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For clinicians

Fairness starts after overhead.

Group practice pay debates usually argue about the split percentage. That is the wrong number.

This calculator estimates what it costs to support your sessions first, then benchmarks how the remaining post-overhead margin is divided between the clinician doing the clinical work and the owner carrying the business.

For fully licensed clinicians, W-2 arrangements are benchmarked from a 50/50 post-overhead split and 1099 arrangements from 60/40, rising as the structure generates healthier surplus. For associates, the benchmark starts lower and moves closer to the fully licensed target when surplus is stronger.

Run the numbers

W-2 mode assumes the practice may be carrying benefits, payroll, and more support infrastructure, so the fairness benchmark starts from a lower tipping point.

Session economics

What a self-pay client would pay for the session you are modeling.

Enter your own average, or estimate it from common Texas CPT reimbursements below.

Percent of scheduled sessions that do not complete.

Percent actually collected after clawbacks or write-offs.

Percent of your caseload that is self-pay.

Percent of your caseload using insurance.

Caseload and pay

Flat rate paid when a session is completed and collected.

Benchmark settings

For fully licensed clinicians, W-2 mode starts from a 50/50 post-overhead benchmark, then adjusts upward when the structure is generating stronger margin. For associates, it starts lower and moves closer to the fully licensed benchmark as surplus gets stronger.

Overhead assumptions

Blank overhead fields are treated as $0.

Shared practice costs

Enter the total monthly costs the practice owner is covering across the shared practice setup. The calculator will divide these costs across the number of clinicians sharing them.

Use the total number of clinicians sharing bookkeeping and other group practice overhead.

Individual costs

Enter costs that can be reasonably known or closely estimated for one clinician, rather than the whole practice.

Use your own monthly room or office cost if the practice is sharing a suite.

Your monthly EHR cost. Leave as the per-clinician amount.

Basic directory presence starts around this range, but paid growth can raise it quickly.

Use your own monthly liability insurance cost.

Optional. Use this for health insurance, employer tax burden, or other real W-2 benefits value.

Optional. Use this if paid time off is part of the support package and you want it counted separately.

Average payroll software and processing overhead. Set to zero if not used.

Rough default for card processing on collected self-pay revenue.

Optional. Percent of collected revenue paid to a biller. Set to zero if not used.

Optional shortcut if you want to plug in a rough monthly benefits value fast.

What the split actually looks like

Below fairness benchmark

This looks like a high-fee, high-volume, or highly efficient structure with substantial post-overhead profit. In this range, a clinician share well above the baseline becomes easier to justify, and owner retention deserves more scrutiny. Based on that margin profile, the clinician share is landing meaningfully below benchmark.

Blended listed session rate
$114
Collected revenue per completed session
$108
Overhead per completed session
$28
Available margin after overhead
$80
Your pay per completed session
$40
Your share of gross revenue
36.9%
Actual share of post-overhead margin
49.8%
Margin profile
High-surplus structure
Benchmark target net share
65.0%
Difference from benchmark
-15.2 pts
Clinician receives 49.8% of net marginPractice retains 50.2% of net margin

Monthly breakdown

Cash pay price$150
Average insurance rate$105
Cash pay share of caseload20.0%
Insurance share of caseload80.0%
Clinicians sharing overhead1
Completed sessions per month85.1
Estimated monthly revenue$9,221
Total shared overhead entered$1,015
Your share of shared overhead$1,015
Estimated monthly overhead$2,384
Benefits included monthly$0
PTO included monthly$0
Payroll included monthly$25
Card fees included monthly$73
Biller fees included monthly$461
Your monthly pay$3,406
Practice retained per completed session$68

High-surplus structure. W-2 mode starts from a 50/50 post-overhead benchmark and scales up as margin gets stronger. This looks like a high-fee, high-volume, or highly efficient structure with substantial post-overhead profit. In this range, a clinician share well above the baseline becomes easier to justify, and owner retention deserves more scrutiny. Insurance estimate is using your manual average reimbursement input.

Educational estimate only. Use it to ground a transparency conversation, not to replace legal, accounting, or contract review.

Methodology notes

This tool is trying to answer a specific question: once the cost of running the practice is estimated, how is the remaining margin being divided between the clinician doing the clinical work and the owner carrying the business?

Assumptions

  • Revenue is estimated from your listed session rate or blended reimbursement average, adjusted by collection rate and no-show assumptions.
  • Shared practice overhead is divided across the number of clinicians you enter, while clearly per-clinician costs like EHR, supervision, benefits, payroll, and per-session fees are kept at the individual level.
  • Fairness is judged primarily on share of post-overhead margin, not just share of gross revenue.
  • For fully licensed clinicians, the calculator starts from a baseline post-overhead benchmark, then raises that benchmark when the structure is generating healthier surplus.
  • For associates, the benchmark starts lower as a conservative heuristic, but it moves closer to the fully licensed benchmark when the structure is generating healthier surplus.
  • High-fee, high-volume, or otherwise efficient structures should usually clear a higher fairness bar than thin-margin structures with little surplus left after overhead.

What clinician-favoring structures tend to offer

  • A larger share of post-overhead margin going directly to the person doing the clinical work.
  • More immediate earning power for clinicians with strong caseloads or high reimbursement rates.
  • Less room for the practice to subsidize low-utilization clinicians, extensive admin support, or richer benefits.

What practice-favoring structures tend to offer

  • More retained margin for admin labor, infrastructure, supervision, onboarding, and business stability.
  • More capacity to smooth out uneven caseloads, absorb ramp-up periods, or support clinicians who are not yet fully built out.
  • A higher risk that the structure drifts into owner-favoring territory if transparency is low and the clinician share stays well below benchmark.

What a balanced structure should feel like

  • The clinician should be able to understand, in broad terms, what the practice is paying for and why the split is what it is.
  • The owner should not be retaining more than half of post-overhead margin for a fully licensed clinician and calling that simply “standard.”
  • The arrangement should feel sustainable for both parties, not like one side is subsidizing the other indefinitely without clarity.

Tension built into the system

There is real structural tension baked into group practice economics. As clinicians see more clients, each hour of therapy becomes cheaper for the practice to support because fixed costs are spread across more sessions. That means part-time clinicians and clinicians with lower caseloads can be genuinely harder to support inside a group model, even when the practice is acting in good faith.

That does not mean a low split is automatically fair. It means the economics get tighter at lower utilization, and practices that want to support part-time or ramping clinicians need to be honest about how they are handling that tension.