Frequently asked questions

It runs much like a regular visit, with two deliberate differences: nothing is charged, and I do not treat. I will listen to what is actually going on, ask questions, and go through your history and your medication list the way I would with any new patient. It takes about 15 to 20 minutes, and you choose whether it happens in person at the office or as a video call. What will not happen at that meeting is a prescription, an order for tests, or a procedure. What I will do is tell you plainly how I would approach your problem if you were my patient — so you are deciding with real information in front of you rather than a sales pitch. If that sounds right, you can enroll or pay for a visit and we start straight away. If it does not, you owe nothing and nobody will chase you. The free consultation is not treatment and does not by itself create a physician–patient relationship.

Whatever would make this work or not work for you. If you have particular needs — a complicated medication list, a condition that needs close follow-up, a specialist you already see, care for a parent, anything you are unsure this practice can handle — raise it then. That is the whole purpose of the meeting. I also owe you an honest answer in the other direction: if I do not think I can serve you well, I will say so and tell you what would suit you better. Neither of us benefits from you paying for a membership that is wrong for you.

Yes — this is a new practice with immediate availability. There is no waiting list and no months-long wait for a first appointment; most people are seen the same day or the next. That will not be true forever, because the panel is capped on purpose, but it is true now.

No. No referral from another physician, and no authorization from an insurance company, is needed to become a patient or to book a visit. Because nothing is billed to insurance, there is nobody outside this office who has to approve your being seen. Call, text, book online, or come in during clinic hours.

Both work. Clinic hours are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, 12 to 8 pm, and Saturday, 9 am to 5 pm, and those hours run as a walk-in clinic. Booking ahead holds your place and is the surest way to be seen quickly, so it is worth a text if you have the time. If you turn up without an appointment during clinic hours and there is room, you will be seen.

It means you pay the practice directly and the practice does not bill an insurance company. You know the price before care is delivered, and there is no claim, no adjudication, and no bill arriving weeks later.

Not in the usual sense. Concierge practices typically charge a large annual retainer and bill your insurance on top of it. Here there is one price: $150 a visit, or $99 a month. Nothing is billed to insurance at all.

It is better to have it. Everyone has to determine for themselves whether health insurance is worth the cost. This practice handles primary, urgent, and pain care — roughly the large majority of what you will ever need — but it does not cover hospitalization, surgery, or catastrophic illness. A high-deductible plan pairs unusually well with a practice like this one.

Think about your car. Your auto insurance does not pay your mechanic, and it does not cover oil changes. It exists for the collision — the rare, expensive event that would ruin you if you had to pay for it yourself. Maintenance is something you arrange directly with someone you trust to look after the car, and nobody finds that strange. Health insurance was built on the same idea: it is there for the hospitalization, the surgery, the cancer diagnosis. Day-to-day care is the oil change. A zero-deductible plan can be pushed into paying for that too, but every routine visit then has to be coded, submitted, reviewed and approved by someone who has never met you — which is a large part of why premiums are what they are, and why a visit is seven minutes long. Paying your physician directly puts that relationship back where it belongs, and leaves insurance to do the job it is actually good at.

For everything outside this office, yes. Your insurance can still cover medications, imaging, labs, specialists, and hospital care. Compare my cash rates against your copay before you decide — mine is often lower.

Plenty of people in exactly that position come here anyway, and the reason is nearly always the same: they want more control over their own care, and more certainty about what will happen. Good insurance decides what is covered. It does not decide what is right for you, and it does not make anyone available at nine at night.

I work for you — not for your insurance company, and not for the government. Nobody outside this room has a say in how long your visit is, what gets discussed, or what gets ordered. Your own preferences are part of the plan rather than an obstacle to it. I will not cut your medications back without your agreement because a formulary or a quality metric wants me to, and I will not push you into a colonoscopy that is not indicated for you. When something genuinely is worth doing, I will tell you plainly and tell you why — and it is still your decision after that.

In one specific and real way, yes. When no claim is submitted, no diagnosis or procedure codes for that visit are sent to an insurance company, so the visit does not become a line in anyone’s claims database. For people who would rather a mental-health visit, a sexual-health question, or a new diagnosis not travel that route, that matters.

Because billing insurance requires volume, and volume requires short visits. Not billing lets this practice stay small enough to care for a limited number of patients properly, and lowers the actual cost of care at the same time.

No. Phil Zhou Medical does not participate in Medicare or Medi-Cal. If you are enrolled in either, please bring it up at your free consultation so I can explain what that means for you before you sign anything.

Then pay-per-visit at $150 may genuinely be the better deal, and I will tell you so. Membership is worth it when you want someone reachable — for the question at 9pm, the refill you forgot, the symptom you are not sure about.

For most routine medications, yes — that is a membership benefit, and it is the single thing patients tell me they notice first. Text what you need and it goes to the pharmacy. Some refills genuinely need a visit or current labs first, and I will tell you when that is the case rather than quietly letting you run out. Controlled medications are the one firm exception — those always require an in-person visit and exam, including for refills, so they can never be handled by text.

