When cash flow starts to pinch, most practice owners look outward—new marketing campaigns, new devices, even expansion plans. But the fastest way to boost cash flow isn’t out there. It’s inside your existing patient flow. The key is your Average Patient Charge (APC)—the amount you actually collect per visit.

All adjustments fall into two categories. Knowing which is which helps you separate what’s normal from what’s fixable. Contractual Adjustments These are the discounts you’ve agreed to with insurance companies. They’re built into your payer contracts and are part of the cost of doing business. They can’t be avoided—and they shouldn’t be feared. Think of them as the difference between your retail price and your contracted price. Write-Offs Write-offs are different

Many small healthcare practices run at or near break-even once you account for the fair cost of the owner’s work. On paper, it might look like a solid operation: Years of service to the community Loyal staff and steady patients A history of “profitability” But once you normalize expenses—especially provider compensation—the math often changes.

Many medical offices glance at their billed charges and assume that’s their income. It’s not. The real measure of your financial health is your Average Patient Charge (APC). Average Patient Charge tells you how much money you actually collect per patient visit, not what you billed. It’s the difference between thinking your practice is profitable and actually knowing it is.

When you hand over your practice, you’re not just transferring assets—you’re transferring identity.Your successor inherits more than a patient roster and a revenue stream. They inherit your name on the door, your standards of care, and the trust your community has placed in you. That inheritance is sacred—and one wrong hire can erode it faster than any market downturn or billing error. Finding the right successor isn’t just a business decision; it’s the hardest hire you’ll e

Too often, practices treat accounting like a project with a finish line: set up QuickBooks, build a few reports, and call it done. But six months later, the questions have changed — and the numbers no longer tell the full story. Your business has evolved. Your accounting should too.

You can rebuild pricing for any procedure in under fifteen minutes using four building blocks: Consumables – List items consumed per case and calculate true per-unit cost, including wastage. Labor – Convert provider and staff minutes (including setup and documentation) into cost. Commission/Performance Pay – Factor in any incentives or case-level bonuses. Overhead Spread – Allocate the fair share of rent, admin, marketing, and software costs. Once the math is done, add your t

When growth stalls, the reflex is usually: “We just need more customers.” Sometimes that’s true. More often, it’s not. Most businesses don’t grow by piling on volume—they grow by pulling one of three levers: Capacity, Price, or Patient Mix. The real challenge is identifying which lever matters right now, then focusing relentlessly on it for the next 30–90 days.

CFOs help you make better decisions about the future: pricing, capacity, cash, and risk. Both are essential. They’re just not the same. Think about it like a vehicle. A CPA is the licensed mechanic who ensures your car is safe and road-legal. The CFO is your crew chief and navigator—choosing routes, pit stops, and race strategy. If you keep asking the mechanic why your lap times are slow, you’ll get great maintenance…and no improvement plan.

At DrCFO, we know your online rating is more than a vanity metric—it’s a powerful conversion engine. Patients skim reviews before they book, and those tiny decimals in your average often decide who wins the appointment. The challenge is that the math behind ratings is deceptive. Every new review increases both the numerator and denominator, which means that moving from 4.7 to 4.8 might take dozens of perfect scores. Most practices underestimate how hard that climb can be. Th

Seasonality isn’t a surprise—it’s a system. The sooner you treat it as such, the sooner your clinic can win every month of the year.

Every multi-location practice eventually faces the same question: do we keep separate tax IDs, or merge into one? A common mistake: merge first, figure out reporting later. Revenue and costs pool together, and suddenly managers don’t trust their P&Ls. Without guardrails, every “why is this site underperforming?” conversation turns into guesswork. The good news: this is fixable with the right design up front.

Most practices chase growth by doing “more of everything”—more hours, more patients, more services. It feels busy but rarely produces sustained results. Instead, think of your practice as a dashboard with three levers of revenue. If you learn to separate them—and pull one at a time—you’ll grow faster, with less stress and greater clarity.

Ancillary and supportive services often decrease blended APC but still boost overall profit. These services tend to have steadier schedules, fewer payer hurdles, and higher staff-time leverage.

Owner Shield is a practical mindset and toolkit for reducing risk without dulling your leadership edge.