Hello and welcome to pursuing health.

I'm Dr. Julie Foucher Brown, family physician and former CrossFit Games athlete.

Here I bring you information and inspiration to help bridge the gap between fitness and medicine

and support your journey toward your healthiest self.

Thank you so much for joining me. Now let's get

started with this week's episode. In this episode, I explore direct primary care as a model

that prioritizes time, relationships, and whole-person care. These conversations highlight what becomes

possible when medicine is practiced in alignment with both patient and physician values. Dr. Ken Richter

shares how direct primary care allows physicians to step outside the insurance-driven system and

return to relationship-based medicine. He explains why time itself becomes a powerful

form of treatment and how deeper connection leads to better outcomes. Can you just explain for people

listening what direct primary care is? Sure. Direct primary care originated from a concierge's model,

and that's a lot of confusion sometimes because people hear concierge's

medicine. And concierge medicine is still around, but it's really for the 1% of the 1%. It's a very

expensive program. And for certain individuals, that's great for them. But we need, and it's been

called a concierge for the masses. And the idea is good. It's a monthly membership model that you would pay a

monthly membership fee and not involve the insurance companies in your outpatient care. By doing that,

we find that it actually becomes less expensive for outpatient care, more accessible, more complete,

and actually the quality goes up because you have more time to

spend with people. It's not that you're a better doctor. It's just that you spend more time with

it. I mean, it would be like any craftsman. Any craftsman, if you have more time to do your craft,

you tender to put out a better product. And so this originated probably about 15 years ago

...