How to calculate home physiotherapy visit charges, with a worked example

A home visit costs you far more than the session itself. There is the ride there and back, fuel, wear on your vehicle, the time spent in traffic, and the things you carry. If you charge the same as a clinic session, you are paying for the patient's convenience out of your own pocket. Here is a simple way to price a home visit that is fair to the patient and still worth your day.

The six parts of a home visit fee

1. Your clinical fee

What you charge for the treatment itself, as you would in a clinic, for the time you spend with the patient. A 45-minute session is worth more than a 30-minute one, and a complex case (a recent stroke, a post-operative knee) more than a routine one.

2. Distance

Use the round trip: the distance from where you start to the patient, doubled. A patient 6 km away is a 12 km trip.

3. Fuel

Round-trip kilometres divided by your vehicle's mileage, multiplied by the price of fuel.

4. Vehicle running costs

Servicing, tyres and wear. A simple allowance per kilometre covers it.

5. Travel time

The time you spend riding is time you cannot treat anyone else. Divide the round trip by your average city speed (often 15 to 25 km an hour in traffic) and value that time at a modest hourly rate.

6. Consumables

Tape, electrodes, disposables, and the use of a portable machine if you carry one.

A worked example

A physiotherapist on a motorbike visits a patient 6 km away for a 45-minute session.

• Clinical fee: ₹500

• Round trip: 12 km

• Fuel: 12 km ÷ 40 km per litre × ₹105 a litre = about ₹32

• Vehicle costs: 12 km × ₹2 = ₹24

• Travel time: 12 km at 20 km an hour = 36 minutes; at ₹300 an hour, about ₹180

• Consumables: ₹30

Total: about ₹766. Round it to a figure that is easy to say: ₹750 or ₹800 a visit.

Use your own numbers for fuel, mileage and time; they vary by city and vehicle. The point is to see every part of the cost, not to arrive at our figure.

Make it easy to explain

Patients accept a fee they understand. Three ways to keep it simple:

• Distance bands. One fee up to 5 km, a higher one for 5 to 10 km, and another beyond that.

• A course rate. A small discount when a patient books a course of sessions, since repeat visits to one area are easier to plan.

• A minimum fee. Below it, a visit is not worth the time, whatever the distance.

Tell the patient the fee before the first visit, and put it on the bill.

Charge the same way every time

Write your bands and rates down and use them for every patient, so two families in the same building are never charged differently by accident.

Recording it in PhysioDesk

• When you enrol a patient, set their session rate. A home visit patient simply has a higher rate than a clinic patient.

• Every bill is built from the patient's completed sessions in a period, at that rate, and can list each session date, so there is never a total to add up by hand.

• If a patient pays in advance for a course, record it in their wallet; future bills are paid from it first.

• If your clinic has a UPI ID, unpaid bills carry a UPI QR, so the patient can pay you before you leave.

• On your Reach page, tick that you visit patients at home and list the areas you cover, so patients searching for home physiotherapy nearby can find you.

Try it in the 30-minute demo from the pricing page.