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.
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Definition
Cost per patient encounter is the fully loaded operating cost of delivering one visit, calculated by dividing total operating expense by total encounters.
The detail
The cleanest published figure comes from U.S. Physical Therapy's FY2025 10-K, because a listed operator has to report it: $86.15 of clinic operating cost per visit across 6.15 million visits, of which $61.93 — 72% — is salaries and related costs. That single ratio is the most useful thing on this page. It means the cost of a visit is a staffing decision far more than a supplies or facilities decision, and that the lever on cost per encounter is schedule density, not vendor negotiation. On the revenue side of the same equation, Concentra reports $147.42 per visit in occupational health, split $210.15 for workers' compensation against $92.84 for employer services — the same room, the same staff, and a 2.3x difference driven purely by who is paying. Cost per encounter and revenue per encounter are set by different mechanisms, and confusing them is why practices cut supplies when the actual problem is payer mix. For overhead as a share of revenue, the two verified anchors are general dental at 60–65% of collections (ZenOne) and dermatology at 72.9% medical / 75.1% cosmetic (FTI Consulting). To calculate your own, sum total operating expense excluding owner compensation for the trailing twelve months and divide by total billable encounters. Track it monthly — the trend is the diagnosis.
U.S. Physical Therapy reports $86.15 of clinic operating cost per visit in FY2025, of which $61.93 is salaries — labour is 72% of the cost of a visit.
Source: U.S. Physical Therapy Inc. (NYSE: USPH), FY2025 Form 10-K
Concentra reports $147.42 revenue per visit in occupational health — $210.15 on a workers' compensation visit against $92.84 on employer services.
Source: Concentra Group Holdings (NYSE: CON), FY2025 Form 10-K
AMA Physician Practice Benchmark Survey tracks practice expense per physician across specialties annually.
Source: AMA Physician Practice Benchmark
What this means for clinic owners
From Sorso
If your cost per encounter is rising faster than your revenue per encounter, you have a problem that no amount of patient volume will fix. Track this metric monthly. It is the cleanest signal of whether your operating model is healthy.
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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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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