How you pay your clinicians signals what you value. The structure of the deal — salaried versus percentage of billings versus hybrid — quietly shapes who applies, who stays, and how aggressively the team takes on travel-heavy or complex referrals. Get this wrong and culture follows the money straight off a cliff.
This is operational orientation. Confirm specifics with an employment lawyer, your accountant, and the relevant Modern Award before structuring any compensation.
The three common structures
- Pure salary: predictable for the clinician, simpler for payroll, less aligned with billings. Common in NDIS providers and large practices.
- Pure percentage of billings: highly aligned with revenue, exposes clinicians to demand fluctuation, often associated with contractor arrangements.
- Hybrid: a base salary plus a percentage of billings above a threshold. Most modern Australian allied health practices use some version of this.
The base-rate conversation
Whatever structure you pick, the base rate has to make sense relative to the local market and the relevant Award (the Health Professionals and Support Services Award is the usual reference for allied health). Below the Award is illegal regardless of intent. At Award and not above, you will lose talent. Most reasonable practices benchmark at 10-25% above the Award for experienced clinicians.
Travel time is work time
A clinician driving between visits is working. The question is how the practice values that work. The cleanest answer is to pay travel time at the same rate as clinical time, even though it does not bill. Practices that try to make clinicians swallow travel time generate quiet resentment and shorter tenures.
Caps and floors matter
If you do percentage-of-billings, set a floor: a minimum guaranteed salary the clinician earns regardless of billings. Without it, a slow month becomes a financial emergency for them and a retention risk for you. Equally, set a cap or a stepdown above which the percentage tapers — uncapped percentages produce eye-watering invoices when one clinician has a great quarter, which destabilises the practice.
Non-billable time has value
Supervision, team meetings, professional development, internal training — these are the hours that build clinicians. Pay for them explicitly. Not paying for non-billable time is the surest way to find that supervision stops happening.
Be transparent about the math
Show the clinician how you calculate their pay. The mystery does no-one any favours. The practices that show their working — what is the billable rate, what is the cost of running the practice, what is left — build trust that lasts.