That same year, a family physician in McPherson opened a practice that charges patients a monthly membership fee.

Eleven calendar years later, the Hutchinson/Reno County Chamber of Commerce has named Great Plains Family Medicine its September Small Business of the Month.

Plenty of DPC practices make local news on the day they open. This one got there by lasting.

Two towns and one physician

The chamber’s write-up is short. Dr. Andrea Herrera was working in a traditional hospital clinic, where “the pace of medicine often left very little time for what she believed mattered most, getting to know her patients, truly listening to them and building relationships.” After she learned about the direct primary care model, she opened her first office in McPherson in 2015. She runs the medical side. Her husband, Pete, runs the business.

The practice has since added a second office at 317 W. 2nd Ave. in Hutchinson, according to its website. The chamber credits the team with health fairs and with partnerships that connect people to health care and resources.

What the chamber doesn’t publish is anything you could run numbers on. It gives no member count, no revenue and no staff count. The practice’s own website fills in more than you might expect.

The price list, by age

Great Plains posts its monthly fees by age band:

  • Children 0 to 18: $20 a month with one adult membership, or $35 without
  • Adults 19 to 44: $60 a month
  • Adults 45 to 65: $85 a month
  • Adults 65 and older: $100 a month

The AAFP says monthly DPC fees generally range from $50 to $100. This practice’s adult tiers sit inside that range, and the oldest members pay at the top of it.

A little arithmetic on the posted schedule: two adults under 45 with two children would pay $160 a month. That figure is our math, not a price the practice quotes.

The fee covers visits and a list of procedures the site says carry no extra charge: EKGs, spirometry, breathing treatments, cryotherapy, lesion removal and laceration repair. House calls are included too. The site also says the practice can’t currently provide routine vaccinations and asks patients to call about arranging them.

Labs and medications are sold at what the practice calls wholesale cost. Physician dispensing regulations vary by state. DPC Frontier tracks the differences and asks readers to verify its list independently.

Two panel numbers on one website

The panel figures are where it gets less tidy.

The practice’s About page tells members they are “one of only about 500 patients each physician is giving their attention to.” The Benefits and Fees page describes “an intimate family practice consisting of around only 600 patients,” and sets that figure against a claim that “most family docs in Kansas routinely include 2,500 patients or more.” The site doesn’t give a source for the 2,500.

The two figures might describe different things. One counts patients per physician, and the other counts the whole practice, which lists one physician and one APRN on its About page. The site doesn’t reconcile them.

Either way, both run above the national DPC average. The AAFP’s 2024 data brief puts the average DPC panel at 413. If you’re sketching a practice from that average, you might keep in mind that one Kansas office open since 2015 describes itself at 500 or 600.

The $100 tier and the new HSA rule

The oldest tier runs into a limit that this year’s federal change didn’t touch.

Since January 1, 2026, an otherwise eligible person enrolled in certain DPC arrangements may contribute to an HSA and may use HSA money to pay the periodic fee. Medicare enrollment ends the contribution half of that. IRS Publication 969 is plain about it: “Beginning with the first month you are enrolled in Medicare, your contribution limit is zero.”

So a 66-year-old member on Medicare can’t put new pre-tax dollars into an HSA to cover a $100 monthly fee. That was true before the 2026 rule, and it’s still true.

Some members pay for both kinds of coverage anyway. One review on the practice’s homepage comes from a family that has used the practice “for over 8 years,” and it says: “We pay for the subscription on top of major medical insurance because we appreciate the service and level of care so much.” The site doesn’t say how many of its members carry insurance alongside their membership.