DPC Doctor
Dr. Delicia Haynes is the CEO and Founder of Family First Health Center, an integrative membership-based family medicine clinic with a worldwide reach based in Daytona Beach, Florida. Through the Direct Primary Care model, she empowers her patients to look and feel their best from the inside out with a lifestyle medicine approach.
Her commitment to helping people understand that “true medicine comes in more than pill form” has enabled several of her patients to shed excess weight, safely stop medications including insulin, become clinically non-diabetic, and live an energetic life they love.
She enjoys serving a diverse patient base, including Olympic athletes, CEOs, best-selling authors, weekend warriors, top employees, teens and domestic engineers. She compassionately helps them improve their physical and mental health so they can show up fully in their personal and professional lives.
She is a diplomat of the American Board of Family Medicine, the American Board of Obesity Medicine, is highly trained in medical aesthetics, laser therapy, and lifestyle medicine. She completed her specialty training at the Halifax Center for Family and Sports Medicine Residency Program.
Dr. Haynes attended medical school at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine and earned a Bachelor of Arts in Biology with a minor in Spanish from the University of Louisville.
Dr. Haynes is also an award-winning coach and business mentor. She created DPC Rx For Success, which helps doctors transition to direct care practices so they can express the “art and heart” of medicine while increasing their inspiration, income and impact.
DPC Startup Basics featuring Dr. Delicia Haynes
Resources Mentioned by Dr. Haynes:
by Dr. Delicia Haynes
CONTACT:
TRANSCRIPT*
Welcome to the podcast. Dr. Haynes. Thank you so glad to be here. It's such an honor, and I just want to put this out there for the listeners, because it's such a special day that we're recording this on, and this is Dr. Haynes, his mom's birthday. And so I just wanted to just say thank you to her for recording on such a special day, and we'll get into how DPC allowed her to be putting family first as we go into the interview.
So thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure. You had started. Your practice. That was a fee for service practice in 2009. And then just three years later, in 2012, you are already listed in the Daytona beach, influential women's list, business article, where you were quoted as saying, if a hurdle is in your way, jump over it.
And if you happen to fall, get back up. So. Having heard you in person, which I hope, and I can't wait for other people to hear you at this upcoming summit, as well as future conferences, from what you've shared. This has been true in so many ways in your life. And I wanted to ask, if you can share for the listeners who may have not had the opportunity to hear you yet, what does that quote mean
to you?
I think it's really all about your get back up muscle. All of us at some point are going to fall and. You start to trust your ability to fly when you know that, Hey, if I fall, I can get back up. So that quote, it takes me back to some of my kind of darkest times. I am very open about back in high school.
I was suicidal, went to medical school and became one of those wounded healers who found a career that would help them to take care of themselves. And suffered a, another episode of major depression to the point that I had to take time off to for medical school, which was one of the most challenging decisions of my career.
And also. The absolute best decision that I ever made and came back out from that, even though everyone thought that no, I was done, I wasn't gonna be able to return. And not only did I return came and got all these awards at graduation. And then I started residency, which is actually where I did a grand rounds on depression and suicide amongst physicians.
Got a little bit mad that I didn't know that we were the professional with the highest suicide rate before I started. I thought that was something we should have maybe talked about, but it wasn't until later that I actually felt that I was drawn to actually share my story. When I became faculty at Florida state university college of medicine and they lost a medical student to suicide.
And I just recognize that my silence wasn't saving anybody. And I didn't want to become known as the depressed doctor while I was trying to make a name for myself and build my practice. But when that happened, I also lost one of my best friends to suicide. It really just made me. It was the time where my love became greater than my fear.
And I, even though I'm not the biggest extrovert kind of started getting out of my own way, started to do some talks, wrote the book and we'll get into how DPC is. None of that would have happened if I hadn't transitioned to DPC. So it's really all intertwined.
When you talk about how you were suicidal in high school, and then you add the expectations, the demands, the sleepless nights, the patriarchal society that we get in residency and medical school, what an environment to throw yourself into and to have surpassed that it's so great that you are here where you are today to be able to shine some light on mental health and the importance of mental health, especially for people who are going through that journey as well.
It's a calling. So it's definitely something I enjoy.
I remember the first step that we all went through. At least half of my class was on some kind of antidepressant because the stress of, if I don't pass the step, what's going to happen to me. Like I'm worthless.
Why did I make this whole journey to go to. Might not be able to pass it. It's just, one huge expectation that we have to hurdle as your quote says, and to, to support each other, as we're on this journey is so important. And so if you haven't had the chance to read Dr. book the Dawn, please go ahead and check out her blog accompanying her. Interview, so that you can read more about that journey that she is talking about now. And one of the things that you have created as a bracelet of empowerment, and can you tell us about what that bracelet.
Yeah. So the wristband is says, white coat say space on one side, white coat, brave space on the other, and then Yana, which stands for you are not alone. And I think so many times we as physicians, we don't know what to say when we see somebody else who's struggling. And so it came out of an idea of being able to just take this off, put it on someone's desk.
