What is direct primary care, and how is it different from concierge medicine?

Direct primary care (DPC) is a membership model: a flat monthly fee replaces insurance billing for primary care, giving you longer visits, direct messaging, and no copays. Concierge medicine typically charges a high annual retainer and still bills your insurance. DPC removes the insurance layer entirely, which is what makes Aspen Health affordable and simple.

How much does membership cost?

Aspen Health has three plans: Core ($100/month, adults 21+), Premium ($150/month, adults 21+), and Youth ($50/month, ages 6-20). A one-time onboarding fee applies ($300 adults, $100 youth), charged with your first month at enrollment. Membership requires a 6-month minimum, then continues month-to-month.

Do I still need health insurance?

Yes, keep it. Aspen Health is your primary care home, not insurance. Your membership covers everyday primary care: visits, messaging, and ongoing access. You'll still use insurance for hospitals, the ER, specialists, imaging, and prescriptions.

Can I use my HSA or FSA?

Yes. As of January 1, 2026, federal law confirms DPC membership fees are HSA-eligible, subject to a monthly cap of $150 per individual. Both Core and Premium fall within that cap. We can provide documentation if your HSA/FSA administrator requires it.

Do you bill insurance, or accept Medicare/Medicaid?

We don't bill insurance for membership, which is what lets us offer longer visits and direct access with no copays. Aspen has opted out of Medicare and Medicaid billing, but you're welcome to join regardless of status. We can provide a superbill for possible out-of-network reimbursement if your plan allows.

What's included in my membership?

Unlimited fair-use visits in-person and video, unlimited secure messaging, rapid in-office testing, group education sessions, and access to health coaching. Most routine labs, imaging, and prescriptions are referred to third parties and billed directly by them, often at discounted cash-pay member rates.

How fast can I be seen, and how do I reach Dr. Benson?

Urgent visits are generally available within 24 hours most days. You can message your doctor directly through the secure portal, with responses typically the same business day and no later than 72 hours. Messaging isn't monitored overnight or weekends.

Do you offer telemedicine, and where?

Yes. Dr. Benson offers secure video visits for patients physically located in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York. At least one in-person visit per year is strongly encouraged for best care.

What conditions do you treat, and what's your approach?

Aspen is a full primary care home with a focus on lifestyle-responsive and chronic issues: weight and metabolic health, gut health, thyroid and hormones, cardiometabolic risk, autoimmune conditions, fatigue, sleep, allergies, and mental health, plus routine preventive care. Treatment starts with lifestyle, adding medication when clinically needed.

Do you prescribe medications and order labs?

Yes. Dr. Benson prescribes when clinically indicated and manages chronic-condition medications, filled at your pharmacy of choice. Routine labs are referred to certified third-party labs; rapid in-office tests are included.

What if I need a specialist, hospital care, or imaging?

Those run through your insurance, as in any practice. Dr. Benson helps arrange referrals, shares clinical context with specialists, and follows up on results. Members also have access to discounted cash-pay imaging and lab referrals through network partners.

How do I cancel, and what's the commitment?

Membership requires a 6-month minimum commitment. After that, it's month-to-month and cancellable with 30 days notice. Early cancellation within the first six months requires paying the remaining balance. If you rejoin after cancelling, a $300 re-onboarding fee applies.

Wearables Are Great — Here's What They Can't Tell You

Sep 6

Written By Jay Benson

I have a lot of patients who show up to their appointment with their phone already open to their Oura or WHOOP app, ready to walk me through last night's sleep score. (Whoop, there it is.) I like seeing that. It means people are paying attention to their bodies in a way they weren't ten years ago.

But almost nobody has been told which numbers on that screen they can actually trust. So let's go through it.

Not all metrics are created equal

Researchers have spent years comparing consumer wearables against hospital-grade equipment — EKGs, sleep lab studies, the real thing. The short version: some of what your device tells you is quite good, and some of it is close to guesswork.

Reasonably accurate:

Resting heart rate. Wrist devices come within about a beat per minute of an EKG. Trust this one.
Heart rate during walking or running. Also solid.
Step count. Close enough to be useful, usually within about 10%.
Atrial fibrillation alerts. This is genuinely impressive. When these devices flag an irregular rhythm, they're right far more often than not — specificity around 90% or better. If your watch tells you it detected AFib, let your doctor know. Don't wait.

