What a good rebooking rate looks like for a physio clinic, how full the diary should be before it starts working against you, and where the published numbers actually come from.
“Are we doing well?” is a hard question to answer in a physio clinic, because most owners only ever see their own numbers. This page pulls together the published benchmarks for three figures clinic owners ask about most: rebooking rate, how full the diary should be, and missed appointments. It also covers where each number comes from, so you can judge how much weight to give it.
Where these numbers come from. We could not find a published benchmark survey of Australian private physiotherapy practices. The closest recent source is a 2026 survey of more than 700 UK private practice owners. The Australian figures below come from public hospital outpatient clinics, which run differently from private practice. Treat all of them as a rough yardstick for your clinic.
Rebooking rate: 73% average, 85% for the top clinics
Your rebooking rate is the share of appointments needing a follow-up where the patient booked their next visit, usually before leaving the room. It’s a clear early sign of whether patients are finishing their course of care.
The 2026 UK Private Practice Barometer collected rebooking estimates from 233 physiotherapy clinics:
- Average physio rebooking rate: 73.3%
- Top 10% of physio clinics: 84.8%
- Across all specialties surveyed: average 74%, median 80%
The survey treats anything under 70% as significantly underperforming. The figures are self-reported by clinic owners, and the survey doesn’t publish its exact definition of rebooking rate, so read them as a guide rather than an audited result.
The same survey found patients attended an average of 5.5 sessions per episode of care (median 5.0), across all specialties. If your treatment plans usually recommend six sessions and patients average four, that gap is the revenue our patient drop-off guide is about.
How full should a physio clinic be? Aim for 70 to 80%
Diary utilisation is the share of available appointment slots that are booked and attended. A physio with 8 slots a day who sees 6 patients is at 75%.
The same UK survey reported:
- Average diary utilisation: 72.3%
- Best band on owner wellbeing, patient wait times and profit: 70 to 80%
- Average patient wait above 80% utilisation: 5.5 days, up from 3.9 days in the 70 to 80% band
About a quarter of owners (26%) said they were fully booked 90% of the time, while the average utilisation was 72.3%. Admin work can make a clinic feel full well before the diary is. If you feel flat out, count attended appointments against available slots for a normal fortnight before deciding you need another practitioner.
When overbooking starts to cost you
Above 80% utilisation, the UK data shows waits getting longer, and more owners at that level mentioned burnout (38% compared with 32% in the 50 to 70% band). A patient with acute back pain may not wait five days. They’re likely to book with the next clinic that can see them this week, and they may stay there.
If your diary is consistently above 80%, the survey’s advice is to stop filling gaps and either raise prices, add a room or practitioner, or both. If you’re below 65%, the constraint is usually referrals or rebooking, not capacity.
Missed appointments: what the research shows
Published did-not-attend (DNA) rates vary widely by setting:
- Australian public hospital physio clinics: a 2025 BMJ Open study of two tertiary hospital outpatient clinics found non-attendance of 8% and 10% over 2018 to 2021. The projected annual labour cost of non-attendance reached $114,827 (2023 Australian dollars) for a single clinic.
- UK private practice: clinics with automated reminders reported lower DNA rates, around 6.3% (self-reported, 2026 Barometer).
- Across a whole course of care: a 2021 US study of nearly 445,000 physical therapy patients found 73% missed at least one appointment during their episode of care.
The first two are rates per appointment. The US figure counts patients who missed at least once, which is why it looks so much higher. Don’t compare them directly.
If you haven’t switched on SMS reminders yet, it’s a low-cost place to start. Our Cliniko automation guide shows where to find the setting.
How to work out your own numbers
You can pull all three from your practice management software in under an hour. Use the last three months so one bad week doesn’t skew the result.
- Rebooking rate: appointments where the next visit was booked before the patient left, divided by all appointments that should have had a follow-up.
- Diary utilisation: attended appointments divided by available appointment slots, per practitioner and for the whole clinic.
- DNA rate: no-shows divided by booked appointments. Track late cancellations separately.
Compare each practitioner as well as the clinic total. A single clinic average can hide one practitioner at 85% rebooking and another at 60%.
To put a dollar figure on the gap between the treatment you recommend and what patients complete, the free Full Course Scorecard does the maths from your own numbers in about three minutes.
This article is general information only and is not financial, clinical or business advice. Benchmark figures are drawn from the sources linked above, several of which are self-reported surveys or studies from outside Australian private practice, and may not reflect your clinic. Figures were checked against the sources on 28 September 2026.
