The Future of Primary Care Is Independent: How Aledade Helps Doctors Break Free From Employed Medicine with Dr. Umar Bowers and Dan Bowles

Key Podcast Moments

• Dr. Umar Bowers explains the moment he realized he needed to leave employed medicine and why he had zero fear stepping out on his own.
• Dan Bowles breaks down how Aledade’s turnkey model helps physicians open independent practices in as little as 90 days.
• Umar defines what independence actually means for clinicians — autonomy, flexibility, innovation, and decision-making power.
• Dan reveals why so many doctors feel trapped in employment agreements and the financial upside they’re missing.
• Together, Umar and Dan outline how value-based care is transforming primary care economics and restoring physician agency.

Independent primary care is returning — not as nostalgia, but as a necessary correction to a system that has pushed too many physicians into burnout, bureaucracy, and employment structures that limit their ability to practice real medicine. In this episode of How I Doctor, Offcall co-founder Dr. Graham Walker sits down with Dr. Umar Bowers, an internist who left a major health system to build the practice he always imagined, and Dan Bowles, General Manager of Practice Health at Aledade, the physician-led company supporting more than 2,400 practices nationwide.

Umar’s journey is one more physicians are beginning to recognize in themselves. After watching autonomy shrink and administrative pressure grow, he made the leap to open Dawson Medical Group with Aledade’s turnkey support. You can explore his full story in Aledade’s physician profile.Today, his practice thrives — not in spite of independence, but because of it.

Dan offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at why physicians so often feel trapped by their contracts, and what it takes to transition from employment back to ownership. Aledade’s model provides the infrastructure most doctors assume they’d need a large system for: contracting, credentialing, analytics, workflows, startup capital, and perhaps most importantly a ready-made community of independent clinicians who support each other.

This episode isn’t about leaving medicine. It’s about staying in medicine — on your own terms. For physicians who want more control, more connection, and more meaning, independent practice may not only be possible…it may be the future.

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Top 4 Takeaways

1. Independence gives physicians real control — over schedules, staffing, innovation, and decision-making.

As Umar describes it, independence isn’t an abstract idea — it’s the ability to decide how you practice, who you hire, how you allocate resources, and which innovations you bring into your clinic. Instead of asking permission, independent physicians make the call themselves. This flexibility reduces cognitive burden and supports better patient care. For many doctors, it’s the first time in years they feel like they’re practicing medicine with agency instead of operating inside a system they didn’t design.