Concierge medicine in Charlotte, with one physician and no waiting room.

Concierge medicine is a membership model where you pay your physician an annual fee directly, in exchange for a much smaller number of patients and direct access. The physician takes a fraction of the usual number of patients, which is what buys the longer visits, the unhurried scheduling, and the direct line. Most concierge practices still bill your insurance for visits on top of the membership fee. Mine does not: this is cash-pay direct care.

Two numbers, always itemized and never blended: my fee, and your testing billed by the laboratory at its own price, with no markup from me. Nothing is charged to apply. Accepted patients begin with the Precision Health Assessment, $500 one time. It stands on its own, and ongoing care is decided separately afterward. Ongoing care is one relationship, the Precision Partnership: from $3,000 per year, or $275 a month. Concierge programs in the Charlotte market vary widely, and most quote an annual fee while still requiring you to carry and use insurance for the visits themselves.

It is worth it when access and time are the thing you are actually missing. If you are healthy, rarely need care, and are satisfied with a fifteen-minute visit twice a year, a membership will not pay for itself. If you have been told your labs are normal while you feel anything but, if you are managing something that needs more than a fifteen-minute slot, or if you want a physician who answers his own phone, this is what you are buying.

No. The practice is cash-pay direct care. Not running insurance is what lets me spend the time real synthesis requires, and it is why labs are billed by the laboratory at its own price instead of marked up through a billing department.

Yes, and most patients do. I coordinate with your cardiologist, your OB, your endocrinologist, and I write the Plan in a form you can hand to any of them. I do not replace hospital care, and you keep your insurance for hospitals and specialists.

The line is blurry and the terms get used interchangeably. Direct primary care usually means a lower fee, no insurance billing at all, and a focus on the bread and butter of primary care. Those practices are good at what they do. Concierge usually means a higher fee, fewer patients per physician, and in most programs insurance still gets billed for the visits. My practice takes the direct primary care billing model, no insurance, no markup on anything I order, and the small practice and access of concierge medicine, then builds it around longevity medicine rather than conventional primary care.

Three things. National concierge networks and hospital-system concierge programs are built around a physician who still carries several hundred patients and still bills your insurance for visits. Mine takes a handful of households at a time and bills no insurance at all. Second, this is physician-only. You work with me directly, not a coach or a nurse practitioner running a protocol. Third, the money model: the fee to begin and the from-price for each form of care are published, and your testing is billed by the laboratory at its own price with no markup from me, rather than arriving as a five-figure scan add-on.

Yes. Across the Charlotte metro, the substantive reviews that set the rhythm of care happen at your kitchen table or on video, quarterly as the default, with additional follow-up whenever your care needs it and direct access in between. There is no waiting room, and that is the point. I don't have a waiting room. I have your address.

Yes, a handful of households at a time. This is a high-touch practice and I keep it deliberately small, because the access I am describing is only real at that scale. You start by applying, and I read every application myself; if we are a good fit, we begin with the Precision Health Assessment, and whether we go further together is decided after it, by both of us. If you have questions first, ask me.

Home visits and the in-home Precision Health Assessment are a signature of the Charlotte metro. Outside the metro, the rest of the practice runs fully virtually across North Carolina, with testing collected at home and blood drawn locally. Either way, you work directly with me.