How Much Does a Solo Practice Doc Make? Did you know it takes ONLY 4 Patients to Break Even? A Low Overhead Leads to a Great Income
How many patients do you see a day? Are you seeing 30+? 40+? 50+? 60+?
Odds are, you are being significant underpaid as an eye doctor. Let me show you the power of keeping a lean overhead and the possibilities of being solo.
Completely ignoring the personal fulfillment of going solo, you have a much higher ceiling as a solo practice.
For me, work life balance is the most important thing. Therefore, I actually set my schedule to match my daughter’s pre-K schedule. I drop her off at 7:30, and I get home by 2:30.
Break Even with Just 4 Patients.
Currently, according to the AAO, a 92004 pays about $165.97 and a 92014 $140.26.
My patient demographic is a mixed of age-related macular degeneration, cataracts, and glaucoma. Consequently, I do get diagnostic testing with my exam visits for gonioscopy, OCT nerve, OCT retina, etc. On average, by clinic visit averages to about $175 per visit.
If you see just 4 patients a day, you can collect about 700 dollars per day. (
I work 5 days a week. Therefore, you can collect about $3500 dollars per week.
Assuming you take 4 weeks off for vacation, you can collect $168000 dollars per year.
Everyone has a different overhead, but when I first started, I did everything myself. I did not hire any techs, front desk employees etc.
Keep The Overhead Low To Boost Your Income
My EMR bill is about $1100 a month, or about $13200 per year.
My rent is about $3000 a month. Its actually $2600 dollars, but I’m overestimating my overhead by 10%. My rental was about 2000 soft. That equates to $36,000 per year.
My utilities is about $400 dollars a month. (60 dollars for ATT fiber internet, $150 for electricity, $70 dollars for YouTube TV for the waiting room, $70 for natural gas), or $4800 per year.
My malpractice insurance premium is about $7500 per year.
My business insurance is around $1650 per year.
My worker’s comp insurance is about $425 per year.
My website, SEO, Google Review management company is about $5700 per year.
I spend 0 dollars for advertising. I did not include health insurance for me in this calculations.
Roughly, this totals to $70,000 per year.
There are some things I did NOT include – including business card expenses, donuts etc for referrals etc.
How Much is Left? Did We Break Even?
Spoiler: Yes.
With just seeing 4 patients a day, you can collect approximately $168000 per year.
After all the expenses, that leaves you to $90,000. This speaks to the power of staying lean.
Dream Big – How About Just 15 patients a day.
I know I pay my employees well. The market for a front desk employee in Atlanta is around $15-20 an hour. For their privacy, I wont disclose the pay range, but I pay well above market.
I just hired a second employee.
2 Employees at $20 dollars an hour is roughly $320 dollars a day. This is about $85,000 per year in wages.
15 patients a day, you can collect $630,000 per year.
This means you are well north of $500,000 per year.
If you looked at your job contract right now, odds are, you are being paid a base salary of less than $250,000 and you are probably seeing 30-40 patients per day. So, you can see half the amount of patients (thus, actually getting to do a more in-depth eye exam) and get paid almost twice as much.
Additional Reading
Supplemental Information from the AAO.
Now that you have reviewed your documentation, confirmed the appropriate level of E/M and/or eye visit code, and have taken into consideration the nine scenarios when not to use an eye visit code, you may find that either an E/M or an eye visit could could work. When both E/M and eye visit codes can be billed, consider billing the code with the highest allowable for that payer. To help determine this, create a simple spreadsheet that lists the allowables for office-based E/M and eye visit codes, for at least five of your top payers.
| E/M, New Patient | Commercial #1 | Commercial #2 | Medicare |
| 99202 | $145.60 | $141.44 | $80.91 |
| 99203 | $211.40 | $205.36 | $124.39 |
| 99204 | $324.80 | $315.52 | $185.26 |
| 99205 | $404.60 | $393.04 | $244.99 |
| Eye Visit, New Patient | |||
| 92002 | $162.40 | $138.88 | $95.65 |
| 92004 | $295.40 | $199.77 | $165.97 |
| E/M, Established Patient | Commercial #1 | Commercial #2 | Medicare |
| 99212 | $85.40 | $82.96 | $62.76 |
| 99213 | $142.80 | $138.72 | $100.57 |
| 99214 | $210.70 | $204.68 | $141.78 |
| 99215 | $282.10 | $274.04 | $200.00 |
| Eye Visit, Established Patient | |||
| 92012 | $170.10 | $128.34 | $95.65 |
| 92014 | $246.40 | $198.22 | $140.26 |
