A New Sarasota DPC Clinic Charges $595 a Month for Adults Over 30

Essential Health’s new Sarasota clinic calls itself a direct primary care practice. Its adult membership costs $595 a month.

That’s about six times the top of the $50 to $100 range the American Academy of Family Physicians says DPC monthly fees generally fall in. It’s also a price that a white paper from deal advisers, published this month, would file one row above DPC on its map of membership medicine.

SRQ Daily reported the opening on Oct. 26 and called it Essential Health’s first Florida clinic. The company’s other offices are in Raleigh and Cary, North Carolina, and Bozeman, Montana. Dr. Kyle O’Brien leads the Sarasota office. His bio says he completed his family medicine residency through the Cleveland Clinic, is board certified in family medicine and in anti-aging and regenerative medicine, and worked as a personal trainer before medical school.

What $595 buys

The Sarasota page lists three tiers. Adults 31 and older pay $595 a month. Adults 19 to 30 pay $355. A child pays $155 and can enroll only alongside an adult member. Billing is month to month, and the page says members can cancel at any time without penalty.

Membership starts with a paid intake. Every new adult member begins with what the practice calls an Essential Health Assessment, priced at $2,950 for adults 31 and up and $1,950 for younger adults. The page says it covers testing of more than 100 biomarkers, DEXA body composition, VO2 max testing, a carotid ultrasound, an EKG and “more than three hours of dedicated physician time.” Add the assessment to twelve months of adult membership and the first year comes to $10,090. That’s DPC Insider’s arithmetic from the posted prices.

After the intake, the page says, members get unlimited visits, same- or next-day appointments “when appropriate,” 24/7 physician access for urgent concerns, a repeat assessment each year and two more lab panels in between. Supplements, peptides, hormones and some medications are sold to members “at practice cost.” Imaging outside the assessment is billed separately.

The panel is small on purpose. The page says Dr. O’Brien limits the practice to about 200 patients. AAFP puts the average DPC panel at 413.

The membership doesn’t stand in for coverage, and the clinic says so. “Essential Health - Sarasota does not replace health insurance,” its FAQ reads. Members keep using insurance for imaging, medications, specialists, emergency care and hospital stays.

Three rows of one price map

The map is in State of Concierge and Consumer Medicine, 2026, an October white paper from the advisory firm Vector Medical Group and the law firm Baker Donelson. DPC Insider covered it on Oct. 24. It sorts the field by annual fee. “Standard/DPC” runs under roughly $5,000 a year, with 400 to 600-plus members per physician. “Premium/Deluxe” runs roughly $5,000 to $15,000, with about 150 to 400. A separate “Longevity and Functional” row is “program- or subscription-priced” and “not panel-based.”

Sarasota’s adult tier works out to $7,140 a year with a panel near 200. On fee and on panel, that’s the premium row. The young-adult tier, at $4,260 a year, lands under the DPC ceiling. And the service list matches the paper’s description of longevity clinics, which it says sell “diagnostics, hormone optimization, and performance programs on a subscription basis.”

So which row this clinic belongs in depends on who walks through the door. The paper describes those rows very differently. Premium is where it says “most sponsor-backed platform formation is concentrated.” The longevity row, it says, has the “least settled regulatory terrain.”

The Sarasota page also carries a notice that it says Florida law requires. It states that the physician “performs one or more stem cell therapies that have not yet been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration.”

The federal line

IRS Notice 2026-5 draws a line by dollar amount, whatever a practice calls itself. For HSA eligibility, the federal definition of a direct primary care service arrangement excludes any arrangement whose aggregate fees for a person exceed $150 a month, or $300 for an arrangement that covers more than one individual. The limit adjusts for inflation for taxable years after 2026.

Sarasota’s adult fee is almost four times the single-person limit. Counted alone, the child tier misses by $5. An adult over 30 and one child together pay $750 a month, against the $300 limit.

Going over doesn’t put the fee out of an HSA’s reach. Answer 20 of the notice says fees above the limit “will be treated as medical expenses reimbursable from an HSA” when the arrangement otherwise qualifies, but “will disqualify the covered individual from eligibility for making HSA contributions while the individual is enrolled.” DPC Insider walked through that rule for a $250 Albany practice on Oct. 20. At $595 the gap is wider, and the rule is the same.

The question the FAQ leaves open

“Otherwise qualifies” carries a lot of weight for a membership like this one. Answer 20 requires care “consisting solely of primary care services,” paid for only by the fixed fee. The notice excludes three things from primary care services: procedures that require general anesthesia, prescription drugs other than vaccines, and “laboratory services not typically administered in an ambulatory primary care setting.”

The notice names no tests on either side of that last line. Sarasota’s membership includes a yearly panel of more than 100 biomarkers, with cardiovascular testing the page says runs through Cleveland HeartLab. Whether a panel like that is “typically administered” in primary care is a question the notice doesn’t settle.

The practice doesn’t claim to settle it either. Asked about HSA and FSA funds, its FAQ answers: “Some patients may be able to use HSA or FSA funds for certain membership fees, depending on their plan and current tax rules.” It tells patients to confirm with an HSA or FSA administrator or a tax advisor. If you’re weighing a $7,140 year, you might ask that question before the first $2,950 visit.