Dr. Tami Singh's panel hit over 4,000 patients in seven years before a hospital bought her physician owned group and started undercoding her billing. She quit, spent six weeks in Bali, and came home to open Aspire Health in a furnished room inside a plastic surgery office. Five years later her panel is closed, her mother handles billing, and three virtual staff in the Philippines run the phones.

A hospital board president told Dr. Jennifer Allen he would eat 40 kinds of crow if her Direct Primary Care practice worked. She now has three clinics, 14 employees, and around 2,000 patients across Hermann, Washington, and O'Fallon, Missouri. She was a nurse and nurse practitioner for 18 years first, and a patient paid her way through medical school.

Rent at Mid-South DPC is 800 dollars a month for 1,250 square feet that used to be a donut drive through, then a tanning salon, then a children's boutique. Dr. Ashlee Hendry's husband did the build out in the evenings while she worked out her 30 day notice. She passed 200 patients four months after opening, and every piece of art on the walls is hers.