That's. A hard day with maybe a sticky note with your number on it. And just letting another doctor know that you care, that you're thinking about our medical student, it came out of the book, just really trying to find ways to make people like be visual supporters. Like I am a Stan, I am a white coat, safe space.
You can come and talk to me. And so we now it's the wristband and the lapel pin and there's shirts and things of that nature. And we do an amazing book sponsorship program. And that's one of my main goals is to make sure that every medical student understands their risk for depression before they enter the, before they enter.
And so the book is being given away at white coat ceremonies across the nation, and first with, at Florida state where I'm faculty and where unfortunately, that the young man who died by suicide was a second year student and his father wrote one of the forwards for them. And so it's been, it's just been a, a beautiful thing to really start people's medical career.
With an acknowledgement of the risk factors. And also most of the book is about what you can do to maintain and improve your own mental health and mental.
With you sharing about your journey, I want to touch on the fact that your dad was an Olympian. this recent Olympics, to be example of Simone Biles, it shows us that in everyday culture, talking about depression is not always something that is.
Welcomed. And so it's a good thing to think about as a DPC physician that you have the time. I'm sure now to talk to your patients over weeks and months and years, rather than the quick 15 minute visit that you might've had in fee for service. Oh,
absolutely. And I think. Both the time that you have for your patients, because nobody comes in or very few people will come in knowing that they're depressed.
They come in and they've got the fatigue and they're not sleeping and all those things. And if it's a seven minute appointment, which unfortunately is still like the national app, You just don't really get to dial in. What's really going on underneath that. And so the beauty of DPC is that you really get to have that relationship based medicine.
And I, when I'm with my patients the same way that I'll give them a blood glucose log or I'll give them a, something to check their blood pressure out, hand out at Beck's depression inventory. And I just keep saying, if you're not measuring it, you can't manage it. And we have time to measure it. And then on the physician side, because I became.
That's when I actually had time to write the book, the book, the knowledge was in for years, I had done the grand rounds and how many of us as physicians have done so many grand rounds. And we have so many passion projects that we just don't have time to even give life to. And when I transitioned to direct primary care, I love practicing medicine.
And the way that I actually went to medical school. But it also opened up that extra time to work with other physicians who wanted to do their own DPCs and then also really follow my passion about mental health, particularly amongst physicians and health professionals.
As you talk about this journey.
In DPC and how you've had time to do passion projects and spend time championing mental health for physicians and your community. I want to go back because before you even opened your DPC, you had your own fee for service clinic. So I want to ask when you graduated residency, what was going on in your mind and in your heart that led you to open a fee for service clinic on your own biases.
With the same passion that later led me to DPC. I didn't know about DPC in 2009. When I graduated from residency, I, all of my mentors were fee for service docs or they were employees. And so I, I started my own practice. I had a very strong passion for her ideal of how I wanted to practice medicine based off of some really negative experiences that I'd had as a patient.
And just really wanting to create. One to be the doctor that I wish I had, and then also create the environment that I would have liked to get curious. So, because of that, I knew I couldn't just go into someone's joined someone else and say, can we change everything? And I'm also a interior designer. So like, down to the paint on the walls, I had a vision.
So I, I didn't know what I was getting myself into. And by the time I figured it out, it was too late. But I'm really glad that I did. I know that the clinic I built from literally a standard floor did the entire build-out designed every wall designed. There are certain things I designed really well. And then there was other things like storage that I completely missed the boat on, but it's just really nice to be able to design it from what I hoped it would be.
And then as. Practice grew. And I realized that I started my own clinic so that I could practice medicine in line with my values, but because I was taking insurance more and more of the decisions that should have been between me, my patient had to go through the insurance company and I, my ability to negotiate, my ability to do a lot of things were really hindered.
The paperwork was ridiculous. And I had to hire more staff to do more of the paperwork side and the clinical. And I just
want to ask, because for people who, whether they're contemplating DPC or a fee for service practice, if they're thinking of jumping right out of residency financially, how did you handle that situation?
Yeah, absolutely. So I did urgent care and I wouldn't recommend, so what I did, I worked at my practice four days a week in urgent care, three days a week, which obviously doesn't last leave time for anything else, but I was coming right straight from residency.
So I was just glad that I got to sleep in my own bed every night. So my, my standards were pretty low as far as lifestyle back then. Not so much now, but I worked urgent care. I worked with hospice. Just different ways to bring in income until my practice was able to be self-sustaining. So definitely when I asked some of my friends who have started their own practice, they all had spouses who were contributing and I've totally, didn't bring that into the equation that was asking them.
And I was like, how did you pay your mortgage? And they're like, oh, that's, I didn't think about that. But it's doable. Whether you are in a relationship or you're doing it like myself doing it single, it's definitely doable. And if you know that it's what you're meant to do. It's really more just finding out how you can make it happen.
