Clinics
Practitioner utilisation, without the guilt
The number that tells you whether to hire, and the reason chasing 100% backfires.
The short answer
Utilisation = billable clinical hours ÷ available clinical hours, × 100. Allied health targets typically sit at 75 to 85%. Above 90% sustained is not excellence, it is a practice with no capacity to absorb a busy week.
The formula
Utilisation = (billable hours ÷ available hours) × 100
Available hours means rostered clinical time, not hours in the building. Admin blocks, team meetings and lunch are not available clinical hours, and counting them makes every practitioner look worse than they are.
Worked example
A practitioner is rostered for 30 clinical hours in a week and bills 24 of them.
24 ÷ 30 = 0.8 0.8 × 100 = 80% utilisation
Why 100% is the wrong target
A practitioner at 100% has no room for a patient who needs an extra fifteen minutes, no room for a same-day urgent booking, and no room to be human. Practices that push utilisation to the ceiling tend to pay for it in cancellations, burnout and turnover, all of which cost more than the marginal appointment earned.
The 75 to 85% band exists because it is the range where a clinic is genuinely busy but still able to respond.
What low utilisation is usually telling you
- Below 60%: a demand problem. More marketing will help; more capacity will not.
- 60 to 75%: usually a scheduling problem. Gaps between appointments, poor recall, or a diary that is hard to fill late.
- Consistently above 90%: a capacity problem. This is your hiring signal, and it arrives before the revenue dip does.
Track it per practitioner and weekly. A monthly average is too slow to act on and hides exactly the variation you need to see.
See it on your own numbers.
Thirty days, no card. Start with your figures or a template for your trade.