Knowing Your Dollar Visit Average (DVA)

A lot of therapists ask me, how many dollars should I be collecting per patient?

That’s a hard thing to say because if you take insurance it’s one thing, if you take cash it’s another thing. If you’ve been in practice for a long time and have a good name and good reputation it’s one thing. If you’re brand new it’s another thing, but let me give you some real general guidelines.

First of all, whether you take insurance or don’t take insurance, you should have a Dollar Visit Average of at least $65 a visit. If you have less than $65 a visit, you either are not charging enough or you have too many people that you’re giving away services for free, or your billing is behind or you’re billing incorrectly and not getting paid but something’s happening. If you have a Dollar Visit Average of less than $65, you probably have to look seriously that you might some financial mistake going on. Now, you may say, I have some EAPs that pay me $50. Well, that’s true but you’ve got some other people that may pay you $80 or $90. So it all comes out and you should be collecting at least $65.

Now what about people that are full pay cash practitioners? Well, you’re going to be almost twice as high and that’s why it pays to be a cash practice. A cash practitioner will actually often have a PVA of well over $100, sometimes $125. If you’re a cash practitioner and you charge full fee to most of your patients. All I’m telling you is the range goes from about $65 to a $125 even up to $200 depending on how much you charge, but what you need to do is if you’re an insurance practitioner, make sure you fall within that $65 or more range. If you’re a cash practitioner, try to be in that over $100 per visit range and I think you’ll be in pretty good shape as far as your practice finances are concerned.

This is Dave Kats, thanks for listening.