What numbers should a physical therapy clinic owner track each month?

Seven numbers give a physical therapy owner a clear read on the clinic. They are visits per therapist per day, net revenue per visit, units billed per visit, cancellation and no-show rate, payer mix, labor cost as a percentage of revenue, and days in accounts receivable. Each one answers a different question. Together they explain why a month went well or badly.

Start with productivity. Visits per therapist per day shows how full the schedule really is. Outpatient benchmarks are often cited around 10 to 14, but a clinic with longer evaluations or more complex patients may run lower and still do fine. Track it by therapist and not just clinic-wide, so you can see who has open capacity and who is stretched thin. Cancellation and no-show rate belongs right next to it. A therapist booked for 14 who sees 11 has a scheduling problem, not a capacity problem, and those lost visits rarely come back.

Next is what each visit is worth. Calculate net revenue per visit from what you actually collected, not what you billed. Most clinics land somewhere around $90 to $140 depending on payer mix. Units billed per visit, with industry averages around 3.0 to 3.6, helps explain changes in that number. If units drop, look at visit length and documentation habits before assuming payers cut their rates.

Payer mix ties these together. Workers’ comp and auto claims typically pay more per visit than other payers. A month where visits went up but revenue stayed flat often turns out to be a shift in payer mix. Seeing the percentage of visits and revenue by payer each month keeps that from being a surprise.

Labor cost as a percentage of revenue is usually the biggest expense line. Include therapists, aides, front desk staff, payroll taxes, and benefits. When therapists are paid on productivity, this number moves with volume, so read it alongside visits and revenue rather than on its own. Pay errors also distort it, which is one more reason to get clinician pay calculated correctly every pay run.

Days in accounts receivable tells you how quickly claims turn into cash. When it creeps up, it usually points to denials, slow follow-up, or a payer that changed its process. Reviewing it monthly means a billing problem gets caught in weeks instead of quarters.

A word on benchmarks. Published figures vary by source, region, and specialty mix, so don’t treat any single number as a pass or fail grade. The value comes from tracking the same numbers the same way every month and watching the trend. That only works if the books are closed and reconciled first. If your billing system says you collected $82,000 and only $76,000 reached the bank, every metric built on that report is off. Checking reported collections against actual deposits is a standard part of how we keep the books for therapy and rehab practices.

As part of our medical practice bookkeeping and tax services, Baker’s closes the books each month and sends a one-page summary. That way these numbers are ready to review when you sit down to look at the month, instead of something you have to piece together yourself on a Sunday night.