Ben started his career as a physiotherapist with a single treatment room. Over the next two decades, he grew that practice into a multi-site, multi-disciplinary operation before selling it to Australia’s largest integrated allied health group. He then spent several years on the other side of the table leading national operations across 30+ clinics and $40 million in revenue.
Today, Ben is the founder of BAC Business Consulting and a Senior Business Advisor with the Australian Physiotherapy Association. He now works with allied health practice owners at every stage of the business journey - from start-up and scaling, to optimisation and exit -with a focus on building practices that perform and endure.
What defines a fast growing practice
The practices that perform well and hold their value aren’t always the biggest or the fastest growing. They’re the ones built deliberately on clear systems, genuine leadership, and financial discipline. But most importantly, their structures don’t depend entirely on the owner showing up every day.
Right now, with the 2026–27 Federal Budget reshaping everything from employment costs to capital gains tax, recent HPSS award changes, NDIS compliance and pricing changes, new payday Super rules, among a list of other changes. With all this, the pressure on practice owners has never been higher. But, high performing Allied Health practices rise not just by navigating legislative challenges, but by doing these four things differently.
Reduce owner dependency
A question I ask every practice owner I work with is this - “if you stepped away from your practice for three months, what would happen?”
For most, the honest answer is uncomfortable. Revenue would fall. Clinical decisions would either stall or slow down as referrers and some team members start calling you directly for answers. This meant that the practice, in effect, was the practice owner.
A practice built around the owner is a problem, not just operationally, but commercially.
The most effective way to change that is to build systems, documentation, and leadership that allow the business to function on any given day - with or without you directly involved.
In practice, that means:
- Documenting clinical and operational processes so knowledge lives in the business, not just in your head.
- Developing a clinical lead who holds genuine accountability for standards
- Building referral relationships that connect to you and to your practice’s brand
- Investing in practice management systems that give your team visibility over schedules, billing, and clinical notes without needing to come to you
Know your numbers well
Most practice owners can tell me their approximate monthly revenue. Few can tell me their average revenue per clinician per day, average sale price, or their utilisation rate. Even fewer can give me their wage cost as a percentage of revenue for clinical and admin staff, or their net profit margin and how those numbers compare to best practice.
These are the gaps high-performing practices avoid falling through. Practices that run on data know which KPIs drive their profitability, and they use that information to make better decisions. In fact, here are the metrics that matter most:
- Revenue per clinician - This needs to be calculated per day/week and mapped to see how this trends over time
- Clinical utilisation rate - Otherwise known as diary occupancy, this is the percentage of available hours that generate revenue
- Wage cost percentage - This is the clinical, admin and total wage costs as a percentage of revenue
- EBITDA margin - This is your true profitability before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation
- New patient conversion and rebooking rates
At scale, best-practice Allied Health practices typically target an EBITDA margin of 17–25%. Modern practice management platforms make this kind of financial visibility far more accessible than it used to be. If the data is in your system, use it. Because the numbers you’re not tracking are the ones quietly eroding your margins.
Important note: Budget impact
Payday superannuation takes effect from 1 July 2026. Super must now be paid at the same time as wages not quarterly. If your cash flow model relied on that gap, update your projections now. This directly affects your wage cost percentage and working capital from day one.
Build leaders, not just a roster
Good clinicians ensure reliable service delivery. Clinical leadership is what makes a business scalable. As you add more clinicians, sites, and service streams, your ability to provide both clinical and operational leadership becomes a bottleneck. The practices I’ve seen scale sustainably have all invested in a leadership structure that distributes responsibility, authority, and accountability across the team.
But leadership has to run parallel on two tracks. One focused on clinical excellence and professional development. The other focused on operational and financial performance. But moving into leadership calls for more than just operational knowledge. Clinicians stepping into leadership roles also need business literacy. This is something I constantly see being overlooked. A well-rounded leader needs to understand what utilisation means, why margin matters, and how their decisions affect the team’s sustainability. Understanding these stats is what gives practitioners the context to lead effectively.
Important note: Compliance
From 1 July 2026, the Fair Work Commission increased the minimum award rate by 4.75%. From 1 October 2026, gender equity award changes take effect under the Health Professionals and Support Services Award, introducing revised classifications and pay rates across multiple levels. Critically, this is not a one-off event-the changes roll out across five phases through to 2030, with the Annual Wage Review running concurrently on top.
Practice owners using bonus or commission structures also need to verify that total remuneration meets Award minimums at every progression point across all five phases. Review your employment contracts, position descriptions, and award classifications before October not after. The cost of getting this wrong is material and compounds over time.
Get your structure right before you need to
The decisions you make about how your practice is legally structured, how profits flow, and how assets are held will have a significant bearing on your future transition. This could be bringing on a partner, selling to a group, or simply stepping back.
The 2026–27 Budget has made this more urgent. Specifically, these two changes deserve immediate attention:
- Capital gains tax. From 1 July 2027, the small business CGT concession threshold increases from $2 million to $10 million in annual turnover. This is a significant change that brings many more Allied Health practices within the reach of small business CGT concessions at the point of sale. However, the timing of any sale or asset crystallisation matters enormously. Tax advisors are currently recommending that all CGT assets, including businesses, have a formal valuation on record as at 30 June 2027.
If you are planning to sell in the short term, it may be strongly in your interests to accelerate your planning now. Not knowing the value of your business at that date may create more complex CGT liability calculations when you do decide to sell. And the more time that elapses post 30 June 2027 without that valuation in place, the more limited your discount entitlement may be.
- Discretionary trust reforms: Many Allied Health practice owners use family trust structures, and the announced changes to income distribution rules may materially affect your tax planning. Draft legislation is expected in the second half of 2026. The direction is clear - don’t wait for certainty before engaging your advisors.
Important note: Planning structural changes
If a sale, partnership, or structural change is a possibility in the next two to five years, speak with a specialist accountant and a business advisor who understands the Allied Health market now! A formal business valuation recorded before 30 June 2027 could be one of the most financially significant steps you take this year.
Building to last or to sell follows the same fundamentals
Whether your goal is to grow your practice, step back from daily management, or to eventually transition your practice, the four basic fundamentals stay the same:
- Reduce owner dependency.
- Know your numbers.
- Build real leadership.
- Get your structure right.
If you do these four things well, you’ll not only have a practice that performs but one that gives you genuine choices about what comes next. It’s also worth acknowledging the broader environment Allied Health practice owners are operating in right now. Across the sector and particularly in areas like NDIS-registered services we’re seeing significant regulatory change. New compliance frameworks, tighter registration requirements, and greater scrutiny of operational and financial performance are reshaping what it means to run a sustainable practice.
As someone who works with practice owners every day, the picture is more nuanced than the headlines suggest. What I consistently observe is that buyers whether they are individual practitioners, private equity groups, or large corporate acquirers have become considerably more discerning. They are no longer simply buying revenue. They are buying confidence across the board. This includes the leadership, the systems, the compliance history, and in the practice’s ability to perform without the founder at the centre of everything.
This shift in buyer behaviour is actually good news for practice owners who have done the ground work. Well-governed, well-documented practices with genuine leadership depth and diversified revenue are becoming more attractive in an increasingly regulated environment.
Higher standards across the sector also raise the bar for entry, and businesses that already meet that bar tend to command stronger valuations as a result. In the end, it helps to remember that regulatory change doesn’t diminish the value of a well-run practice. In most cases, it amplifies it - because it raises the standard every competitor has to meet. And if your practice is ahead of the curve, that puts you at the top of people’s list.
