A practice should explain a membership or concierge plan by stating what the fee covers, what it does not cover, whether the practice also bills insurance or Medicare for visits, and how joining, pausing, and leaving work. The Medicare and tax sentences on that page carry legal weight, so counsel and an accountant should approve them before publishing. Everything else comes from the membership agreement the practice already uses.
Practices use the labels differently. One practice's "concierge" plan might be an annual fee on top of normal insurance billing; another's "direct primary care" plan might be a monthly fee with no insurance billing at all; a third might run a hybrid. Patients reading those pages often cannot tell which model they are looking at, and the first phone call becomes a lesson in definitions.
This is a content question for practice owners and marketing leads. It is not legal, tax, or financial advice, and it is not advice to any patient about whether to join a plan or keep insurance. Our primary and specialty care overview covers the wider set of access and billing pages.
Define your model before you show a price
The first paragraph of a membership page should say, in one or two sentences, what kind of arrangement this is at this practice: who you bill, for what, and how often. A price shown before that definition invites the wrong comparison. A reader who assumes the fee replaces insurance will compare it with a premium; a reader who assumes it sits on top of insurance will compare it with a copay.
Then say what membership changes for the patient in practical terms: appointment length, how quickly members are seen, how they reach the clinician between visits, and whether there is after-hours contact. These are service commitments, so each one needs the clinician's agreement before it appears. Access is not coverage. The page should say what the membership buys from this practice and, just as plainly, what it does not pay for elsewhere.
What the fee covers, and what it does not
A table does this better than prose. Build it with the billing lead and check it against the signed agreement, line by line.
| Item | Question the page must settle |
|---|---|
| Office visits | Included without a per-visit charge, or billed to insurance as well? |
| Messaging and phone access | Included, and with what response window the practice will commit to? |
| In-office tests and lab draws | Included, discounted, or billed separately? |
| Outside labs and imaging | Who bills the patient, and does the practice negotiate cash rates? |
| Specialist visits, urgent care, hospital care | Outside the membership, stated in one plain sentence |
| Medications and vaccines | Dispensed on site, prescribed only, or included? |
The rows most likely to cause trouble are the ones the practice thinks are obvious. Before drafting, ask the billing lead: "What did a member get billed for last quarter that surprised them?" Each answer is a row the table needs or a row that needs clearer wording. Our page on insurance and cost content for practices covers how the rest of the site should talk about cost.
Give Medicare patients their own section
Medicare patients raise questions that a general membership page cannot answer in passing. Whether the practice participates in Medicare, has opted out, or bills Medicare for some services while charging a membership fee for others changes what the page may say, and each arrangement has its own rules.
For practices that participate in Medicare, the HHS Office of Inspector General issued an alert on March 31, 2004 about added charges for covered services. It says Medicare participating providers can "charge Medicare beneficiaries extra for items and services that are not covered by Medicare," and that "Charging extra fees for already covered services abuses the trust of Medicare patients." The alert is more than twenty years old, so ask counsel what guidance applies now and how your fee is structured against it.
For clinicians who have opted out and use private contracts, the federal regulations at 42 CFR 405.415 require the contract to state that the beneficiary accepts "full responsibility for payment of the physician's or practitioner's charge" for all services the clinician furnishes, agrees "not to submit a claim to Medicare," and understands that "Medicare payment will not be made for any items or services furnished by the physician or practitioner" that Medicare would otherwise have covered. A web page cannot replace that contract, but it should not contradict it, and a short Medicare section that names the practice's actual status, as counsel confirms it, saves a long phone call.
HSA questions changed for 2026
Patients ask whether they can pay the fee from a health savings account. IRS Notice 2026-5 explains a provision of the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act on direct primary care service arrangements, which it says "applies to months beginning after December 31, 2025." The notice describes an arrangement "consisting solely of primary care services provided by primary care practitioners" for "a fixed periodic fee," and says the term does not include arrangements where fees for a month exceed "$150" ("or $300 for any such arrangement that covers more than one individual"), and it says "The aggregate limit is adjusted annually for inflation for taxable years after 2026," so those figures are the 2026 levels. It also excludes from primary care services "procedures that require the use of general anesthesia," "prescription drugs other than vaccines," and some laboratory services.
Whether a particular plan fits that description is a tax question for the practice's accountant and counsel. The page should not say "HSA eligible" until they confirm it, and the sentence should carry the date it was checked, since tax guidance and fee levels both change.
Joining, pausing, and leaving
Exit terms are where membership pages are thinnest and where patients feel misled most easily. Write down how enrollment works, any enrollment fee, the minimum term, how much notice cancellation needs, how refunds are handled, and what happens to a family plan when one member leaves. Each of those terms is already in the membership agreement. The writer should not have to invent the cancellation policy; the page should match the agreement in substance, and the agreement wins if they ever differ.
Leaving also raises a records question. Under the HIPAA access rule at 45 CFR 164.524, a covered entity "must act on a request for access no later than 30 days after receipt of the request," with one limited extension, as the regulation read when checked in October 2026. Your privacy officer can confirm whether a state rule or a later federal change sets a shorter timeline. A sentence explaining how departing members request copies of their records, as your privacy officer approves it, answers a question every leaving patient has.
Consider a fictional two-physician membership practice in Arizona. Its first page listed a monthly price and the phrase "unlimited access." The revised page, in this invented example, opens with a two-sentence definition of the model, carries the coverage table above, gives Medicare patients a short section approved by counsel, and ends with the cancellation terms copied in substance from the agreement. It is longer, and it answers the questions that used to fill the first ten minutes of every inquiry call. A related page on what happens after a visit covers records and billing questions for every patient.
In Hudson South's process, the Authority Asset gathers the practice's approved knowledge and evidence, including the membership agreement and the billing team's answers. Hudson Twenty-One records how the practice communicates across 21 dimensions so the page sounds like its physicians, Market Intelligence researches the questions patients ask and the market around the practice, and AEO Creation turns those inputs into answer-first content. See our overview of content for medical, dental and wellness practices for the rest of the set.
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- OIG Alerts Physicians About Added Charges for Covered Services. HHS Office of Inspector General. Read 2026-10-16.
- 42 CFR Part 405, Subpart D: Private Contracts. Electronic Code of Federal Regulations. Read 2026-10-16.
- Notice 2026-5: Expanded Availability of Health Savings Accounts under the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act. Internal Revenue Service. Read 2026-10-16.
- 45 CFR 164.524: Access of individuals to protected health information. Electronic Code of Federal Regulations. Read 2026-10-16.