Visit fee calculator

Most cash-pay fees are set by looking at the clinic down the road, which imports their rent and their no-show rate along with their number. This works it out from yours.

$
$
$
visits
min
%
%

Break-even fee per kept visit

$51.12

Fee at a 20% margin

$63.90

Monthly cost
$11200
Kept visits a month
219
Implied hourly
$85
Ink-and-wash drawing of a clinic front desk with a card reader and a plant
The desk where the fee is quoted, and where it is discounted.

Your own pay is a cost, not the profit

The commonest mistake in a small practice’s arithmetic is treating what the owner takes home as whatever is left. Put your salary in the cost line at the number you would have to pay someone to do your job — the BLS median for physical therapists is $102,760 a year and for chiropractors $79,200 — and let the margin sit on top of it. What is left is the business’s return, which is the number a buyer would eventually price.

No-shows are a price problem

An 8% no-show rate is not an 8% revenue problem — the room, the rent and your hour were all spent anyway. Every point of no-show pushes the break-even fee up on the visits that do happen. It is usually cheaper to fix the reminder system than to raise the fee.

Room time is the real unit

A 30-minute visit at $95 and a 60-minute visit at $150 are not the same business. The implied hourly figure above is what to compare across clinics, across services and against the idea of hiring. It is also the number that tells you whether a longer initial evaluation is affordable.

Then put it on paper

Once the fee is set, the patient needs it in writing before the visit, and a superbill after it if they intend to claim. Quoted verbally and discounted at the desk is how a defensible fee turns into a variable one.

Red flag — refer out

Never let the fee decide the plan. A patient who cannot afford the course of care you think they need gets referred, not stretched thinner.

Wage context: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook — Physical Therapists (May 2025 wage data), read 2026-09-04.

Sources

Keep reading

Physical Therapy Business Plan Template

Work through every section of an outpatient PT clinic business plan.

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.