Should I publish my prices?

For anything with a predictable price, yes — patients search for it, and a clinic that publishes gets the enquiry from people who have already accepted the number. For work that genuinely varies, publish a starting price and what moves it. "Contact us for pricing" filters out the price-sensitive, which is only useful if you meant to.

How do I price a first consultation?

By what it leads to. If a consultation reliably becomes treatment, it can sit near its floor and act as the door. If most consultations end there, it is a service in its own right and has to pay for itself. The mistake is assuming the first case without checking which one you are in.

What if my costs are higher than local prices?

Then one of three things is true: your utilisation is lower than the clinics you are comparing to, your costs are genuinely higher, or their prices do not cover their costs either. Utilisation is the one you can check and usually the one it turns out to be — the same fixed costs across more sold hours is a price cut nobody has to notice.

How often should prices change?

Once a year for the list, with a review whenever a major input moves — a lab increase, a rent renewal, a new hire. Clinics that leave it longer end up making a large correction, and a large correction is the kind patients actually react to.

How to price the work a clinic actually does

Most clinic price lists are inherited. Somebody set them years ago, competitors moved and were followed, and costs rose in between without anybody deciding anything. The list still works, in the sense that money arrives — but nobody can say which lines are carrying it.

The fix is not a pricing philosophy. It is one number, worked out once, that turns every price on your list into something you can check.

Start with what an hour costs you

Add up everything the clinic spends in a month, whether or not anybody walks through the door: rent, salaries, software, insurance, equipment finance, utilities. Then divide by the hours you can actually sell.

cost per hour = monthly fixed costs ÷ sellable hours per month

Sellable hours is the part people get wrong. It is not the hours you are open. Take opening hours, subtract admin time, holidays, training and the slots you hold empty on purpose — then subtract the share you know you will not fill, because a room booked 70% of the time has to carry its cost across that 70%.

Example

A single-room clinic

Fixed costs €14,000/month
Open 160 hours, minus 30 for admin, holidays and reserved slots → 130
Realistically 75% filled → 98 sellable hours
€14,000 ÷ 98 = €143 per hour, before anybody is treated
A 30-minute appointment must cover €71 before consumables

Important

If the owner treats patients, put a market salary for that work in the fixed costs. Leaving it out makes every price look profitable and quietly turns the owner's unpaid hours into the thing subsidising the price list.

Then add what the treatment itself costs

On top of the hour: consumables, lab fees, the implant or the material, and anything you pay a visiting specialist per case. These vary per treatment, which is exactly why an average price list hides them.

floor price = (cost per hour × hours used) + direct costs

That figure is a floor, not a price. It is the number below which the appointment costs you money to perform, and its job is to tell you which lines on your list are quietly subsidised by the others.

Price above the floor, on purpose

What sits between the floor and the price you charge is a judgement, and it is a different judgement per treatment. Three things reasonably move it.

Scarcity. Work only two people in the city do supports a different margin from work every clinic offers.
What it leads to. A first consultation can sit near the floor if it reliably becomes a course of treatment. It should not sit near the floor if it usually does not.
Who is paying. Where an insurer or a public scheme sets the fee, your only lever is whether to do the work at all — which is a decision worth taking deliberately rather than by default.

What should not move it is what the clinic down the road charges. Their price reflects their rent, their utilisation and their salaries, and you can see none of the three.

The treatment that loses money

Once you have floors, you will find at least one. Usually it is a long, low-priced treatment that everybody assumed was fine because the patients who come for it are nice.

Losing money is not automatically a reason to stop. It is a reason to know, and then to pick one of four answers rather than drifting.

Answer	When it is right
Raise the price	The work is valued and demand is not fragile
Make it shorter	The time, not the price, is the problem — often a process issue
Keep it as a loss leader	It reliably leads to work that pays, and you can show it does
Stop offering it	It neither pays nor leads anywhere, and it occupies the room

Note

The loss-leader answer is the one clinics choose most and check least. If you take it, look at what those patients actually booked next over the following year. Sometimes the answer is nothing, and it has been true for a while.

Raising prices without losing people

Increases are survivable and badly-handled increases are not. What patients react to is being surprised, far more than the amount.

Change the list on a date, not gradually. A price that drifts makes every quote a negotiation.
Give a few weeks' notice on the site and at the desk, and honour anything already quoted in writing.
Move a few lines at a time rather than the whole list at once — a uniform rise tells patients it is about you, not about the work.
Brief the front desk on the reason before the date, because they are the ones who will be asked.
Look at bookings for the treatments you changed, not at total revenue, for the two months after.

That last step is the one that gets skipped, and it is the only one that answers the question you actually had.

Packages, plans and discounts

A package is a discount you have decided in advance, so decide what it buys. Committed future appointments and money up front are both worth paying for; a lower price on work the patient was going to have anyway is not.

Payment plans are a different instrument, and they are usually the better one. Splitting a large treatment over months makes it affordable without reducing what you are paid for it — you are lending convenience rather than discounting the work.

Tip

Whatever you offer, write down what it costs at the floor before you launch it. The unprofitable line in most clinics is not a treatment — it is a package somebody built from three treatments without adding up their floors.

Once a year, in an afternoon

Recompute cost per hour with this year's actual costs and actual utilisation.
Recompute the floor for every service, with current consumable and lab prices.
Flag every line within 10% of its floor, or below it.
Decide one of the four answers for each flagged line.
Set a date, tell people, and change it.

It takes an afternoon and it is the difference between a price list you chose and one you inherited. Most clinics find at least one line they would never have set at that price today.

Common questions

Should I publish my prices?: For anything with a predictable price, yes — patients search for it, and a clinic that publishes gets the enquiry from people who have already accepted the number. For work that genuinely varies, publish a starting price and what moves it. "Contact us for pricing" filters out the price-sensitive, which is only useful if you meant to.
How do I price a first consultation?: By what it leads to. If a consultation reliably becomes treatment, it can sit near its floor and act as the door. If most consultations end there, it is a service in its own right and has to pay for itself. The mistake is assuming the first case without checking which one you are in.
What if my costs are higher than local prices?: Then one of three things is true: your utilisation is lower than the clinics you are comparing to, your costs are genuinely higher, or their prices do not cover their costs either. Utilisation is the one you can check and usually the one it turns out to be — the same fixed costs across more sold hours is a price cut nobody has to notice.
How often should prices change?: Once a year for the list, with a review whenever a major input moves — a lab increase, a rent renewal, a new hire. Clinics that leave it longer end up making a large correction, and a large correction is the kind patients actually react to.

Your price list, where the appointments are.

Services in Clinic+ carry a duration and a price, so the diary, the invoice and the reports all read the same list — which is what makes revenue per hour something you can look up rather than rebuild each year.

See how services work