And definitely now I want to touch on this idea of martyrdom, because you've mentioned this in a previous interview. You talk about when your practice, when you're fee for service practice was self-sustaining that you didn't have time for vacation, that you didn't have time to take care of yourself. So I wanted to see if you can share with the listeners, what was that life like?
And what point did you reach where you were like, This is not a sustainable model
for me by day I was the doctor. And then by night I needed to be the business owner and make sure that all chasing claims and that sort of thing. I went through several different billing companies and billing individuals, and I knew it wasn't going to get better.
Like I got. With increasing my own efficiency and that sort of thing, but the environment wasn't getting better, what happened in 2014? So I went to the national rep for mercury summit in summer 2014. And you can never unlearn anything. So that was, I had no intention of transitions. I just knew I wanted to see some other options because I knew that what I was doing was not sustainable.
I didn't have any time for myself was definitely family. First was just the name of the clinic. It wasn't how I was actually living. And that fall of 2014, my biller was poached by the house. They were taking over a lot of clinics. That's happening all over the country. They were buying up clinics and they needed billers.
So they poached my biller. And the week before that, I got a envelope in the mail from the area's largest insurance company with a 40% cut to what the reimbursement rate was going to be. And it was really those two things happened. In a fairly short period of time. And I was sitting at my clinic, it was like 10 o'clock at night.
I was so hungry. All I had was ramen and I had not had ramen since like undergrad. And I was like, how am I back here? This is not what we did all this work for. And that's when I ended a time. I was, I was battling depression at the time too. But even through that, I knew that what I was doing, wasn't going to work.
And that's when I started my transition and
having been an entrepreneurial. Alrighty. And having, even though it was not sustainable for you having a sustainable practice financially, when you went to that conference and heard what you can't unhear and learn what you can't unlearn, what was that transition
like
to DPC?
And this is when I talk about this a lot, when I'm on this stage. That if you're suffering from depression, switching to DPC is. An antidote to that. Now, if it's burnout, where it's mostly work-related then obviously those switching, how you're working can really treat that.
I recommend that if you are battling depression, that you actually get that treated. That is not what I did. I transitioned, even though I was depressed and I felt like I had to because of just kind of income pressures and. So I didn't have the fervor that most DPC doctors have when they're super excited, they're ready to go.
I was still like beat down and it wasn't until I actually took the time to have my depression treated. I had to take, went to some retreats just to feel my own soul. And that was when things really started to turn around. And I was able to exude the enthusiasm that it was always there, but it was just clouded by the mental health issues that I was having.
It can be done even if you are like in the throws of depression, but I think that you always want to put yourself in the best position and then also be you're just a more magnetic person when you're excited about it. And I just, that's not the space that I was in, but I went ahead and jumped anyway
and having been through that transition.
And now it's 2021. Do you check in with yourself to make sure that you are emotionally and mentally where you want to be?
I do. I have. So I, I talked about the Beck depression inventory a lot because I take it every single Sunday.
It's literally available my come to Jesus moment just to see where I am and, and I have. A score at which like, okay, it's time to start meds, no shame. This is just what it is. So it's become, it's part of my lifestyle and in a big part of why I transitioned to direct primary care, because I knew what I needed to do to maintain my mental health, but I didn't have time to do it in my previous model.
And I think that I'm very grateful for, to find a DPC for so many reasons, both for myself, for my family and for my patients. And
when you talk about your family, I want to ask here after you had transitioned over to DPC, that was when your mom took ill with cancer. So can you share about when you talk about this time, that DPC allowed you, what was that journey like through your mom's illness and how did DPC enable you to be with her?
Yeah, and it actually, it happened even in 2017, I was in a car accident and had a traumatic brain injury. And interestingly, that was the first time that I was, that I spoke on the national DPC stage and I had a concussion. So when I came back, I was offered two weeks and in my fee for service, That would have been, there's no income that would have come in in my fee for service.
I didn't take vacations because we didn't get paid. And I knew how much I was losing every second that I was on vacation because the bills didn't stop. And the beauty of in 2017, when I had the car accident, is that nothing changed as far as the income of the. I had some of some residents and some friends who were able to cover the clinic for me so that I could recover.
I was still recovering when my mom was diagnosed. And one of my biggest regrets is that I didn't talk to her physician before he took her for surgery. He had said that, or she called me and told me that she had been diagnosed with uterine cancer and she was going for hysterectomy. And I assumed that it was locally.
And found out that it was not, they rather than doing a CT or doing any imaging, they took her first surgery and that's when they found out she was stage four. I flew up. That was really the day after her surgery, because I was, I had an event the day of her surgery and she had said, don't come then you can just come later.
And from that moment on, because I really didn't try. And she was at university Kentucky, which is where I went to school. And there's a lot of background there about people of color, not getting the best care. And it was painful for so many different reasons, but I flew up and met with her doctor and he wasn't a bad person.
