What does it take to open a physical therapy clinic?

Choose the practice you are actually opening

The operating format is a leased outpatient practice providing one-to-one adult physical therapy visits. One clinician owns and manages the practice; one clinician is employed; a part-time administrator handles reception and eligibility tasks. There is no home-care route, occupational or speech therapy, audiology, pool, imaging, surgery, franchise, equipment retail or membership revenue. The illustrated room and staffing arrangement are a planning case, not a real business or named borrower.

The model chooses California for regulatory scope but does not invent a city, address, lease or patient market. Two separate treatment stations and a modest exercise area must work within 1,600 square feet, with a usable accessible route and retained restroom/HVAC. A former medical tenant is a starting condition to inspect, not proof of suitability. Medical-access guidance

Begin with the opening budget if the site and installed equipment are your uncertainty. Read visit economics if the appointment template is unsettled, and profitability for the full cash path. The financing guide turns those choices into a funding brief. The owner-generated complete plan example remains pending.

Licensed work sets the schedule

The owner is paid $96,000 annually and retains 32 weekly hours for patient visits, including their documentation. The employee is paid $114,000 and has 36 visit hours. Each is paid for 40 hours; management, meetings and other non-visit duties occupy the remainder. There is no assumption that unpaid owner labor or an unlicensed aide closes a staffing gap.

Using 40 minutes of one-to-one care and 10 minutes of documentation/turnover gives 353.6 normalized monthly visit slots. Longer evaluations reduce that capacity unless the weighted schedule changes. The BLS national employee wage median is $102,760 for May 2025; the case salaries remain hiring assumptions, and the data do not measure self-employed owner income. Wage boundary; California professional roles

Check collections before committing the lease

The mature schedule yields 305.7 expected completed visits per normalized month after cancellations and same-slot refills. At the assumed payer mix, expected net revenue is $121.75 per completed visit; gross billed charges average $183.50 and are a different management measure. Insurance receipts arrive over several months, while the clinical team is paid in the service month.

The first negative cash position occurs in month 9; the trough is −$11,352 in month 13. Negative balances are unpaid funding requirements, not money available to spend. A financing case must resolve them before launch. More reserve can cover timing, but it cannot repair persistent operating losses in the lower case.

Use broad SBA evidence for context

Verified SBA records under NAICS 621340 number 325 in approval FY2023, 391 in FY2024 and 396 in FY2025: 1,112 across those cohorts at the June 30, 2026 snapshot. The scope includes physical, occupational and speech therapists and audiologists. It does not identify this two-therapist outpatient format, California demand or startup costs. These are loan records with PIF, CHGOFF or EXEMPT status, not unique borrowers or approval probabilities. SBA source and definitions; Census scope

Read the dedicated SBA industry profile for the broader category’s defined samples and downloadable aggregates. The existing lending-data explorer supplies the common methodology. Before a real application, obtain practitioner licenses, a site proposal, payer enrollment dates, actual fee schedules and a referral/scheduling test. Broad lending activity cannot replace those project inputs.