Take with a grain of salt:

Heart rate during weightlifting or cycling. Accuracy drops off noticeably during anything where you're gripping a bar or handlebars. The sensor needs decent contact and steady blood flow, and a clenched grip gives it neither.
Sleep staging. Your device is decent at telling whether you were asleep or awake. It is much shakier at deciding whether you were in deep sleep versus REM. Most devices also overestimate how much you actually slept.
Calories burned and VO2 max. These are the least reliable numbers on the whole dashboard. Error rates on energy expenditure can swing 20% in either direction, and VO2 max estimates can run 10 to 15% high.

One more thing worth knowing: if you have sleep apnea or insomnia, sleep tracking accuracy gets worse, not better. Which is unfortunate, because those are exactly the people most motivated to track it.

Nobody can check the math

Here's something that may surprise you. The companies don't publish their algorithms. How your ring calculates "readiness," how your watch decides you hit deep sleep at 1:14 a.m. — that's proprietary. It's a black box.

That means two devices worn on the same wrist on the same night can give you different answers, and there's no way for anyone, including me, to say which one got it right. Those algorithms also change over time without much notice, so a shift in your numbers sometimes reflects a software update rather than anything happening in your body.

How to actually read your own data

This is the part I wish came in the box.

Watch trends, not days. One bad recovery score means nothing. Your body has off nights — a late meal, a glass of wine, a stressful day. What matters is the direction things move over three or four weeks. If your resting heart rate has crept up five beats over a month, that's worth a conversation. If it was high on Tuesday, that's Tuesday.
Compare yourself to yourself. These devices are far better at detecting change in one person than at telling you how you stack up against anyone else. Your baseline is the useful benchmark.
Pick one number and one goal. The research on this is consistent — trackers help people when there's a specific target attached. People who set a step goal walk substantially more, around 1,800 extra steps a day in pooled studies. People who just wear the device and watch numbers accumulate mostly don't change anything.
Don't diagnose yourself at 2 a.m. A low HRV reading is not a medical finding. An elevated overnight heart rate after a hard workout is expected physiology, not a warning sign.

Where the evidence gets complicated

Here's where it gets interesting, because the research pulls in two directions.

When you look at wearables used on their own, the results are underwhelming. Large reviews pooling data from well over 100,000 people find real gains in physical activity — but small, often insignificant effects on the things we actually treat: blood pressure, cholesterol, A1c. A JAMA piece I read described wearables as facilitators, not drivers, of health change which I think is important.

But when the device is paired with actual clinical support, the picture changes. A meta-analysis of 35 trials in patients with chronic conditions found tracker-based programs that included counseling produced over 2,000 additional steps per day — plus measurable drops in systolic blood pressure, waist circumference, and LDL cholesterol. The common thread across those trials was consultation — someone actually reviewing the numbers with the patient.

So the device isn't the intervention. The device plus a plan plus someone paying attention is the intervention. That's the difference between having data and using it.

That's a big part of how we practice at Aspen Health — we have the time to actually sit with your trends and connect them to everything else in your chart.

I'll also say I expect the tools for pulling this data directly into your chart to keep getting better. I'm looking forward to reviewing your trends alongside your labs without you having to hand me your phone.

The takeaway

Keep wearing the thing. Trust your resting heart rate, take your sleep stages with skepticism, ignore the calorie count, and pay attention if it ever tells you your rhythm is irregular. Watch the month, not the night.

And if you're a patient here and you're tracking, bring it in. I'd like to actually look at it with you.

— Jay Benson, DO Founder, Aspen Health | Princeton, NJ

References

Doherty C, et al. Keeping pace with wearables: a living umbrella review of systematic reviews evaluating the accuracy of consumer wearable technologies in health measurement. Sports Medicine. 2024.

Ferguson T, et al. Effectiveness of wearable activity trackers to increase physical activity and improve health: a systematic review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Lancet Digital Health. 2022.

Franssen W, et al. Can consumer wearable activity tracker-based interventions improve physical activity and cardiometabolic health in patients with chronic diseases? A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity. 2020.

Patel MS, Asch DA, Volpp KG. Wearable devices as facilitators, not drivers, of health behavior change. JAMA. 2015.

Shei RJ, et al. Wearable activity trackers — advanced technology or advanced marketing? European Journal of Applied Physiology. 2022.

Guo J, et al. Validity and clinical utility of a wrist-worn device against polysomnography. PLOS One. 2025.

Jay Benson

Wearables Are Great — Here's What They Can't Tell You

Why Your Annual Physical Isn't Enough