We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kyle Hampton. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kyle below.

Kyle, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about how you went about setting up your own practice and if you have any advice for professionals who might be considering starting their own?

Starting your own medical practice can be a daunting decision, let alone a huge task. From actually wanting to branch out on your own to the planning stages, licensing, finding office space, etc., it can all be a very overwhelming project to undertake.

I was working at a very busy Federally Qualified Health Clinic at the time and completely overworked and burnt out. I was seeing anywhere from 25 to 40 patients a day and did not feel like I was managing any of them well. Basically with that many patients, it’s impossible to spend more than 5-10 minutes with any of them. It was just simply not enough time to be an effective primary care physician. I knew there had to be a better way to practice medicine.

So after a long time of talking things over with my wife, also a primary care doctor, we decided that I had to leave my well-paying employed position. I had to go out and practice medicine the way I had always wanted to and knew that I could. To spend time with patients, and really have the opportunity to get to the root of their health concerns and issues.

Over the course of about a year, together we slowly built everything we needed to start this new adventure. From picking a business name and creating a website to finding an office space to convert to a clinic and start taking on new patient members.

Probably the hardest challenge was starting from complete ground zero with no patients and opening up shop for business. There were lots of days that I would go from business to business and talk about what we did or would spend more time trying to just spread the word about our form of primary care than actually seeing patients. But it soon started to build up and we had a steady stream of new members joining and then telling more people about how direct primary care was different. After about a year of really working to grow the practice, we had a steady monthly growth rate and we were meeting our membership goals. Everything was going great.

And then Covid-19 fell right in our laps. After just one year of being open we had to basically stop seeing patients in person due to the restrictions that were placed upon us from the lockdown. We essentially went to zero new growth and it really looked like Covid just might be the end of our self-employed medical clinic venture. It was hard to know what to do. How to continue growing in this new reality that was healthcare during a pandemic. But I soon transitioned to telemedicine and began taking on new patients that had nowhere else to turn to. That actually became a new growth stream for the clinic and we served a real need in the community for fast availability and convenient care through telemedicine visits. We were able to actually take a very difficult situation and use it to our advantage while providing a needed service.

So, now here we are 5 years into this venture and doing great.  We just opened our second location and have brought on a pediatrician and another doctor doing aesthetic medicine.  We have created a primary care culture that is more beneficial and convenient for patients and provides a better work-life balance for our physicians and staff. 

For any young doctor or resident who may be considering starting their own clinic or practice, I would advise to just be flexible and be able to find that niche that they can fit into and grow. Be ready for change and be able to pivot to something new when it arises. One of the best things about our clinic at Arktos Direct Care is that we are not stuck in any single system. We can provide new services and treatments as our patients need them or as the community needs them. That has really helped maintain our constant growth in the Direct Primary Care field.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am a physician who is board-certified in both family medicine and osteopathic manipulation. I co-founded Arktos Direct Care with my wife and fellow physician, Dr. Aida Yavari.

Arktos Direct Care is a membership based direct primary care clinic. We specialize and focus on the highest quality personalized care you can get. We provide our services through a membership based model and are not contracted with any insurance companies. That allows us to treat our patients in the best way possible without the constraints set forth by middlemen insurance companies. All the while making costs known up front and never surprising our patient with high cost bills or unexpected co-pays or visit fees.

I also am trained in regenerative medicine treatments and in conjunction with my osteopathic manipulation I am able to address and treat many structural, musculoskeletal problems through a non-surgical, minimally invasive approach.

Our clinics also offer cutting edge aesthetic medicine treatments that are focused on regenerative aesthetic techniques and treatments. Dr. Yavari and Dr. Weiner provide some of the highest quality aesthetic care you can find on the Front Range. They both focus on providing the most natural appearing treatments to provide traceless results for our clients.

We have also added a direct care pediatrician to help round out an all encompassing approach to personalized family medical care. We can truly provide the most comprehensive care for all ages.

I am most proud that we are able to offer our patients and members a robust, high-quality level of care that is personalized to their needs and respectful of their time all while feeling like we are all one big family. We really do care for our patients and are there for them whenever they need us and we work with them on their journey to better health.

We have a motto that we have always stuck to that really defines our brand of care….
Your Doctor, On Your Time, Every Time.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

At our small business all of our employees are like family. We have a common goal of taking care of our patients the best way that each of us can. Each and every member of our team has skills and attributes that they do better than anyone else.

We encourage them to use those skills as best they can and have pride in what they do. That allows them to feel a sense of ownership over that part of our practice. If they want to branch out into something new that can help us grow and provide better, more well-rounded care, we allow that. We let their growth become our successes.

When our staff do well, we do well. And we make sure they know that and are compensated for that. We have set up a system that allows our staff to benefit as we grow. The better we are doing the better they get paid and the more rewarding their job feels to them. It helps our staff feel more connected to their job and have pride in what they do.

That definitely transcends to how our patients feel as we are oftentimes being told just how good our staff have treated them or how happy they seem.

If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?

This is always a tough question to ponder. Are there times I second-guess my career choices? Even my choice to go into medicine? Sure, of course.

Was family medicine the right choice? Could I have been more fulfilled doing something else? These questions invariably come up over a career in medicine.

There were times in training when I really thought I would go into cardiology or emergency medicine or even when I was told by my attendings that I should become an intensive care doctor. And, while all of those are rewarding specialties, I always wanted the detective side of medicine. The side of medicine that was built around long-term relationships with patients really trying to figure out how to create better health and solving new problems. I could never really say I thought I would like another specialty more than I would primary care.

I still feel that way. There is something deeply rewarding to be able to spend time building lasting relationships with my patients and to be able to handle just about any problem or health issue that .is brought up. There is also the overlying advocacy for our patients that comes with primary care that you cannot find with most other specialties. I am truly my patients’ primary physician. It all rolls downhill to me. I get to be the one who takes care of them for the longest and has the most impact on their lives. You cannot get that in any other specialty or maybe even any other profession.

That type of feeling is something that will always make me feel like I made the right choices in my career path and choice of specialty in medicine. So, if I could go back and make that choice, knowing what I know now, I absolutely would choose the same. No doubt.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.arktosdirectcare.com
• Instagram: arktosdirectcare
• Facebook: Arktos Direct Care
• Linkedin: Kyle Hampton, DO

Image Credits
Photography Dy Desiree Vanessa Houk Photography