Dr. Adam Robin - Healthcare Staffing

If you’re a private practice owner who feels broke and busy, check your admin payroll.

I see clinics doing ~$100K/month with 18–20% of revenue going to admin and non‑clinical labor:

Biller
Floater
Extra front desk
“Manager”

On paper it feels like you’re buying freedom.
In reality, you’re just buying fixed cost.

Admin bloat quietly eats the profit that should be funding:

Competitive clinicians pay
Your own compensation
The actual freedom you’re working for

That’s why you feel stuck even as revenue climbs. It’s not that the business can’t work… it’s that too much of the money is tied up in the wrong seats.

Before you hire your next admin, ask yourself:
Is this a people problem or a system problem?

Most practices try to fix sloppy systems by throwing another body at the front desk.
That’s how you end up with three people doing what one well‑trained person + a good VA could handle.

The smarter play is to tighten the workflow first:

Push repeatable, screen-based tasks to a trained virtual assistant at a fraction of the cost
Keep a lean in‑clinic admin team focused on high‑touch work only they can do

That’s how you:

Expand operational capacity
Keep admin payroll in that 10–15% sweet spot
Still have margin to pay clinicians competitively and buy back your own time as the owner

If you run a private practice, here’s a simple rule of thumb:

Your total admin and non‑clinical labor should usually stay under 15% of your total monthly collections.

So, if you’re collecting $100K/month, you’ve got roughly $10K–$15K to spend on:

Front desk
Billing
Operations
Leadership (all in)

The more competitive clinics I work with push that down to 10–12%.

Once that admin number creeps up to 18–20%, you’re stealing from the buckets that actually grow the business:

Clinicians pay (huge for attracting and keeping A‑players)
Marketing
Your own compensation as the owner

You can’t build a clinic that attracts and keeps top talent if all the money is tied up in overhead.

If you’re a private practice owner and you feel broke and busy, check your admin payroll.

I’ll often see a clinic doing ~$100K/month…
but non‑clinical payroll (front desk, biller, floater, manager, etc.) is eating 18–20%+ of revenue.

On paper, it looks like you’re “buying freedom.”
In reality, you’re buying fixed cost.

Admin bloat quietly eats the profit that should be:

Paying great clinicians
Paying you
Funding real freedom as the owner

That’s why you can grow top‑line and still feel stuck.

Here’s how the work-harder loop traps most practice owners:

You’re understaffed → you jump in → the overwork fries your brain → your fried brain makes rushed decisions → those decisions create more chaos → so you jump in even harder.

The only way out is to buy back bandwidth before you feel ready. That might look like:

Handing phones, insurance checks, or scheduling to a trained VA
Giving your front desk clear scripts so you’re not rewriting every email
Blocking out 2 hours where you’re not treating at all, just thinking and planning

You don’t wait until you “have time” to fix the problem.
You create time by delegating the right 5–10 hours first… then you use that space to make better decisions.

If you own a private practice, every decision you make lives in three buckets: time, money, or people.

Most owners try to solve every problem with more time – usually their own – stealing from sleep, family, and their brain just to keep the wheels on.

But the real leverage is how you invest money into people, so you’re no longer the only solution to every problem.

High-quality owners ask:

“What’s the highest and best use of my time, and who or what can do everything else?”

Low-quality owners ask:

“How do I cram more into my day?”

You don’t build freedom by working more hours.
You build it by reallocating your resources intentionally.