Revenue per consultation hour: what does an hour with patients need to bring in?
Work backward from your personal needs through practice costs to the individual consultation hour, and see the minimum revenue required per hour with patients.
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Simplified model calculation, no tax or business advice. Your figures are processed in your browser and are not transmitted.
What the calculator gives you
Calculated from your needs
The calculator starts with what you need personally and works backward from there to each individual consultation hour.
All costs at a glance
Personal needs, pension provisions, taxes and eight items of practice expenses make up the minimum revenue your practice has to generate.
One figure for every hour
At the end, you see what an hour with patients must bring in at minimum, plus the hours that cover the practice costs alone.
How to calculate your revenue per consultation hour
Enter needs and costs
Personal needs and practice costs as individual items, with the costs taken from your profit calculation. Standard values apply for time with patients as long as you enter nothing, and you adjust the working days in the result; the comparison with actual revenue is optional.
Contact details
Briefly enter your details to unlock the result. If you have used another MediPulse tool, they are already filled in.
Get your result
Your minimum revenue per consultation hour with the full calculation, on screen and as a PDF.
Revenue per consultation hour: how the calculation works
If you know what an hour with patients must bring in at minimum, you can assess consultation times, new positions and investments in a single unit. Here is the logic behind the calculator.
Why profit is not enough
Taxable profit is not the money you have available. Repayment of the practice loan does not reduce profit but has to be paid out of it, as do income tax, the physicians' pension fund (Versorgungswerk) and health insurance. That is why the calculation starts with your personal needs and not with a profit figure.
Why only hours with patients count
Revenue is generated during consultation hours. Administration, documentation and running the practice take time but generate no revenue of their own. In 2023, practice owners worked an average of 45.8 hours per week, 33.1 of them in direct contact with patients (Central Research Institute of Ambulatory Health Care, Zentralinstitut für die kassenärztliche Versorgung, Zi-Praxis-Panel, Table 6). The calculator therefore divides the minimum revenue only by these hours.
What the hours for practice costs show
Practice expenses run all year, even when a consultation hour is canceled. Dividing them by the minimum revenue per consultation hour shows how many hours cover the costs alone. This lets you translate shorter consultation times or an additional position into hours.
A minimum, not a pricing recommendation
The result is the lower limit for planning. In a statutory health insurance practice, fees do not grow at the same rate as time, because flat rates and budgets apply. An additional hour there often brings in less than the average. It is worth recalculating after every major change: a new position, a purchase, a rent increase.
Frequently asked questions
What is the minimum revenue per consultation hour?
The revenue each working hour with patients must bring in at minimum so that personal needs, pension provisions, taxes and all practice costs are covered. It is the annual minimum revenue divided by the working hours with patients.
Where do I get the practice costs from?
From last year's profit calculation (cash-basis income statement, Einnahmen-Überschuss-Rechnung) or interim financial statement (BWA). The items in the calculator follow the usual structure: premises costs, staff, practice and laboratory supplies, fees and insurance, travel and continuing education, other operating expenses, interest and depreciation.
How many working days are realistic?
The calculator assumes 220 days, i.e. 44 working weeks of 5 days. If you want to be more precise, enter public holidays, vacation, continuing education and sick days individually; the calculator then deducts them from 365 days minus 104 weekend days. For comparison: in 2023, practice owners were absent for an average of 38.4 days, of which 32.8 days were vacation and 3.3 days illness (Zi-Praxis-Panel).
Why doesn't administrative time count?
Because no revenue is generated during that time. If you spread the minimum revenue across all working hours, you set the bar for the consultation hour too low.
Is the calculator free?
Yes, the calculator is free and non-binding. You do not need a subscription, only valid contact details to unlock the result.
What happens to my data?
Your figures are processed in your browser and not transmitted. Your contact details are processed in compliance with the GDPR and used solely for MediPulse to contact you.
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