For owners of insurance-based PT clinics

What is an empty appointment slot costing you a year?

Six questions, about a minute. You'll get a real number, the research it's measured against, and the free counting sheet that tells you which of the two answers is true for your clinic.

01

Attended visits, all clinicians. A rough number is fine.

visits / week
02

PTs and PTAs, full-time equivalent.

FTE
03

Net, after the insurer takes its view. Not sure? Leave it — published figures run $91 to $106.

$per visit
04

One course of care, evaluation through discharge. Published average is 11 to 12.

visits
05

Your best guess. Don't look it up — the guess is the point.

06

Most don't, and most owners have never had cause to check.

Your result

Your estimate Measured average, 10.9% Measured range, 15–31%
At the number you gave me

At the rate the largest study measures

Missed-appointment rates: Bhavsar et al., PLOS ONE, 2021 — 828 clinics, 26 states, 6,023,363 appointments — and the American Alliance of Orthopaedic Executives PT practice survey, 131 administrators. Visits per course of care: Gozalo, Resnik & Silver, Health Services Research, 2015, 538 clinics. Every figure here is annual and is revenue booked, not cash collected — reimbursement lands 30 to 60 days after date of service. The calculation assumes a recovered visit costs you almost nothing extra to deliver, because the clinician was already being paid for that hour. It also caps the improvement at six percentage points rather than assuming a move to zero — clinics running reminders with a 24-hour policy measure around 6.07% no-shows against a 7.81% average, so six points is a real move, not a perfect one.

Here's the part nobody can answer for you

So count it. The sheet below is five columns and it takes your front desk about ten seconds per appointment. Sixty days of it and you'll know your own number instead of estimating it — whether you ever speak to me or not.

What this is. A calculator built by Alex Stewart at Soleus, who measures where money leaks out of owner-operated clinics. It uses published research, names every source, and shows its arithmetic so you can check it. It is not a diagnosis of your clinic and it isn't a promise of anything — it's an estimate built from six numbers you gave me in a minute.

Questions, or you think a number here is wrong: [email protected]. If you know this trade better than the research does, I'd rather hear it.