In his first week at Fischer Clinic, a new patient told Dr. Brewer Eberly, I am looking forward to dying with you. A third generation family physician who nearly left medicine in his third year of medical school, Eberly got to Raleigh through years of friendship rather than a job board, and started with 170 patients another physician had onboarded for him.

Dr. Tiffanny Blythe priced Blue Lotus Family Medicine so low she barely covered her living expenses, until the furnace broke and the math stopped working. She raised 85 percent of her panel from $50 to $75 with three months of notice and lost a handful of people. The higher price funds a scholarship program with no application and no gatekeeping, where a patient can pay as little as $5 a month.

Dr. Becky Lynn opened Evora Women's Health in February 2020, one month before the pandemic, and brought home nothing at all the first year. She priced the practice on the higher side, then gave one Tuesday a month away on a pay what you can basis so she would not have to abandon the patients who could not follow her.