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MJ Mollie James On The Doctor's Lounge

“One of the misconceptions I think doctors make is that I want to help people so I need to keep my prices low. I think that's one of the biggest fallacies out there, because if you want to help people you need to price appropriately so you are in a position of financial strength, then you can offer charitable care. I couldn't help anybody when I was bankrupt.”

The Doctor's Lounge · October 2026

“One of the misconceptions I think doctors make is that I want to help people so I need to keep my prices low. I think that's one of the biggest fallacies out there, because if you want to help people you need to price appropriately so you are in a position of financial strength, then you can offer charitable care. I couldn't help anybody when I was bankrupt.” — Mollie James, The Doctor's Lounge

Mollie James, a doctor who left hospital employment to run her own cash-pay practice, is talking about how independent doctors should position themselves in the market. She goes on to say she thinks direct primary care is generally underpriced.

The Doctor's Lounge · 2026-10-11 Listen to the episode → More from Mollie James →

Transcript

The Doctor's Lounge Around 34:33 into the episode
Mollie James

You have to deliver customer service and you have to deliver results. So if what you're doing it doesn't work, you lose your patience.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

Mollie James

So we get feedback. So we're talking to these patients frequently to know what's working and what's not and if it's not working we can pivot faster and get them to results faster. So I think that's one thing that people don't realize when you're in that setting you set it up you know you you pick where you want to be in the market. Do you want to be a free clinic? Do you want to serve impoverished people? Do you want to be at the top tier where you're serving ultra wealthy people that there's different levels of service to each part of that different pros and cons. You have to pick where you want to be and one of the misconceptions I think doctors make is that I want to help people so I need to keep my prices low. I think that's one of the biggest fallacies out there because if you want to help people you need a price appropriately so you are in a position of financial strength, then you can offer charitable care. I couldn't help anybody when I was bankrupt. So this is one of my calls to our DPC colleagues I love the DPC model. I think the pricing is not quite accurate and I don't think it withstands the test of time. I wish we could have a…

Anthony DiGiorgio

That really is a the perfect example anyway. Go please continue.

Mollie James

Yeah so doc, um people like you not only do I want you to go independent, I think we have an obligation to go independent because once you're owned by a hospital he who controls the purse strings controls everything. So when they're controlling the flow of money to you it doesn't matter. You have…

Anthony DiGiorgio

Yeah I I had a Twitter post a few months ago about you know one of my mentors, my former chairman and he was of the era where there were multiple hospitals and he would you know cater to his patients and take them to the hospitals that gave him the most support and he was really able to build a…

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

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