Setting and revising consultation fees: a method, not a number
2026-10-21 · MedSlay
Most doctors set their consultation fee once, early in practice, by asking what the doctor down the road charges. Then they leave it alone for years, because raising it feels awkward and nobody has a method for doing it.
There is no right number that applies everywhere, and this article will not pretend there is. What there can be is a method: one that gives you a fee you can explain, a follow-up rule the desk can apply without calling you, and a way of revising both that does not surprise anyone.
Start from what a visit costs you
Before looking at anyone else's fee, work out your own floor. Add up what the clinic costs to run in a month: rent, staff salaries, electricity, consumables, software, the accountant. Divide it by the number of consultations you actually see in a month, not the number you hope to see.
That figure is what each visit costs before you have earned anything. It is often higher than doctors expect, especially in the first years of a practice, and it is the number below which a fee is losing you money.
Then look at your area, and decide where you sit
Now look at what comparable doctors nearby charge: the same specialty, a similar kind of clinic, the same neighbourhood. You will usually find a range rather than a single figure. Where you sit in it depends on things you can name: your experience, your qualifications, the time you give each patient, and the facilities in the room.
Pick a place in the range you could explain to a patient in one sentence. If you cannot, the fee is probably a guess.
Settle the follow-up rule before anyone asks
Most disputes at the desk are not about the fee. They are about whether a return visit is charged. Decide, in writing:
- The follow-up fee, or whether a review is free.
- The window: how many days after a consultation a review counts as a follow-up rather than a new visit.
- What resets it: a new complaint is a new consultation, even inside the window.
Write it on the board at the desk. A rule the receptionist can point to ends the conversation; a rule that lives in your head starts one every day.
Decide who pays less, and record it
Every clinic gives concessions: to staff and their families, to elderly patients, to someone who cannot pay today. That is part of practice. The problem is concessions made case by case, at the desk, with nothing written down, because then nobody can tell a kindness from a leak.
Decide the categories in advance, and record every waived or reduced fee against the visit, with who approved it. It takes seconds, and it means the month's collections add up.
Revising the fee without losing patients
Patients accept a revised fee far more readily than a surprise at the desk:
- Revise on a fixed date, such as the start of a financial year, not whenever it occurs to you. A predictable review is easier to accept.
- Give notice. Put a notice at the desk a few weeks before the change, with the date it takes effect.
- Update every place the fee appears on the same day: the board at the desk, your Google Business Profile, any directory listing and your clinic software.
- Honour follow-ups already in their window at the old rate. Charging the new fee for a review the patient was told was covered is how goodwill is lost.
- Give the desk one sentence to say, so the receptionist is not left to explain your pricing in their own words.
Put the fee where patients can see it
Patients mind an unexpected fee more than a high one. Showing the fee before they arrive, on your profile, in your listing and at the desk, removes the awkward moment entirely. A fee that says "on request" invites exactly the phone call your receptionist does not have time for.
Where MedSlay helps
A doctor's profile in MedSlay holds separate charges for a consultation, a follow-up and renewals, so the desk is not working them out from memory. The consultation fee appears on the doctor's card in the public Doctor Directory and on their profile page, and shows as "fee on request" if it is left blank. Each visit records its own fee, which can be adjusted for that visit when a concession applies, along with its payment status, and the patient can be given a receipt.
If your fees are still kept on a sticky note at the desk, see how MedSlay handles visits, fees and receipts.