CLIFF PORTER, MD, PHD
Medical Director
Board-Certified Family Physician
Dr. Cliff Porter brings an unusual combination of clinical medicine, academic depth, military leadership, and systems-level thinking to Austin Concierge Therapy.
He is the founder of Texas Direct Medical Care, a direct primary care practice built around something increasingly rare in medicine: time, access, continuity, and a physician who knows the larger story. As ACT’s Medical Director, Cliff advises our clinical team when medical issues intersect with mental health and provides medical leadership for our ketamine program.
Board_Certified
Family Medicine
Founder, Texas
Direct Medical Care
Senior Fellow
Healthcare Policy
Colonel
U.S. Army (Ret.)
Sometimes the whole picture includes both.
Mental health and physical health do not always arrive in neat, separate categories. Medications, underlying medical conditions, sleep, hormones, pain, substance use, and other physiological factors can all affect how someone feels and functions.
As Medical Director, Cliff gives Austin Concierge Therapy another layer of clinical perspective when a case has a meaningful medical component. He also provides medical leadership for our ketamine treatment program, while his practice, Texas Direct Medical Care, is a trusted primary-care resource for many ACT clients.
The goal is not to turn therapy into medicine. It is to make sure important pieces of a complicated case do not get missed simply because they fall outside one clinician’s discipline.
From philosophy professor to Army physician.
Before Cliff became a physician, he was a scholar and professor. He earned a PhD in political philosophy and taught history and philosophy—training that still shows up in the way he thinks: analytically, systemically, and with an unusual ability to explain complicated ideas clearly.
His career then took him through medicine and three decades of military service. Cliff served in both enlisted and officer ranks, practiced medicine in the U.S. Army, deployed to Iraq, and ultimately retired as a Colonel. His military service included recognition with the Bronze Star Medal.
Along the way, his medical work has ranged from full-spectrum family medicine and urgent care to hospital and military medicine. Today, that breadth gives him a particularly useful instinct for recognizing when something that looks psychological may also have a medical, medication-related, or physiological component.
And despite the résumé, Cliff is remarkably easy to talk to. He has the kind of warm, unhurried bedside manner that makes complicated situations feel more manageable—not because he oversimplifies them, but because he knows how to make them understandable.
That combination of breadth, curiosity, and warmth is what makes Cliff such a natural fit at Austin Concierge Therapy. He can move comfortably between the medical details and the larger human story—and knows that good care often depends on understanding both.
More than a physician on the team.
Trusted partners in care.
Cliff’s relationship with Austin Concierge Therapy extends beyond clinical consultation. His practice, Texas Direct Medical Care, has become a trusted primary-care resource for many ACT clients who want the same kind of access, continuity, and relationship-based care they value in therapy.
His medical team also provides the medical infrastructure behind ACT’s ketamine program—including medical evaluation, prescribing, monitoring, and the physician oversight required to provide treatment safely.
And when something arises in therapy that may have a meaningful medical component, our clinicians have access to a physician who understands how we work and can help us think through what may be happening.
The result is not one giant treatment team managing every aspect of someone’s life. It is something simpler: trusted professionals who know one another, communicate when appropriate, and are willing to work together when the case calls for it.
Medicine shaped by more than medicine.
Cliff’s path to medicine has never been particularly conventional. Before medical school, he was a historian, philosopher, and professor. Three decades of military service added another kind of education—leadership, decision-making under pressure, and medicine practiced far outside the ordinary clinic.
01 — Medical Education & Certification
- Board-Certified in Family Medicine
- MD, Eastern Virginia Medical School
- Founder, Texas Direct Medical Care
- Former Medical Director for urgent-care clinics in Travis County
- Full-spectrum family and military medicine experience
02 — Academic Background
- PhD, Claremont Graduate School
- MA, History — University of Saskatchewan
- BA, History — University of Saskatchewan
- Former professor of history and philosophy
- Ongoing scholarship in healthcare policy, ethics, and history
03 — Military Service & Leadership
- 30 years of U.S. military service
- Enlisted and officer service
- Colonel, U.S. Army — Retired
- Iraq deployment, 1st Armored Division
- Senior Flight Physician, 36th Combat Aviation Brigade
- Bronze Star Medal
04 — Healthcare Leadership
- Senior Fellow, Healthcare Policy
- Appointed by Governor Greg Abbott to the Texas Health Professions Workforce Coordinating Council
- Healthcare-policy research and legislative testimony