The healthcare safety net has holes. We connect the patients who fall through to a doctor they can afford.
About 27.1 million Americans have no health insurance. Millions more have insurance they cannot afford to use. Without a regular doctor, a small health problem can turn into a trip to the emergency room. Many people do not know that affordable doctors exist near them. We help them learn about these doctors, and our free directory helps them find one, so they can stay healthy.
- More than10,000
- uninsured and underinsured patients connected to a cash-pay physician since 2020
- 20,000
- cash-pay doctors, including direct primary care and concierge practices, listed in all 50 states plus DC, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands
- $149
- It costs us $149 per patient connected
- $157 to$309
- modeled cost avoidance per connected patient per year
“Modeled” means estimated with a cost model, not measured directly. See how we measure
Recognition
Before the Foundation existed, the FindMyDirectDoctor directory and the work behind it earned these honors.
Business Innovation Merit Award
2025 To The Stars: Kansas Business Awards, Kansas Department of Commerce, with a certificate signed by Governor Laura Kelly
Kansas State University Accelerator Program
Top three of several hundred applicants
KITE Proof of Concept award
Kansas Department of Commerce, fiscal year 2023. KITE stands for Kansas Innovation & Technology Enterprises. A proof of concept award helps test whether a new idea can work.
Where the safety net misses people
Medicare covers older adults. Medicaid covers many people with low incomes. Federally qualified health centers (FQHCs), also called community health centers, care for many more. These are clinics that get federal funding to serve people in need. They adjust their fees based on income and family size. But these programs cannot reach everyone.
About 27.1 million Americans have no health insurance at all. Among adults aged 19 to 64, 44% are inadequately insured. That means they have no coverage, went without it during the year, or have costs or deductibles that are high compared with their income. A deductible is the amount you pay yourself before your insurance starts to pay. The average deductible on a Marketplace plan hit a record $3,786 in 2026.
There is another gap that few people talk about. Affordable doctors already exist, but most people have never heard of them. In a 2021 national survey of 1,000 adults, about two out of three said they were not familiar with direct primary care. Direct primary care is a way to see a regular doctor for a flat monthly fee.
When people cannot find a doctor they can afford, small problems wait. High blood pressure goes untreated. An infection gets worse. Too often, the first doctor they see works in an emergency room. People stay healthy when small problems are caught early, and that is much harder without a regular doctor.
First we help people learn. Then we help them find a doctor.
FindMyDirectDoctor Foundation runs a free online directory of cash-pay doctors, including direct primary care and concierge practices. It is the largest directory of its kind in the country. A cash-pay doctor lets you pay for a visit yourself, without going through insurance. A typical cash-pay visit costs $40 to $300. Direct primary care works like a gym membership: you pay a flat monthly fee, usually $50 to $200 a month, and you can see your doctor when you need to.
Our work has two halves. The first half is awareness and education, because people cannot use a kind of care they have never heard of. The second half is matching each person with a doctor near them.
Here is how it works.
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Learn [Awareness]
We write plain-language guides that show up when people search online for help with the cost of care. We also reach people through online and offline outreach, and by showing up in their communities.
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Search [Access]
Once people reach our free directory, they type in their zip code or a health condition, such as diabetes. They see doctors near them who accept direct payment. Then they contact the practice to ask about cost and appointments.
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Get regular care [Healthy]
A regular doctor can catch small problems early, before they turn into an emergency. That helps people stay healthy and leads to better health outcomes, which means better health over time.
We are not a medical provider and we do not offer medical advice. In an emergency, call 911.
Low cost per person, and how we count it
Since 2020, the directory has connected more than 10,000 uninsured and underinsured patients to a cash-pay physician. It costs us $149 per patient connected. For comparison, the federal Navigator program, which helps people sign up for health insurance, spent $1,061 per enrollment in plan year 2024. The two programs do different jobs, so this is a rough comparison, not a head-to-head test.