He just, he looked at her and she looks so good. That he did it didn't cross his mind that it could, that it wasn't, that it was not localized. And by then it was too late. She hadn't eaten for seven days and then she needed to start chemo. And she had a lot of surgical complications that I knew that I could have prevented.
Had I realized that she hadn't, that they hadn't done any imaging. So from then on, I went into like mode of, I don't particularly. Trust the care that she is getting. If I'm not there, she was very humble. So she would never tell anyone that I was a doctor. And so I was flying up every week, every two weeks to go to doctor's visits to just, to, to, to be there running myself ragged because she is in Kentucky, I'm down here in Florida.
And so, although my personal life. Mess a complete mess. Emotionally I've was so riddled with guilt. I didn't sleep for two months, but when you're looking at, when you looked at my books, when you looked at a family first house in her books, you couldn't. That any of that was going on. I was there from the fall of 2017.
My mom died December 28th, 2018. And all along, I was at her hospital bed. I was taking care of patients still from the bedside and was really, I had sleepovers in the hospital and it was just, there was parts of it. That was really beautiful that I was, I put myself in a position where I could drop everything.
Fly up to Kentucky. I have a sleepover in the hospital, in the, at her hospital room so that I can advocate and that I could take her to the bathroom, change the sheets and do all the things that needed to be done and just really be fully present with her and literally walk her to, and so I will never, I'm just, I was so grateful for DPC because.
What it allowed me to be in terms of the daughter that I was able to be there in that time. I it's something I wouldn't have been able to do with the ease that I did it had. I still been in like the fee for service and when it comes down to it, I think that's what it's really all about. Like at the end of our, in end of the road, it's a relationships, it's the people that we love and just being able to show up and be there.
So to have created a business that allowed me to do that is completely priceless.
, it just makes you stop in your tracks. When you really think about what matters at the end of the day. So it's just wonderful that you were able to be with her.
I, it kills me because having had the experience of my dad before he passed, had atrocious medical care in the hospital. And when you, as a physician know, like you could do better. I would never do that if it were my patient type of thoughts that despite that at the end of the day, you were able to be with your mom when she passed
so I really, I want people to listen to those words, rewind, listen again, this is where, when people talk about, oh, I can't do DPC. Cause I won't make as much money. I got to keep doing. But why at the end of the day, are we going to work at all? Yeah, we got to put food on the table, but at the end of the day, do we have time to take care of ourselves so we can take care of others?
Do we have time to take care of ourselves so we can be with our families? So thank you for sharing. Oh,
no, absolutely. I literally crawled into bed with my mom on December 27th. Was had this thought that I needed to be there when she took her last breath, which she would've never wanted. And I have this, I just imagined that she was literally waiting for me to go to sleep.
And then when I woke up, she was gone. But just being able to do that, it was amazing. And also like again on the business side, which is always important, it's definitely not the number one thing I've made more than I've ever made as a DPC doctor than I ever did a fee for service. So I doubled the income than.
When I was super service now as a mature, direct primary care. So the while there's definitely a growth curve. And so you have to do some augmentation of income as that's happening. The income is also there as well. And
when you mentioned that your practice right now in 2021, what's your patient panel in what's your patient mix?
Yeah. So paying as agreed, which I always make a distinction between like total numbers of patients and who is paying as agreed. Cause there's the people who are supporting my practice. And then there are those others who I will at some point be acknowledging their decision to step away. So I want to say that right now we have, it's like just under 600 who are paying as agreed.
And then we have more that. In various states of either discharge or we're working with them, obviously with the pandemic, we're working with a lot of people who have lost income and that sort of thing. So we've got a lot of blurred on payment plans. And then in terms of insurance, the last time that we looked, it was 30% of our patients were uninsured.
When I first started that number was 40%. So that has, it's definitely more women. When I look at my individual mix, when I look at my, the businesses that I take care of, it's mostly men, but it's an interesting kind of trust, transition there. And most of my patients are in their fifties, sixties, and we've got a lot of year.
I don't have as many kids for the smattering of kids and families. So it's a very, and then from a diversity standpoint, Minorities. I speak Spanglish. My patients think that I'm fluent. I don't claim to be, but so I have a lot of Spanish speaking patients. My ma is Mexican American, so she's better than me, but so we have a lot of a great mix in terms of like diversity.
And in terms of the staff at your clinic, if you, your ma, and can you share who else is
at your clinic? So currently I have a full-time receptionist, a part-time Ima, and like a VA, a virtual inmate who used to be an inmate here and moved to Texas. And I was smart enough to keep her because she's amazing.
And we just had, we literally just had some staffing changes where I released someone to the workforce, but yeah.
Current group and the woman who you had made a coat, a white coat with all of the colored hand prints on it.
That actually is Dr. Alexa Avellino at the time. She was my receptionist. When I was transitioning to direct primary care, she was going to medical school. I had her do all these projects, totally revamped her resume.