Yes. My assistant is a native Spanish speaker and handles Spanish-speaking patients — she answers the Spanish line, schedules visits, and interprets during the appointment at no extra charge. Dr. Zhou speaks English and Mandarin; his Spanish is limited, which is exactly why the interpretation is built in rather than improvised. There is also a Spanish version of this site.

The office is open for scheduled visits Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from noon to 8 pm, and Saturday from 9 am to 5 pm — early enough for a lunch-hour visit, late enough for one after work, and a Saturday for anyone whose weekdays are full, so seeing a doctor does not cost you a vacation day. Phone and text are 24/7, every day including weekends. If you need to be seen and those hours do not work, text me: house calls and off-schedule visits are how most of those get solved.

As long as the problem takes. There is a wide range depending on what you came in for — a straightforward refill or a rash is short, a new diagnosis or a complicated medication list is not. What I can tell you is that you will not be rushed, and the visit does not end because a schedule says it should. That is the whole reason this practice keeps a small panel.

Yes, and prior authorizations too. Forms are real clinical work — they require knowing your history and being willing to put my name to it — so they are handled one of two ways: as part of a standard $150 visit, or included with a $99/month membership. Either way you are not being sent away to find someone who will sign it.

Yes. Texts come to me, not to an answering service or a portal queue, and I would rather you asked than waited. Scheduling, refills, a photo of a rash, or a question about whether something is worth coming in for are all fair game. Please do not use text for an emergency — call 911 — and keep in mind that ordinary text messaging is not encrypted.

24/7 direct contact with your physician by text or call, routine care and prescription refills handled without an office visit when appropriate, same-day and next-day appointments, longer visits, and wholesale pricing on labs, imaging, and medications. Free unlimited clinic visits, so long as there is a reason for visit.

Hospitalization, emergency care, surgery, obstetric care, and specialist consultations. The cost of medications, labs, and imaging is also not included — you get my wholesale rate on those, not free care. The one exception is the weight loss program, which is $200 a month with everything included.

Yes, when they are genuinely indicated — but with one condition that does not bend: a controlled prescription requires an in-person visit and physical exam, every time, including refills. Not by text, not by phone, not at a first contact. Everything else in this practice is built to be as frictionless as possible; this is the one place where the friction is the point. Pain management here still starts with function — injections, physical therapy, and non-medication strategies — and medication is part of the plan rather than the whole of it.

Mostly the problems that need a physician with time: weight loss, headache and migraine, insomnia, anxiety and depression, men’s health, women’s health and hormone therapy, addiction medicine, and back and shoulder pain — plus general neurology, which four years of neurology residency means is handled here rather than referred out. Everyday problems are seen too — infections, rashes, minor injuries, blood pressure and diabetes follow-up, physicals — as walk-ins or by appointment. The services page describes each in full.

Eleven years, and sixteen since I started medical school. That covers a transitional-year internship and four years of neurology residency at Harbor–UCLA, primary care for an underserved population in Los Angeles County, and hospice and palliative medicine since 2018, which I still practice. I get asked often enough that I would rather answer it here than have you wondering about it in the room.

It means symptom management and difficult conversations are the part of medicine I am best at. Day to day that shows up as better pain control, more careful medication management in older patients, and a physician who will actually sit down with your family when something serious happens. It does not mean this is an end-of-life practice — most of what I do here is ordinary primary and urgent care.

Both are arranged, not stocked. Vaccines are ordered here and given at a partner pharmacy a few minutes from the office, usually the same day. Imaging — X-ray, ultrasound, CT, MRI — goes to a local imaging center at a negotiated rate, with the price known before you go. A one-room practice that claimed to do everything on site would be lying to you; what you get instead is the order written the day you need it and the cost told to you up front.

Yes. I practiced in patients’ homes for years and still do. House calls are usually scheduled outside regular clinic hours, including evenings and weekends, throughout Upland and the surrounding communities. The fee depends on distance and time and is quoted before the visit is booked.

Yes. A virtual doctor consultation works anywhere in California — I am licensed here, so I can see you by video anywhere in the state — you do not have to be in Upland or anywhere near it. You can also join as a member and be cared for entirely by telehealth: the membership works the same way at a distance, and the direct phone and text access is the part that travels best. Most of primary care is a conversation, a review of your history, and a decision about what to do next, and all of that works on video.

Honestly, no. For anything complex I can give you better care in the room. On video I do not always get the fullest picture: I cannot lay hands on an abdomen, listen to a heart or a lung, look properly in an ear or a throat, or notice the small things you pick up only in person. Telehealth makes real sense if you value the convenience and the problem suits it — follow-ups, medication adjustments, results, straightforward acute issues, and most of the ongoing management of a condition we have already worked up together. For a new or complicated problem, I would prefer to see in person. But part of the purpose of a subscription service is to avoid coming in person unless necessary.