An average emergency room visit cost about $2,863 in 2026, across all types of insurance. A cash-pay doctor visit usually costs $40 to $300. Our cost model estimates that each connected patient avoids $157 to $309 in costs per year. That figure is modeled, not measured. Our Impact page explains what it means, and funders can request the full report.
Saving money is only part of the point. The work is for people's health. A regular doctor they can afford helps uninsured and underinsured people stay healthy. We do not track the health of individual patients, so we do not claim measured health results.
Why funders support this work
Counties and states
We work with counties and states that want better access to affordable care for uninsured, underinsured and underserved people. Underserved people live where doctors are few, far away or hard to afford. We plan awareness, outreach and directory work for your area and report back on what we can measure. The goal is for more people to have a regular doctor, stay healthy and have better health outcomes. The directory already covers all 50 states, so work can start anywhere. Kansas, where we are based, is one of ten states that have not expanded Medicaid. That means Kansas has not opened its Medicaid program to more adults with low incomes.
Talk with usFederal programs
We reach people who coverage programs miss, at a low cost per person. It costs us $149 per patient connected, compared with $1,061 per enrollment in the federal Navigator program in plan year 2024. When we report to a federal program, we show the size of the need in the areas we serve, what we did, how many people we reached and connected, what it cost per person, and the results we could measure.
Talk with usHospitals
We help uninsured and underinsured people near your hospital find an affordable regular doctor. People without a regular doctor often use the ER as their doctor's office. Much of that care goes unpaid, and the hospital absorbs the cost. This is called uncompensated care, which means care a hospital provides but is never paid for. Hospital margins, the money left after costs, are already thin. A regular doctor keeps these patients healthier and prevents unnecessary ER visits, so your hospital can lose less money on care that could have happened in a doctor's office.
Talk with usFoundations and health plans
You want results you can measure, a low cost per person and an organization you can trust. FindMyDirectDoctor Foundation counts every patient connection it can see and explains how on our Impact page. It costs us $149 per patient connected. If you run a health plan, members with high deductibles sometimes put off care because of the cost. An affordable regular doctor can help those members get everyday care and stay healthier. Our Foundation has a three-person board, and two of the three directors are independent physicians. No director or officer is paid.
Talk with usIndividuals and physicians
Our founder, Harsha Moole, MD, is a doctor and medical researcher who built this directory with his own money starting in 2020. He takes no salary. Most of our budget goes straight to the program.
Talk with us
Why a doctor and researcher started a free directory
Harsha Moole, MD, is an internal medicine physician-scientist in Topeka, Kansas. In his work as a hospitalist, a doctor who cares for patients while they are in the hospital, he kept admitting the same kind of patient.
Picture a 34-year-old man with high blood pressure. He has no insurance, so he never sees a doctor. Low-cost daily medicine could have kept his blood pressure under control. Instead, he arrives at the hospital with a stroke.
He is not one real person. He is a mix of many patients Harsha has treated, with details changed to protect their privacy.
In 2020, Harsha started the FindMyDirectDoctor directory to help people like him find an affordable doctor before a crisis. He paid for it himself. His wife, Christina Delgado, has been the backbone of the work from the start. The directory has connected more than 10,000 uninsured and underinsured patients to a cash-pay physician, and as a researcher, Harsha watched the results closely. In time, the work grew beyond what one family could pay for. So in 2026, he formed FindMyDirectDoctor Foundation to grow with outside support. Our goal is to reach millions of patients, not just thousands.
Who runs the Foundation
Two of our three directors are independent physicians. No director or officer is paid.
Meet the teamOur key documents, in one place
- Our IRS letter confirming that we are a 501(c)(3) public charity, dated September 23, 2026. A 501(c)(3) public charity is a nonprofit the IRS recognizes as a charity under that section of the tax law.PDF
- Our conflict of interest policy, which explains how we handle decisions where a director has a personal interestPDF
- A plain explanation of how we license our directory technology
- Our 2027 budget: about 82.7% program, 5.3% fundraising and 12.0% management and general
Let's talk
Do you work on health access or the cost of care for a county, a state, a hospital or a foundation? Do you want to partner with us? We would like to hear from you.
Talk with us