A clinic-based therapist sees 6 to 8 clients in an 8-hour day. A community-based therapist on a typical Australian day, doing in-home and school visits, sees 4 to 5. The difference is travel — not abstract, not avoidable, just real. Setting a target as if your community team were a clinic team is the foundational mistake most practices make.
Start with what is actually possible
For a therapist with a clustered schedule in a defined geographic patch, 4 to 5 billable hours a day is a realistic ceiling — not a floor. That works out to around 20 to 25 billable hours a week, accounting for non-billable time on supervision, case meetings, and unscheduled gaps.
Differentiate by experience and discipline
A new graduate hitting 25 billable hours is overworking. An experienced clinician at 20 may be coasting. Set the target by the role and the experience level, not flat across the team. Speech and OT often have different cancellation profiles than psychology; account for it.
Target weekly, measure quarterly
A bad week happens — a sick day, a school holiday, a high-cancellation patch. The clinician who hits 18 hours in one week and 27 the next is doing fine on average; the clinician who hits 18 every week needs a conversation. Quarterly trends tell the truth that weekly snapshots cannot.
Watch the gap, not the number
If a clinician’s actual utilisation is 60% of target every week, the gap is the diagnostic. Where is the time going? Driving? No-shows? Scheduling holes? Each has a different fix. The target itself is rarely the problem; what produces the gap usually is.
Make targets a development tool, not a punishment
Practices that hit clinicians with their utilisation number in performance reviews create a culture where utilisation is gamed. Practices that use it as a mutual diagnostic in supervision (“what is making this harder than it should be?”) create a culture where the number drives improvement.
How Carelyt makes the number visible
Insights tracks billable hours against weekly target per therapist, with a quarterly view. Recurring sessions hold the schedule pattern so the baseline gets close to the ceiling without manual rebuild. Map view surfaces the geographic gaps that often drive the utilisation gap.