What is the average revenue per provider?
There is no free public benchmark for collections per FTE provider by specialty — MGMA's survey is the industry reference and it is a paid product. From our own client work, general dentistry commonly runs $700K to $1.1M per dentist and physical therapy $250K to $350K per FTE clinician.
Want this answered for your own clinic?
Definition
Revenue per provider is total practice collections divided by full-time-equivalent (FTE) revenue-generating providers (physicians, NPs, PAs, dentists, PTs).
The detail
Revenue per provider is the cleanest single benchmark of provider productivity, but the right comparison depends on specialty. MGMA's Provider Compensation and Production Survey is the industry reference for median collections per FTE physician by specialty, but its figures sit behind DataDive and we will not reproduce numbers we cannot link you to. Mid-level providers generate less revenue than physicians but at materially lower compensation, which is why well-utilized NPs and PAs can lift practice profitability. Where we have our own book to speak from: general dentistry commonly runs $700K to $1.1M per dentist, and physical therapy $250K to $350K per FTE clinician. Those are our numbers from our own client work, not a survey, and they describe the segments we actually serve. The biggest drivers of revenue per provider are schedule density, no-show rate, and complete billing of every encounter, not provider speed.
MGMA Provider Compensation and Production Survey is the industry standard source for specialty-specific productivity benchmarks.
Source: MGMA Compensation Data
Schedule density (booked vs available slots) typically explains more variance in provider revenue than appointment length.
Source: MGMA Practice Operations
What this means for clinic owners
From Sorso
Revenue per provider is a productivity metric, not an effort metric. Providers who appear less busy often generate more revenue because their schedules are tighter and their billing capture is cleaner. Measure outcomes, not hours.
Continue with Sorso
How clinic owners typically work with us after a question like this
Fractional CFO
Strategic CFO for $3M–$50M clinics
Forecasts, location-level P&L, exit prep. Starts at $4,000/mo.
Explore Fractional CFO →Accounting
Healthcare-specialist accounting
Books done right by people who understand clinic finance. Starts at $2,000/mo.
Explore Accounting →Free Assessment
See where your clinic stands
4-minute, 15-question diagnostic. Personalized scorecard emailed to you.
Take the Free Assessment →Related questions
What is the average cost per patient encounter?
Two operators publish this directly. U.S. Physical Therapy reports $86.15 of operating cost per visit for FY2025, of which $61.93 is salaries — labour is 72% of the cost of a PT visit. Concentra reports $147.42 of revenue per visit in occupational health. Both are large multi-site operators, so read them as the economics of delivery at scale, then run the same arithmetic on your own trailing twelve months.
How much should I pay my practice manager?
BLS reports a median annual wage of $117,960 for medical and health services managers (May 2024), with the bottom 10 percent under $67,900 and the top 10 percent above $219,080. Outpatient practice managers sit toward the lower half of that range; multi-location administrators toward the upper.
What is a good profit margin for a dental practice?
A healthy general dental practice runs 35 to 45 percent owner profit margin (pre-tax, including owner comp). Normalized EBITDA margin runs 18 to 28 percent after market-rate clinical and management compensation. Below 30 percent owner margin signals a problem worth investigating.
What is a good overhead ratio for medical practices?
General dentistry runs 60–65% of collections, with above 70% treated as a problem (ZenOne). Dermatology runs 72.9% of net revenue for medical and 75.1% for cosmetic (FTI Consulting). Outpatient physical therapy runs 80.8% at clinic level — salaries alone are 59.1% — per U.S. Physical Therapy's FY2025 10-K. Each of those links to the page carrying the figure. Note the spread: an 80.8% overhead ratio is healthy in physical therapy and would be a crisis in dentistry, which is why a single cross-specialty target is worse than none.
What is a good staff-to-provider ratio?
A good staff-to-provider ratio is 3.5 to 5.5 FTE staff per FTE provider for most outpatient specialties, with primary care typically 4 to 5, specialty care 3.5 to 4.5, and procedural specialties 5 to 7.
When should I add a second clinic location?
You should add a second location when your first location is at 80 percent or more capacity utilization, has 25 percent or higher EBITDA margins, and you have 6 to 12 months of operating cash plus dedicated growth capital.
What financial KPIs should I track for my clinic?
The core 8 financial KPIs every clinic should track monthly are revenue, EBITDA, net collection rate, days in AR, denial rate, revenue per provider, overhead ratio, and rolling 13-week cash forecast.
What is a reasonable patient no-show rate for an outpatient clinic?
Published no-show rates are higher than most practices assume: a 2024 systematic review of outpatient clinics found rates reported between 12% and 42% across studies. Where your own practice should sit depends on specialty and payer mix — primary care, behavioral health, and Medicaid-heavy panels run structurally higher, while elective and cash-pay practices run lower because patients have a deposit on the line. Whatever the number, the fix is rarely a single tactic; it is a stacked system of reminders, deposits, overbooking discipline, and patient selection.
What is a fair productivity bonus structure for outpatient clinic providers?
A fair productivity bonus for outpatient providers ties incremental pay to a measurable production metric (personal collections, wRVUs, or net visit revenue) above a defined threshold, with the threshold and rate calibrated so total compensation lands within MGMA benchmarks for the specialty at expected production. Common structures pay 30 to 45 percent of collections or a per-wRVU rate above threshold, often capped or tiered to protect practice margin.
What does switching EHR systems actually cost in lost clinical productivity?
Beyond software fees and implementation, an EHR switch typically costs an outpatient practice 4 to 12 weeks of reduced provider productivity, with the steepest drop in the first 30 days and a gradual return to baseline over a quarter or two. The actual revenue impact varies by specialty, provider tenure, and how much of the legacy workflow has to be relearned, and it is consistently the largest hidden cost of an EHR transition.
How many patients does an average primary care physician see per day?
Physicians surveyed by The Physicians Foundation reported seeing approximately 20 patients per day, alongside an average 53-hour work week. Volume alone is a misleading metric; payer mix, visit complexity, panel size, support staff, and documentation burden drive whether a given schedule is sustainable or a path to burnout.
How do work RVU productivity targets compare across medical specialties?
Work RVU (wRVU) productivity benchmarks vary widely by specialty, with primary care sitting well below the procedural specialties. The benchmarks that matter for compensation and capacity planning come from specialty-specific MGMA, AMGA, or SullivanCotter survey data, not generic averages.
Founder of Sorso and a CFA charterholder. Before Sorso, Stan spent 19 years in corporate finance at institutions including UniCredit and Société Générale — managing a $450M loan portfolio and making senior partner at a major mezzanine lender by 29 — then built a fractional CFO firm exclusively for outpatient healthcare clinics.
Want to see how your practice measures up?
Take the 4-minute financial assessment. It is free, and it will show you where your practice is leaking money.