She got into medical school. She is now a second year, ER, doctor down in Miami, but we did her first white coat and we had patients and her family put their hands in paint. And then we wrote messages on them. And then I presented, I put it on her own tests, our first white coat. And it was really tough.
That's amazing. That's
amazing. And I love to hear that the update as to where she is in her ER career. That's wonderful.
Earlier this year, Dr. Kristen Kim was part of your practice and she has since moved on. So I want to ask for those people who are considering partnering with a physician, employing a physician or going through a transition with. A physician is leaving the practice.
Can you share about your experience with Dr. Kim? Yeah,
and I think it's really good to have talks in the beginning of what it looks like if toward the end and to that. So when Dr. Kim joined the practice, my mom was still alive, but was in the final stages. So I knew that I needed someone. Because I didn't know what that grief situation was going to be like, but I knew that I needed someone I'm so grateful that my path, Dr.
Kim's path crossed, she actually had lost her daughter a few. And in 2017, actually it was right after my car accident because I remember meeting her with two twins on either hip and a three-year-old by her side. And I shortly thereafter, her three-year-old passed away. So she wasn't practicing medicine for awhile.
And. At the time that I was thinking, I need to bring someone on, she was talking to her husband saying, I think I'm ready to go back, but I don't want to go back to what I had done before. And some people connected to us and we met for coffee and she was very upfront about her desire to really just get back into clinical working.
Part-time. And that she really didn't see yourself staying for more than two years. So I think that in the beginning, having those conversations about what is your, what's your goal? The fast-forward so that, so she was with me from, okay. She couldn't start in 2018 because she had a non-compete that we didn't know about, where she knew about, she didn't realize they going to enforce it.
So then I had to change her start date to 2019 so that she wouldn't get in trouble with her non. And she was with us until may of 2021. And she had always wanted to do a practice, a doing group visits. She's a very holistic integrative style of medicine, which she was doing here, but like me, just having a really strong vision for how you wanted to practice medicine and knowing that you need to do it elsewhere.
And she, and she said, she was like, it's hard to leave a place that you're so happy. But there's a party that knows you that you're supposed to be doing something different. So I really honor that as far as how we transitioned her, we let the patients know months in advance, like when she was going to be leaving, we had third parties.
All sorts of reasons. So we had a going away party for her. She owns a farm and add these random chickens that started laying eggs in my yard. And so I incubated them and gave her like, literally put chickens. Cause that's where I live as her going away gifts. And then her kid got Campylobacter. I know, but it was just really a beautiful, I think, crossing of paths.
Every relationship has a season, but you're going to have different staff that come and go and being really upfront about what people are looking for and just honoring who they are and who you are, and that they're near your season might be short or long. And so she is going to be starting her practice probably in a few weeks.
She had some delays with construction and whatnot, and we're still very close and it's, I think I have a tendency to empower people. So I have a lot of people who. Come and worked with me or been around me. Who've just gone on, not that I'm the secret sauce, but Navy that have gone on to do like these amazing things.
And I actually take a lot of pride in that, whether it's me consulting with a physician and simply by her being here in my practice, even though she didn't formally go through any of my coaching programs, we naturally were having conversations or she was overhearing conversations that I was having. And being able to be around my staff, I think just recognize mates, be very upfront and be very clear about what you're looking for.
And, and then touching base along the way of how things stand, what things are looking like. It was really hard for her when she told me that she knew that she needed to, to transition that she gave me a year notice though. And so I think that says a lot about her and about our relationship. And I think that it's really possible to have that.
Really fairly seamless of a transition. And most of her patients have been absorbed into the practice and they're coming to see me now. Some of them will go and see her when she opened. It's really just a beautiful.
Awesome. And when you talk about empowerment and the seasons, I want to ask two big questions, one about coaching and what got you into coaching, but also about how you think about the seasons.
Uh, DPC physician in particular, as they're transitioning from the early days, two to three years out to somebody like yourself, where you're definitely seasoned years beyond that. I know I'm totally stacking questions there. So let's start with What led you to even delve into coaching and develop the coaching strategies that you have today? So people
kept asking me is the short answer. I hired my first coach in 2012 and have had a coach of some sort since then. Now I was a division one athlete back in the day.
So like, Always had a coach who was somebody who could watch my form, look at my blind spots. And so I always knew the value of mentorship and coaching and consulting, but it wasn't until 2012 that I actually, you know, in starting investing in it. And. So I have numerous kind of coaching certifications that I got because I was going through it anyway.
And it might as well just take the test and have the certificate, even though I think we, as doctors are addicted to certificates and papers and things of that nature. And then as my practice grew, one of my coaches, actually someone else he was coaching with, let them know that. I was giving all this amazing advice.
And he was saying like, oh, you should develop a coaching program. I had already developed it. I already developed what I wish I'd had. I just never had actually marketed it or put anything out. And so he already had a few people who were interested in being in that kind of inaugural 2000, 19 summer, 2019 class.
