Playbook, physiotherapy clinic
Putting a figure on rehab when nobody has assessed the patient yet
This request usually comes from somebody who is not the patient. A case manager, an employer or a solicitor funding rehab wants a number they can put in a file, and the number they want does not exist until an assessment has happened.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for quotes and estimates holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The person asking is often a third party paying for somebody else, which means they want a document rather than a conversation, and they will file whatever they are sent.
- A course estimate is a session price multiplied by a count nobody can know in advance, so the only honest estimate has a unit price and a review point in it rather than a total.
- A total, once written down for a funder, is treated as a cap, and the patient is the one who discovers halfway through a programme that the funding has run out.
- Funders usually want the estimate in their own format with a review after an agreed number of sessions, so the shape of the document comes from them and the clinic is filling it in rather than designing it.
How it arrives
- can you send me a written estimate
- my solicitor needs a cost for rehab
- how much for a course of physio on a shoulder
- can you quote for six sessions
- what would a rehab programme cost my employer
- can i have the cost in writing before i book
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Unit prices for everything a course can contain | Assessment, follow up, extended session, class, report writing, and any travel charge. A funder builds their own arithmetic from these, which is the only estimate you can safely give before an assessment. |
|---|---|
| Your report and administration charges | What you charge to write a progress report or a discharge summary for a third party. Funders expect this line and clinics routinely forget to publish it. |
| How third party funded work is set up | What you need from a funder before the first appointment, who signs off, and how invoices are addressed. This is the part that delays these cases, not the price. |
| Your review point convention | The number of sessions after which the physiotherapist reviews progress and reports back. It is what lets an estimate be given as a stage rather than as a total. |
The reply
I can give you the unit prices, which is what most funders need: the initial assessment and follow ups are listed separately on our fees page, along with the charge for a written report [1]. I cannot give a total for a course, because how many sessions somebody needs is decided at the assessment and not before it. If you need this on paper for a file, leave me your name and an email and the clinic will send a written estimate with a review point in it [2].
It gives the funder the components they can actually work with, which is far more use than a refusal. The total is declined by naming exactly what produces one, so it reads as a process rather than as evasion. The written document is offered through a person, because a document addressed to a funder is a commitment and the assistant has no standing to make one.
Where it stops
The trigger. Anybody asking for the estimate in writing, addressed to an insurer, an employer, a solicitor or a case manager.
A written estimate has to come from the clinic rather than from me, because it is a document somebody will rely on. Leave your name, an email and who it is for, and the team will put it together.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never give a total for a course of treatment, however many caveats are attached to it.
- Never state or confirm a number of sessions in writing for a described injury.
- Never accept a funder's cap or agree that treatment will be completed within a set number of sessions.
- Never quote a session price as though it were fixed for a whole programme when a review may change the plan.
Questions
- How is this different from somebody asking what a session costs?
- A session price is a published fact and the assistant can just say it. An estimate is a document a third party will rely on and possibly treat as a limit, which is a commitment and needs a person behind it.
- Can it fill in a funder's form?
- No. It cannot produce or send documents at all. What it can usefully do is give the unit prices and collect the details so somebody can complete the form the same day.
- Is publishing report charges not slightly awkward?
- Less awkward than adding one to an invoice a funder has already approved. Case managers expect the line, and its absence delays sign off more often than its presence loses work.
Keep reading
- Everything for a physiotherapy clinicSession prices, referral rules and what to wear are safe to automate. Exercise advice and injury assessment are not.
- Handling quotes and estimates in generalWhat has to be known before a number is possible, how the scoping step works, and how to answer without stonewalling or inventing a figure.
- Two different documents, and the physio question that decides whichThe document an insurer needs, the receipt that must carry a registration number, and moving from insured to self pay.
- Access questions from patients whose difficulty is brand newStairs on crutches, a treatment couch that will not lower, and arranging a chaperone before a physio appointment.
- What can actually be deleted from a physiotherapy recordWhy most of a physiotherapy file cannot be erased on request, and what happens to a report already sent to an insurer.
Try it on your own material
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