Fractional CFO
A fractional CFO is a part-time Chief Financial Officer who provides executive-level financial strategy to companies that do not need — or cannot justify — a full-time CFO hire. They work with a small number of clients, typically committing a defined number of hours per month to each engagement, and own the strategic finance function end to end.
Why this matters for your clinic
After 18 years in corporate finance I started working directly with clinic owners as a fractional CFO. Here is what the role actually does, not the LinkedIn version. In a typical $5M outpatient clinic engagement, I own monthly close review, a rolling 13-week cash forecast, payer contract review, location-level P&L build-out, and the one-on-one conversations with the owner about whether the next hire or the next location actually pencils out. Your accountant handles bookkeeping and taxes. Your billing company processes claims. Nobody in that stack is sitting across the desk from you asking whether your strategy is working — that gap is what a fractional CFO fills.
The economics are straightforward. Per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment Statistics for Financial Managers (SOC 11-3031), median annual pay for full-time financial managers is well into six figures, and a healthcare CFO with real specialty experience commonly runs $200K–$350K+ fully loaded once benefits and bonus are included (the Robert Half Salary Guide tracks this each year). A fractional engagement delivers the same caliber of strategic finance work for a fraction of that cost because you are paying for outcomes and hours, not a full headcount.
What I look for in a clinic before I take the engagement: revenue between roughly $3M and $50M, at least one location that is already profitable, and an owner who wants a thought partner rather than a dashboard vendor. If that sounds like your practice, the place to start is the full scope breakdown at /healthcare-accounting-services/fractional-cfo, which covers exactly what the monthly cadence looks like.
What good looks like
Typical fractional CFO pricing for outpatient healthcare clinics ranges roughly $4K–$8K per month depending on scope, number of locations, and complexity of payer mix. Benchmarks for equivalent full-time CFO compensation come from BLS OES 11-3031 (Financial Managers) and the Robert Half Salary Guide, which is updated annually.
Example
A dermatology group with 3 locations and ~$7.5M in revenue came to me with the classic symptom: strong top-line growth, flat take-home. Inside 90 days the fractional CFO engagement produced a location-level P&L (Location 2 was losing money against fully allocated overhead), a renegotiated commercial payer contract on the largest plan, and a 13-week cash forecast the owner actually used to time a capex decision on laser equipment. None of that was new financial science — it was just the strategic layer nobody in their existing vendor stack was accountable for.
From Sorso
The clinics that get the most out of a fractional CFO are the ones who treat me as a co-pilot on weekly decisions, not an auditor who shows up once a month — the ROI lives in the conversations, not the deliverables.
Founder of Sorso. 18 years in corporate finance. Managed a $450M loan portfolio before building a fractional CFO firm exclusively for healthcare clinics.
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