Welcome to the very first episode of DPC Life! I’m Dr. Anne Gonzalez—a family medicine physician, wife, mom, and now podcaster. In this episode, I sit down with my DPC partner, Dr. Rachel Kelly, to share the story of how we went from working as employed physicians in the traditional system to opening our own Direct Primary Care practice.

We talk about:

• How we first met and became practice partners

• Why the hospital system left us drained and undervalued

• The leap from “golden handcuffs” to building something better

• What we didn’t know (and had to learn fast) when starting a DPC practice

• Setting boundaries with patients and starting as you want to finish

This is our origin story - the honest truth about how scary, yet ultimately rewarding it was to make the jump.

Resources & Mentions:

• Spruce Health – for patient messaging and urgent vs. routine contact management

• DPC Ads in Minutes – helping independent doctors grow their practices

• Harmony Ops Health – tools and systems to support DPC clinics