Today we’d like to introduce you to Troy Burns.
Hi Troy, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I was born and raised in the St. Louis area, then moved to Kansas City after high school to attend medical school at UMKC. After graduating from medical school in 1986 and completing an internal medicine internship at St. Luke’s Hospital on the plaza, I worked in urgent care for a few years before starting my own medical practice taking care of men with sexual dysfunction. I grew that practice into a national medical practice with 36 locations in 23 states.
I then opened my current medical practice, ProPartners Healthcare, in Overland Park in 2001 as a primary care and preventive medicine practice for men. It became successful immediately and grew to the point where the volume of patients made it challenging for our other physicians and I to have the time and availability that we insisted on providing to our patients. My partner and I discovered a new practice membership-based practice model in 2013 known as Direct Primary Care (DPC) and quickly transitioned our practice to deliver insurance-free high-access timely care. The patients who chose to stay with ProPartners loved it and asked if we could take care of their wives and children. In response to this need, we expanded into a full family medicine practice in 2015.
In early 2018 we opened our second office location in the Northland and continue to grow steadily in providing Direct Primary Care to individuals, families and business around the Kansas City metro area. We are continuing to recruit Family Medicine physicians and hope to open our third office location in 2026.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Since ProPartners was the first Direct Primary Care practice in the Kansas City metro and it is a different kind of practice, it has been (and continues to be) and challenge to educate the public about the importance of having high-level access to a primary care physician who knows you and is always available. Most people recognize that the current established healthcare systems and insurance approaches do not guarantee timely access to care but also find it difficult to understand the value of guaranteeing access by paying a monthly fee and not using the major medical insurance that they are also paying increasing amounts of money to purchase.
The primary struggles have been this “high information sale” of the new practice model concept and finding the excellent Family Medicine doctors we need in a timely manner as we grow. We have high standards and will not hire a doctor that we would not send our own family to.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
As a primary care physician, I have found that the practice of medicine and the concerns brought to the doctor are fairly common and predictable, the evaluation and treatment of these concerns falls within a well-established “standard of care” in the medical community but the communication with patients and the approach to educating them about their care is where the “art of medicine” comes in. I believe that time spent with patients in listening, asking the right questions and explaining the importance and details of treatment recommendations is what I like to think sets me (and ProPartners) apart from other family medicine practices.
In addition, I am most proud of the culture and work environment we have built at ProPartners. To a person, we have staff, providers and physicians who are nice people who work hard to really care for our patients. Everyone not only gets along with each other but has built close personal relationships with each other and with many of our patients. In contrast to many medical practices, we have career-long employees, many who have been with us for 10-20 years.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
I believe that the delivery of primary care services by mainstream health systems will continue to struggle with a shortage of primary care physicians and an increasing transition to primary care being delivered by mid level providers rather than physicians. Also, as a very high percentage of primary care physicians and midlevel providers are employees of the hospitals, there will continue to be great pressure on these caregivers to see more patients, faster and to continue to refer for tests, specialists and other services within the healthcare systems who employ them.
Individuals and business who seek timely, unrushed primary care from physicians who work for them (rather than the insurance companies or the hospitals), will continue to seek out direct arrangements with private physicians who practice in value-based models like Direct Primary Care (DPC).
Pricing:
- DPC Memberships are age-based, ranging from $50 to $115 per month.
- Family Memberships are a maximum of $220 per month (married couple + all children under 18 y/o).
- Corporate Memberships are also available at $85 per employee per month (and pricing for families).
- Details of services included in memberships are at:
- https://propartnershealthcare.com/join-now/
Contact Info:
- Website: https://propartnershealthcare.com/join-now/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/propartnershealthcare/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/propartnershealthcare
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/15240639
- Twitter: https://x.com/ProPartnersHC
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ProPartnersMD
