Everyone said the window had closed.
Dr. Grace Torres-Hodges, foot and ankle surgeon, Pensacola.
What did year one actually cost, and how did she get from there to here?
Walk through the fire once. Practice on your terms for years.
Hosted by Dr. Tea Nguyen, DPM, who made the same move in 2022 and asks what she wishes someone had told her.
Free live hour.
Thursday, October 29. 3:00 PM PT / 5:00 PM CT / 6:00 PM ET.
Save your seatOrganized by the DSC Alliance, the physician-led community for specialists who practice in direct care.
Who you will hear from
DR. TEA NGUYEN, DPM
Host. Board-certified podiatrist and surgeon, Santa Cruz County. Founder and surgical director of Pacific Point Podiatry since 2018, outside all insurance since 2022. Host of The Direct Care Podcast for Specialists.
DR. GRACE TORRES-HODGES, DPM, MBA, FACPM, FASPS
Guest. Foot and ankle surgeon, Pensacola. Solo private practice since 2001. Outside all third-party payers since 2013. Co-leads the Florida chapter of the Free Market Medical Association. Author of Private Practice Solution and Doctor Do, Doctor Don't.
Designed, Not Defaulted. How intentionality, physician autonomy, and entrepreneurship protect the doctor-patient relationship.
"If physicians do not intentionally design their careers, payment models, boundaries, and patient relationships, someone else will shape them by default."
Then your questions, live, until we run out of time.
Save your seatWhy this webinar
You were handed a building.
The contracts were already written. The pay model was already chosen. The schedule, the visit length, the referral pathways, the software, the terms on which you meet a patient, all of it was decided before you arrived, by people whose interests were not yours and who never had to explain themselves to you.
Then you were taught to read all of that as the weather. Background conditions. Just how medicine works.
It is not weather. It is architecture, and somebody drew it.
Two foot and ankle surgeons saw that and walked out of it, nine years apart.
Dr. Grace Torres-Hodges opted out of every third-party payer in 2013, when there was no term for what she was doing, no directory, and nobody who had done it first. Dr. Tea Nguyen did it in 2022, having opened Pacific Point Podiatry in 2018 as an insurance-based practice, done everything the consultants told her to do, and found it was too much work for too little pay.
Same specialty. Same decision. A decade of difference in what existed to help them make it.
That gap is the conversation.
What this hour covers
The physicians
Dr. Tea Nguyen, DPM
Board-certified podiatric physician and surgeon. Doctor of Podiatric Medicine, Des Moines University. Diplomate of the American Board of Podiatric Medicine. International visiting scholar in plastic and reconstructive microsurgery at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taiwan.
She founded Pacific Point Podiatry in Santa Cruz County in 2018, the first podiatry practice in the county built on a patient-centric, root-cause model, and took it entirely outside insurance in 2022. She is the founder and surgical director.
She hosts The Direct Care Podcast for Specialists.
Her line from the August webinar, on the most expensive mistake physicians make: "A medical degree is not the brand. It is how you show up and talk to people."
Dr. Grace Torres-Hodges, DPM, MBA, FACPM, FASPS
Board-certified foot and ankle surgeon, practicing in Pensacola, Florida, where she founded her solo private practice in 2001. A second generation physician in her own community, she cares for patients of all ages across Northwest Florida and South Alabama.
Diplomate of the American Board of Podiatric Medicine. Fellow of the American College of Podiatric Medicine and of the American Society of Podiatric Surgery. Undergraduate at Vanderbilt, residency at St. Vincent's Medical Center, MBA from Quantic.
In 2013 she was introduced to direct care and free market medicine and opted out of all third-party payers. She co-leads the Florida chapter of the Free Market Medical Association and has spoken at the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and Docs 4 Patient Care. She hosts lectures and roundtables with medical students and residents from Florida State, the University of Florida, Kent State, Des Moines University, Eglin Air Force Base, and Navy Hospital Pensacola.
A former national spokesperson for the American Podiatric Medical Association, she is a frequent source on foot health for Prevention, Good Housekeeping, the Wall Street Journal, and NPR. She writes weekly on Substack as The Direct Doctor.
Author of two books: Private Practice Solution, winner of the Independent Press Award for Medicine and an International Impact Award in Business, and Doctor Do, Doctor Don't, released June 2026. She does not discount them, because direct care does not discount its services. Since 2023 every dollar of proceeds has sponsored students to attend free market and direct care conferences. books.by/drgracedpm
The Alliance
The DSC Alliance exists so that no specialist has to start from zero again.
In 2013 Grace had no term to search, no directory, no alliance. In 2022 Tea had the beginnings of one, and helped build the rest. This hour is the two of them, in the same room, so the next specialist starts further along than either of them did.
Her own words for it: burnout, when shared, becomes the structural protection for the next generation.
Save your seatThe recording joins the member library afterward, with the Starter Guide, the national directory, and a private room of specialists who answer each other honestly.
Reserve your seat
Save your seat for Thursday, October 29,
3:00 PM PT / 5:00 PM CT / 6:00 PM ET.
On the form: "What is the one question you want answered on October 29? We put the best ones to Grace and Tea first."
Grace Torres-Hodges and Tea Nguyen will be live to take your questions.
Board-certified specialist physicians at any stage. The physician who has not signed their next contract yet, and the one who signed years ago and has been living with it.
Yes, the live hour is free for any physician interested in direct care.
Yes. There is a field on the registration form. The best questions go to Grace and Tea first, before the open floor. The specific ones win, about your own contract or your own numbers, not the model in general.
Register anyway. The recording lives in the member library, so if that matters to you, your first month of membership is free and it takes the same two minutes.
No. A good share of the room every month is still employed and still deciding.
No. Both physicians are surgeons, which makes the procedural side concrete rather than theoretical, but the argument is structural: who shapes your contracts, your pay model, your boundaries, and your patient relationships.
Yes, directly at books.by/drgracedpm. Since 2023 all proceeds sponsor students to attend free market and direct care conferences.
