A Chicago Clinic's New $250 Fee Is a Different Deal From DPC
CBS Chicago reports an unnamed Chicago primary care clinic will charge patients $250 a year starting Feb. 1, citing falling insurance reimbursement. The same story features an Evanston DPC practice at $85 a month. The two fees buy different things.
Practice Desk 4 min read Practice Spotlight
Patients at one Chicago primary care clinic received a letter telling them they would owe $250 a year per patient starting Feb. 1. CBS News Chicago reported the letter on Oct. 28. The station did not name the clinic.
The letter said the fee is meant to combat “declining reimbursement rates from insurance companies combined with increasing administrative requirements,” according to CBS.
The same segment then visited Bridge Family Health, a direct primary care practice run by Dr. Jeff Panzer, which charges $85 a month. The headline calls both of them membership fees. On the evidence in the story, they are two different arrangements, and CBS reported what the patient gets for only one of them.
What $85 a month buys
Bridge publishes its prices. Its pricing page lists $85 a month for one adult, $160 for two adults in a household and $200 for a family of two adults and one child. There is a one-time enrollment fee of $100 for an individual and $200 for a household.
The page also spells out what the membership covers: preventive visits, sick visits, chronic condition care, medication management and direct contact with the care team by text or email. It promises no copays and no per-visit fees for included care. Bridge says health insurance can still be used for what sits outside the membership, which it lists as specialist care, hospitalization, emergency care, surgery, imaging, prescriptions and lab testing.
Do the arithmetic for one adult and Bridge costs $1,020 a year in membership fees, plus the $100 to enroll. That is about four times the Chicago clinic’s $250.
Bridge sits within the normal range for the model. The American Academy of Family Physicians says monthly DPC fees typically run from $50 to $100.
The panel is the product
The fee pays for a smaller panel, which is where the time comes from. Panzer told CBS that direct primary care offices like his max out at about 500 to 600 patients, which the station described as “a third of what many traditional primary care physicians would see.”
AAFP’s figures land close to that. Its DPC page reports an average panel of 504 patients in 2025, up from 402 in 2024.
Panzer told the station the model lets the practice drop insurance contracts and give each patient more time. That is the structural difference AAFP draws, too. Compared with concierge medicine, it says, DPC “usually involves lower monthly fees, does not bill insurance and covers a broader range of services.”
Where the $250 fee fits
The Chicago clinic’s fee is harder to place. CBS did not report what it covers. It did not say whether the clinic will keep billing insurance once the fee starts, or what happens to a patient who doesn’t pay by Feb. 1.
The letter’s stated reason is insurance reimbursement. That reasoning points to an insurance-billing practice.
Rebecca Kirch, executive vice president of policy and programs at the National Patient Advocate Foundation, told CBS the paperwork behind that reimbursement has grown fast. “Over the past few years, there’s no question that the administrative tasks that doctors’ offices and/or doctors seeing people in outpatient hospital settings has skyrocketed,” she said.
She also worries that fees meant to pay for that extra work could push some patients to put off care. “Affordability is the name of the game in a way we’ve not seen in a good long while,” Kirch said.
Katie Smith, a patient interviewed by the station, described why some people pay anyway. The model is “really appealing for people who live in the area, who really want to know their doctor,” she said, and who “want a quick response.”
What the letter leaves out
On paper, $250 a year is the smaller bill. You might still have no way to weigh it, because CBS did not report what the money changes.
A patient comparing the two needs three answers the CBS report doesn’t give. Does the fee come with a smaller panel or longer visits? Does the clinic keep billing insurance for the same visits? And do patients who decline it stay on the clinic’s panel?
Bridge answered its version of those questions on a public web page. Until the Chicago clinic does the same, its patients are being asked to pay for a change they can’t yet see.