And it started off as a six week course. And then it became nine weeks because. Toward the end. It was like, what was missing? What else would you like to know? And it's really nice to be able to just step-by-step walk people through that process that you mentioned this to the seasons. And so the course of drug coming with your prescription for success.
And it's really that first part is start with, why are you doing this? What do you want? Not what do you want your life to look like? Not just your direct primary care and then everything else has a reverse engineering process. So that you don't do what I did with my initial practice and my fee for service practice, which I built a practice that was great for my patients and terrible for me.
And I built this prison going back to the whole martyrdom thing. And we're so good at that. And especially in family medicine and primary care, we obviously did interdis because we wanted the highest paying specialty. We do have a tendency toward the martyrdom, so it's really important to help people.
And especially when I'm talking to people about their pricing is okay, so. Do you want to take a vacation? Cause we need to add, we need to add that in there. Are you living where you want to live or where is your settling to live? Because we need to add that in there. One of my, the courses that I'm teaching now, which is direct primary care prescription optimization, which is for established DPC docs.
A lot of that everybody's getting their pricing change or wrecking recommendations because we're just usually, we're like, oh, I can get by with this. And it's like, okay, you're going to work hard regardless. So let's not just get by. And then in particular for, am I, my physicians, who are, they have spouses, they're like, okay, our total household income is X.
And so I just need to contribute why. And I think because I come from this, obviously not having. Extra income. And my belief system is your practice should be able to support everything. When we're talking about pricing, when we're talking about packaging, there's ways that you can still take care of the people that you want to take care of and still make the profit that you desire to make.
So making those. So there's a lot of, a lot of different seasons in DPC, and I've been through a lot of them and seen a lot of them. And so that. It's nice to be able to talk to people about and talk to them about it as their situation. Not just this random, you don't know anything about somebody and you're giving them random advice, but really okay.
The specific to your desire, your health, your household, your goals, these are things that you may want to consider. So it's, I've always been a mentor. I've always had a mentor. I was a consultant before I ever went into medicine. And so it's so many things you end up bringing pieces of what you did before into what you're currently.
You had mentioned investment in your future investment, in your dreams and your goals. What do you say when people are asking, what does investment mean? I would love to hear from a coach, from a physician, from a seasoned doctor.
What does that mean when you had approached investment in yourself, an investment in your first official coach in 2012 in entrepreneurial physician space? Some
people will know. Get that and that's okay. So I don't pretend whether it's a patient or client. I'm not for everybody. And I think it's important for all of us to recognize that. I think it's great to take advantage of all of the, the information that's out there, but just recognize and recognize the source.
One of my frustrations, when I started coaching, I waited until I had a very profitable. I didn't have to, but it was important to me to help someone get to where they would actually want to get to. And when I was talking to other doctors and there's, and there's no kind of shade about doctors who are not profitable and they can obviously give a lot of great advice as well, but I think that needs to be divulged.
And I think that people just need to be like really transparent about that when you're talking to somebody else and they're making. Career decisions, family decisions off of your advice. So I take that very strongly. It's when I look at investment, I'm looking at shortening my learning curve. So, you know, okay.
I want to do it sooner, quicker, faster. I want to learn from your mistakes. I don't want to repeat them. I don't have time for that. Just I want to hit the ground running and I want to build something that I actually want, but that's, that's where if that matters to you, then that's when investment. It really makes sense.
Awesome.
And so for those interested in learning even more about Dr. Haynes's DPC prescriptions from success, please check out
DPC success.com backslash schedule. And that's my scheduling page. We just have a conversation to see if this is even a
now I want to talk about your community and the fact that you're up to 600 patients and, and I know you clarify who's the, who are the paying members and who are not. But one of the things that I loved is you had shared a story about. Going around to the local barbershops and teaching about hypertension and how to screen for hypertension.
And I just loved that. That was that you found a niche way of really communicating with your community and really helping them. I see that you are a physician who really truly cares about preventative health and longevity of a person's life. So can you talk about how that all happened and how you've continued to be a part of your community by throwing things like parties and whatnot?
Absolutely. And granted that was pre pandemic things that some of my community service had to change. We've done a, a school or a sports physical event every year. And during the pandemic, we just couldn't make that happen. The way that we tap into the. With that particular event, the cutting high blood pressure was the name of the project.
I had heard about it from another physician who I think they did a Ted talk and. I could totally do that. And one of my sorority sisters was like, have you seen this? And I was like, I could do that. And I went and bought a bunch of blood pressure cuffs and some rack cards that had what normal values were on one side.
And then it had some information about our practice on the other side, and just went around to some of the barbershops and. Just said, Hey, you know why people are waiting to get their haircut. They could be checking their blood pressure. Are you okay with me showing you how it works so that you feel more empowered to show them?
And it was some barbershops that collected dust. I won't say it was like a slam dunk everywhere. And then there were others. It really depended on the barber or the stylist. So there were people who had their own health challenges. One lady who had a stroke before. People literally will come there just to do that, not even to get their hair done.
