Physical therapy business plan template
A clinic plan is short. Seven sections, and only three of them are about money. The one most often skipped — naming the referrers — is the one a lender reads twice.
Sections with real content
7 / 7
1 · Summary
2 · Service and setting
3 · Referral market
4 · Staffing and capacity
5 · Payer mix and fees
6 · Money
7 · What could go wrong
The referral section is the plan
Everything else is arithmetic you can redo. Whether three named orthopaedic groups will send you patients, and why they would move from where they send now, is the question the whole thing rests on. A market section that describes a county’s population and no individual referrer has not answered it.
Cash lands 45 to 60 days late
The first commercial payment arrives a month and a half to two months after the first visit, and credentialling can add months before that. Reserve is sized against that gap, not against the fit-out. Clinics that fail rarely fail on demand.
Capacity before growth
Write the trigger for the second hire as a measurement, not a feeling: a schedule holding above a set occupancy for a set number of weeks. The same discipline applies to the second room and the second location. Without it, hiring happens in the busy month and hurts in the quiet one.
Sector background worth quoting
BLS puts physical therapist employment at 283,700 with 12% projected growth over 2025–35, against a 102,760 dollar median wage. That is useful for a landlord and useless for a lender, who wants your break-even, not the sector’s. Use the visit fee calculator for the number they will actually ask for. Fuller wage detail sits in the salary guide.
Red flag — refer out
If the plan only works at a visit volume that means twelve-minute treatments, the problem is the plan. Patients notice before the spreadsheet does.
Employment and wage figures: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook — Physical Therapists (May 2025 wage data), read 2026-09-04.
Sources
- BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook — Physical Therapists — May 2025 wage data · read 2026-09-04
Keep reading
Visit Fee Calculator
Price a cash-pay visit from your own overhead, time and target margin.
Physical Therapist Salary
National and state pay for physical therapists, straight from BLS data.
Physical Therapist Assistant Salary
PTA pay, the gap to PT pay, and where the highest-paying settings are.
Chiropractor Salary
What chiropractors earn employed versus in their own practice.