ZDoggMD Built a Direct Primary Care Practice. Here's What He Found.

ZDoggMD — Dr. Zubin Damania — didn't just diagnose what's wrong with medicine. He tried to build the alternative. Turntable Health, his direct primary care practice in Las Vegas, was one of the most serious attempts to prove that Health 3.0 wasn't just theory.

What ZDoggMD Built

Turntable Health opened in downtown Las Vegas as a direct primary care model — meaning patients paid a monthly membership fee directly to the practice rather than going through insurance for primary care. The model was designed around ZDoggMD's Health 3.0 framework : small patient panels, longer appointments, same-day access, genuine physician-patient relationships, and technology used to support care rather than document it for billing purposes.

The physicians at Turntable Health saw fewer patients per day than in traditional primary care. They spent more time with each one. They knew their patients. They had the bandwidth to practice medicine the way they trained to — not the way the reimbursement system required.

ZDoggMD documented the experiment in a documentary , which is worth watching for any physician considering the DPC model. The insights are honest, including about what didn't work.

Why Direct Primary Care Works for Physicians

The DPC model eliminates the primary driver of administrative burden in primary care: insurance. When a patient pays a monthly membership directly to the practice, the physician doesn't need to document for billing codes. The note serves the clinical purpose it was always supposed to serve — communication and continuity — not compliance.

Physicians in DPC consistently report higher job satisfaction, better patient relationships, and significantly reduced administrative burden compared to insurance-based practice. The AMA's research on physician burnout consistently shows that administrative burden is the #1 driver — and DPC removes the largest category of it entirely.

ZDoggMD's view: DPC isn't the complete solution to what's wrong with American healthcare. But it is a viable model for primary care physicians who want to practice medicine instead of billing medicine, and it demonstrates that the physician-patient relationship can be preserved and even deepened when the administrative machinery around it is reduced.

DPC + AI Documentation: The Combination That Changes Everything

Even in DPC, documentation takes time. Fewer patients doesn't mean no notes — it means better notes, with more clinical substance, reflecting the longer and more complex conversations that happen when physicians have real time with patients.

Ambient AI documentation paired with the DPC model is particularly powerful: you've already eliminated insurance-driven administrative work, and now you're also eliminating after-hours documentation time. The result is a physician who actually practices medicine during working hours and goes home afterward. Which is, as ZDoggMD would say, what Health 3.0 is supposed to look like.

ZDoggMD on Direct Primary Care and Turntable Health:

Works in DPC. Works in Any Practice.

NoPajamaTime eliminates after-hours charting whether you're in DPC, private practice, or a health system. Notes done during the encounter.