And so that, that really took off. And after we had the established, one of the larger hospital systems wanted to support it and they were able to buy some more cuffs. Now they got risked customs to arm cusp. We won't go there. But so it was just nice. That was something that I started and developed some wings that was right before my car accident.
And so when my car accident happened, a lot of. Community service that required me to leave. I had to back away from some, but it is still ongoing at a few of those sites. And then since the pandemic I've been doing a lot more mental health, unfortunately we had two of my patients who passed away from suicide and in the direct primary care practice, because the relationships are so much tighter.
Like it, it hits really hard. And just wanting to make sure that I was doing more as far as just people knowing signs and symptoms, people know how to get help. And luckily that's something that I can do virtually. So I've been doing a lot more kind of virtual community talks and introducing people to things like the Beck depression inventory, just so that you have to ask yourself those questions that you don't sit down and ask yourself every day.
And that's been really good.
And when you talk about community talks, do you have patients who are like, Hey, my community is really asking about XYZ topic, and then that's how you find out what your community needs are. How do you craft your talks and how do you target, who attends them? It's multiple
ways.
And once you start doing speaking engagements, destinies, you just keep finding them. With patients when I'm in their social history section, where we're going in, cause it's direct primary care. So we get to know all of the, what are your hobbies, but are you involved in, and that's when you really find out people's involvement in the community, what their interests are, what their passions are.
And so there've been a couple of people that just by way of that, I've been able to say, oh, Like a straight talk that I give that's amazing and would love to come and do that for you guys. And I've done that top for several businesses, and that was my entry into working with that business. That's one way.
And then I've also. You know, gone out to introduce myself to people that I would like to work with 1 million cups. I love, I used to go every single Wednesday and it was great to be around other entrepreneurs, especially like early stage entrepreneurs when I was in that stage as well. And we all were like marketing for each other.
And I just love that kind of that ecosystem. It's it really goes to when you can clearly identify who you really like to serve, it becomes a lot easier to find out, like where do they hang out? What organizations are they a part of and then what do they need? What keeps them up at night? And what do I do that can.
To, you know, solve or I can connect them with, cause I'm not always the answer, but I can usually connect them with somebody in my network who is, and that's really helped me gain a lot of, and from the in terms of business patients is that I connect to somebody with someone and they remembered that. And anytime you do something for someone else, usually if they're a good person, they want to find a way to repay you and that good stuff comes back.
Awesome. Now, recently you had posted about that. Got. Um, sculpt in your clinic. And so I wanted to ask about what are the fancy pieces of tech or things that you love about your clinic that helps you run on an everyday basis and allows you to practice the way you wanna practice.
Yeah, introduce the aesthetics into my practice.
Back when I was fee for service, then I was doing more things like Botox, Juvederm. Again, I was Santera designer. I care about how things look and symmetry and all of that. So I wouldn't say don't add it if it's not an interest of yours, but it was really in line with what I like that health from inside out approach and beauty from the inside out.
And then. When it comes to am also board certified in obesity medicine and was always paying a lot of attention to people's body composition and making sure that we were finding ways to actually reduce fat and improve muscle. And currently am slopes the only device that does both simultaneously. So when I, when I thought I really wanted it for myself, but he has to be careful of that.
Because sometimes those are not great investments. And I definitely wouldn't recommend early stage DPC going out and getting these devices that are really expensive. Not when I did it. It's because I had runway to where I could handle that. So it was something that I'm excited to do. It fits really nice with my practice and my.
Health philosophy to be able to help people increase their muscle tone, decrease their fat, increase their core strength. A lot of these, especially my seniors reducing their risk for falls because they're stronger and lengthening the amount of time that they are able to practice the activities that they really enjoy doing.
So it just really was in line with, you know, all of that. Plus I wanted it myself.
There's nothing wrong with that though. But when I hear you if you're just figuring out the finances. I, that totally makes sense. Now, what about on an everyday basis, your EMR, that your software, what do you use that allows you to practice the way you want?
Yeah.
So I partnered with hint early on. So I have been with them since 2015, and it's just nice because it allows that part to be a little bit more background and until somebody changes their credit card and then we get that notification and okay, let me let's reach out and make sure that we update that.
So it made running the practice so much easier compared to our fee for service. Like it's so. And so that's in the background. As far as EMR. I didn't change my EMR. I had purchased an EMR. Way back when I first started in fee for service, it's a little bit clunky for DPC, but because I purchased it so long ago, it's a lot less expensive than what's currently out there.
And it still has a lot of bells and whistles. I always pay attention to the tech for DPC, because I may want to switch it someday. It might make sense. So it is an area that I'm always paying attention to. And like in the course, we go through all that. But for me personally, I have not changed my EMR just from a financial standpoint.
It didn't make sense to.
With you having spoken about empowerment and with you being the featured speaker at this upcoming summit, that's going to happen at the end of this week. I want to ask about. Empowering physicians, especially who are black and brown, because physicians who are black and brown are definitely a minority when it comes to physicians.