Anything that needs my hands or my eyes in the room. A real physical exam, joint injections, wound care, laceration repair, and in-office procedures all require a visit. Controlled medications are never prescribed by video — they require an in-person visit and exam, without exception, and that applies to telehealth patients exactly as it does to everyone else. Labs and imaging are not a problem: I order them to a facility near you and we go over the results together. If something turns up that needs examining, I will say so plainly and arrange a visit or a referral rather than guess at it over video.

Yes — you need to be physically in California at the time of the visit. That is a licensing rule, not a preference: a California medical license permits care of patients located in California. If you travel out of state, we can still talk, but a formal visit and prescribing will wait until you are back. If you move out of California permanently, I will help you transition to a physician licensed where you live.

Yes, it is one of the tools I use for weight loss. See the weight management page.

$200 a month, everything included. There are no per-visit charges, no add-ons and no separate bills. I take no payment from any drug manufacturer. See the weight management page.

Not as fast as the advertising you have seen, and that is deliberate. Most of the health benefit — blood pressure, blood sugar, lipids, joint pain, sleep — shows up in the first five to ten percent of body weight. A slower loss you can hold onto beats a fast one that rebounds. No physician can responsibly promise you a number by a date.

No separate membership is needed. Weight management is its own flat $200 a month, and everything the $99 membership covers comes with it — so the frequent small adjustments weight care needs are simply part of it, and you never weigh a question against a visit fee.

Because a typical primary care physician carries two to three thousand patients, and that is why appointments are seven minutes long. This practice caps its panel at a small fraction of that, which is what makes the access real rather than advertised.

The panel size, and it is a real one. A primary care physician working through insurance typically carries two to three thousand patients. A direct primary care panel maxes out at somewhere around four to six hundred. That smaller number is exactly what buys you same-day access and a visit that is not seven minutes long — but it also means this model does nothing to help the physician shortage. If anything it works the other way: a doctor who moves to direct primary care sees far fewer patients than they did before, and if enough doctors made the same move, fewer patients overall would have someone. That is an honest cost of the arrangement. It is not one you feel from inside the practice, but you should know it is there.

Yes, and this got considerably better on January 1, 2026. Visit fees and most services have always been eligible. What changed is the membership: under the law that took effect this year, enrolling in a direct primary care arrangement no longer disqualifies you from contributing to an HSA, and you may pay the monthly fee from your HSA. A qualifying arrangement is capped at $150 a month for one person and $300 for a family, so the $99 membership sits under the cap. See the IRS announcement and Notice 2026-05. The rule is new and Treasury has not finished defining what counts as primary care for this purpose, so confirm your own situation with your tax advisor — I am a physician, not an accountant. There is more on this on the for business page.

It is close to the case this practice was built for. On a high-deductible plan you pay full price for primary care until you meet the deductible, and most people never do — so your plan is not actually paying for the everyday care you use. Add the HSA change above and you can now cover the membership with pre-tax dollars. The clinic also stays open until 8 pm Tuesday through Thursday and opens on Saturday, because when you are self-employed a morning in a waiting room is a morning you did not bill.

Yes. The group price is $75 per person per month, with a minimum of four people — $25 below the individual rate, and the whole price, with no setup or administration fee. Four people is $300 a month for the business. The owner counts toward the four, so three employees plus you makes a group. Worth knowing up front that the panel is capped at a few hundred patients by design, so employer spots are limited. Details on the for business page.

Nothing is prorated, because nothing needs to be. Each person’s billing starts on the day they are enrolled and recurs on that date every month. Someone hired in the middle of a month simply starts their own monthly cycle that day — there is no partial month to calculate and no catch-up charge later. The practical effect is that a group’s charges land on different days rather than all at once, and people can be added or removed as your staff changes.

Fees a business pays toward employees’ medical care are generally deductible, and there are established ways to structure it — a QSEHRA for smaller employers, an excepted-benefit HRA, an ICHRA. For your own membership as a self-employed person, the treatment depends on your situation. This is not tax advice and I am not your accountant — ask your CPA before you rely on any of it. An employer-paid arrangement can also have ERISA implications worth an attorney’s look.

Major credit and debit cards, HSA and FSA cards, cash, ACH transfer, Zelle, and PayPal. I also accept cryptocurrency — Bitcoin, Ethereum, or a dollar-pegged stablecoin. Members keep a card on file for the monthly charge. Whatever you use, payment is due at the time of service — nothing is billed to you later, and no insurance is billed at all.

It is a card on file, exactly like a Netflix subscription. You enter your card or bank account once at signup, in the secure Stripe checkout on the Subscribe page, and it is charged automatically every month on the same date. Billing starts the day you join, not on the first of the month, so nothing is prorated and there is no partial first month. There is no invoice to watch for, nothing to remember, and no visit to the office to pay.

No. The price you see is the exact amount that leaves your account. $99 a month means $99 — no enrollment fee, no processing surcharge, no annual fee, and nothing added on. The one thing that changes the total is adding another person to the membership, and you would be the one asking for that. If the membership price itself ever changes, you will be told before it happens, not after.

You can cancel at any time — online in the billing portal, or by calling or texting (562) 575-6816. Cancelling stops the next charge. You are welcome to return later and to switch to pay-per-visit at any point.