Why More Colorado Employers Are Turning to Direct Primary Care

For small businesses, offering great healthcare benefits has never been simple.

Costs continue to rise. Employees can have insurance and still struggle to get a timely primary care appointment. And small employers are often left trying to balance better benefits with a budget that has very real limits.

A new 2026 Direct Primary Care Trends Report from Hint Health suggests that more employers are adding another option to that conversation: Direct Primary Care (DPC).

And Colorado is helping lead the way.

Colorado Ranks #2 for DPC Membership Concentration

In 2025, Colorado had 1,287.5 Direct Primary Care members per 100,000 residents—the second-highest concentration in the country.

That's part of a much larger trend.

Nationally, DPC membership per capita increased 837% between 2017 and 2025, growing from 44 to 409 members per 100,000 people.

In other words, DPC isn't just gaining attention. More patients are actually using it.

Employers Are Driving More of That Growth

Perhaps the most interesting shift is who is paying for DPC memberships.

In 2017, employers funded just 18% of active DPC memberships in Hint's data.

By 2025?

Nearly 60% were employer-sponsored.

That means employer-sponsored memberships now represent the majority of active DPC memberships in the report's dataset.

Why Are Employers Looking at DPC?

Direct Primary Care gives employees access to primary care through a straightforward membership model rather than billing insurance for the routine primary care services included in membership.

For an employer, that can mean offering employees something very tangible: better access to a primary care provider.

In separate patient-experience benchmarking included in the report, patients across 12 DPC practices gave their experience with Contact/Access a 97% performance score.

And the employer pricing data is notable, too. The median employer-sponsored DPC membership remained between $55 and $66 per month from 2020 through 2025 within Hint's dataset.

DPC Doesn't Replace Health Insurance

This is an important distinction.

Direct Primary Care isn't health insurance and isn't designed to replace coverage for things like hospitalization, surgery, emergency care, or specialty treatment.

Instead, employers can incorporate DPC into a broader benefits strategy to give employees more direct access to the care they use most often: primary care.

For small businesses especially, that creates another option worth exploring when evaluating how to support employees.

What Could DPC Look Like for Your Business?

If you're a Colorado business owner planning your benefits for the year ahead, this is a good time to ask a few questions:

Could your employees benefit from easier access to primary care? Would they value having an ongoing relationship with a physician? And could DPC complement the benefits you're already providing?

With Colorado now among the country's strongest DPC markets and employer participation continuing to grow nationally, more businesses are asking those questions.

DOPC can help you understand what Direct Primary Care looks like for employers, how membership works, and whether it could make sense for your team.

Ready to explore DPC for your employees?

LET'S TALK ABOUT YOUR TEAM →