So when you speak with someone who has come from a family that is black and brown, how do you speak to them
there are just certain universal in experiences that you've had because of the skin that you're in or because of how you walk around in society. And so when it comes to patients or for like other physicians, but really for both, there have been experiences of me walking into take care of.
And there are some people there who didn't want me to be their doctor. And there's, there are certain things that you. Can't change, nor would you want to change. And I really just get to that point that I don't have anything to print. So I don't have anything to prove high protect and being able to very quickly, if you're really sensing that, you're just getting that just to, just to shift and keep it moving, because there are so many people who are waiting for you.
So don't get hung up on the people who are disrespectful or dismissive or any of those things. And then when they do come to you later, you can just say, But,
yeah. Yeah. And especially in the DPC space, because this idea of opening your own practice and you did even before with DBC, but the idea of valuing yourself, you're talking about the time to do things. One of the things we have time to do is really reflect on our own value and going back to why we're doing this and this idea that if you are having those thoughts at all of trying to justify like what you're doing and whatnot, it's this is if you open a DPC, that is your DPC and you get to call this.
And recognizing that really like you are not for everybody. And in the beginning, I have this idea of, if you have. Pulse and a pocket book, you are my person.
And very quickly realized like, no, you're really not. And so the clearer you are on the people that you are really uniquely qualified to serve, then I think the happier experience in DPC is because you become really more magnetic to taking care of the people that like they've been looking for you and, and you enjoy taking care of them versus building your practice with a bunch of people who.
Really don't particularly, you know, wanting to take care of or don't value what you're doing
In terms of other resources that you found incredibly helpful along your journey,
what are some that you've found in valuable ? Really,
as hanging out with other businesses, most doctors are not great business owners. And so it's, I'm in this CEO exchange and talent. Basically, it's a group of CEOs that get together. And I am definitely the smallest in terms of the company.
I came in as a speaker. And so this is two that I came in, I gave my stress talk and someone who was there was like, we don't know if you qualify, but if you do, would you be interested in joining us? And I was thinking myself, I had, no, I don't qualify, but yes. And then one by one, I started just serving companies around that table.
So. Just networking with other entrepreneurs, not coming. I didn't come from an entrepreneurial family. So there were conversations that just weren't being had at my dinner table. And so to be around people who have built businesses, especially those. Created by businesses that have been like, generational has been just amazing.
And so they're doing things that, you know, aren't medical, but that can very easily apply or at least make you question why you're doing what you're doing, or can you streamline anything? One of the CEOs in my group is Chick-fil-A franchisee and she filets just like. Out the wazoo. I just, I learned so much by just being in the room.
So anytime you have a chance to like, be in the room, ask question, or just ask questions or just listen, that's really helpful. And then, so it really a mentorship, I think from a lot of different angles is important. Both in the personal realm. I do. I invest heavily in personal development because. My business will never go any further than my own personal development in my own business.
So needing to wanting to expand that and needing to expand that really just looking for ways that you can improve all the different aspects of your life. And, you know, if you find somebody who is doing things that you want to do, or they have things that you want to have, they've got the relationships that you want to have sit down and have coffee with them.
And people love. Going for coffee and being interviewed. And that's usually how I ended up working with most of the businesses that I have worked with is I'm inquisitive about. Their startup story and, and it just goes from there and it doesn't always, but it's always an interesting story. And there's, I would think about, is there a way that I can support them and I can help them, or can I connect them with something that they can, if the answer is not me.
If someone is interested in reaching out after this podcast what's the best way to contact so
they can email me as Dr. dalysia@dpcsuccess.com. That's D R D E L I C I a@dpcsuccess.com.
That's a really easy way to get in contact with me and whether it's direct primary care or the mental health piece, I speak at medical schools and. Such a passion of mine, you can reach out there or across social media at Dr. Delisa MD. Awesome. And
for those who are holdouts, and they're just on the fence about attending this year's hint summit, why should they attend hint summit this year?
That the hint summit always brings a lot of things in terms of technology. In addition to the, kind of the stories. So you're going to get a lot of information about both. And I think there've been so many advances in technology, especially with the pandemic. We are actually like fee for service.
Doctors are doing telemedicine now, which wasn't the case back when I started my ITP. So just really staying abreast of. From a technology standpoint and just from what's out there and what people are doing standpoint, it's great. It's great networking because you get to meet with other physicians from all over the country who are in this model and you're able to ask them questions and you just can pick their brains.
And then I'm excited to be talking as well, and we'll be really helping doctors craft their personal story. So I'm not sure if it's facility. Which is so important in terms of developing a practice that is truly purpose-driven. So I think all of those reasons and more are things to come to the summit for.
Wonderful.
And if you haven't registered yet summit.hint.com is where to find registration. So thank you so much, Dr. Haynes for joining us today, we look forward to seeing you at tent summit.
Thank you.
*Transcript generated by AI so please forgive errors.