Responses from 766 clinicians, described as MD, DO, PA, or NP; practice managers; and practice owners indicate that 26 percent are in practices described as private (concierge medicine membership), compared with 74 percent who indicate they are in conventional fee-for-service practices. The study compares responses between groups.

Asked their primary motivations for adding or converting to a direct primary care or other membership model for payment rather than a conventional fee-for-service practice model, 66 percent of physicians say they want to spend more time with patients — the top response. Second and third choices are improving work-life balance (41 percent) and separating from the insurance payer system (40 percent).

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With 75 percent of respondent physicians in conventional fee-for-service practices indicating they spend 30 minutes or less with each patient, and nearly 60 percent reporting a patient panel of over 1,000, it's telling that nearly all physicians employing concierge medicine membership or direct primary care payment models instead have a patient panel of less than 1,000, with 79 percent spending an average of 30 to 60 minutes or more on each patient visit.

Conventional fee-for-service physicians indicate that they also work, on average, about six hours more per week than concierge medicine or direct-pay physicians, as well as spending nearly 12 hours on administrative work. Providers in concierge medicine practices, on the other hand, spend 10 hours on administrative tasks.

Among respondents using some variation of a concierge medicine membership model, 65 percent say membership cost is under $2,000 per year.

While 32 percent of respondents have less than 25 percent of their patients in membership, close to the same number of respondents (30 percent) have all their patients in membership; the rest fall somewhere between the two.

In addition, 57 percent participate in Medicare, 54 percent participate in health plans in network, and 58 percent are out-of-network with health plans. While that indicates flexibility among practices, it doesn't hold all the answers.

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Thirty-five percent of conventional practices report their biggest challenge is remaining financially viable, and 38 percent of direct primary care private practices say that recruiting new patients is their single biggest problem.