The Catalog / Tools / Clinic Startup Calculator
Build-out, devices, opening inventory, licensing, insurance, payroll, marketing and the runway you have to bank before break-even — totalled into one cash-to-open number, plus the visits per month that cover your fixed cost. Every field starts as a placeholder. Replace them with your own quotes and the sheet is yours.
The short answer: the cost to open an aesthetic or wellness clinic is one-time capital (build-out, fixtures, equipment, opening inventory, legal and licensing, launch marketing) plus banked runway (fixed monthly cost × the months you hold before break-even) plus a contingency. Fill in the sheet below with your own quotes and the total updates as you type.
Build-out is the line that moves most between a shell and a second-generation medical suite.
Enter devices as capital, as a monthly payment, or split across both lines.
The lines new owners forget until the week before opening.
Used only to find your break-even volume — nothing here forecasts demand.
Your sheet
Read this next to your lease. The runway line is the one that decides whether a slow first quarter is survivable.
Four formulas, run on your inputs and nothing else:
Payroll burden. Employer taxes, benefits and workers' compensation are real money on top of salary. Entering base pay alone understates your fixed cost every single month.
Medical director and prescriber coverage. Directorship is usually a monthly retainer, and per-consult fees ride on top. Put the retainer in fixed cost and the per-consult fee inside your gross margin, or you will double-count. Our guide to medical director coverage in all 50 states covers the structures and the ownership language to insist on.
Opening inventory. Injectables, biologics and program medication have to be on the shelf before the first patient, and 503A patient-specific prescriptions do not stock a treatment room the way 503B office stock does — see 503A vs 503B in plain English.
It will not tell you how many patients you will have. Nobody can, and any tool that claims to is selling something. It tells you the volume your cost structure requires — which is the number worth arguing about before you sign a lease.
There is no honest single number — it is the sum of your own build-out bid, equipment decisions, opening inventory, licensing, insurance, payroll and the runway you hold before break-even. That is exactly what this calculator totals. A practice taking over a second-generation medical suite with leased devices carries a fraction of the capital of a shell build-out with purchased platforms. Get real quotes for the four biggest lines — build-out, devices, payroll and runway — and the total stops being a guess.
Cash to open is one-time capital plus banked runway plus contingency. Most first-time owners budget the capital and forget the runway: the months where rent, payroll, the medical director retainer and marketing are all due before patient volume covers them. Runway is usually the second-largest number on the sheet, and it is the one that decides whether a slow first quarter is survivable.
Divide monthly fixed cost by contribution per visit, where contribution is your average ticket times your gross margin. If fixed cost runs $22,000 a month and a $450 visit contributes $324 after product and per-consult fees, you need about 68 visits a month to cover fixed cost — roughly three a working day. The calculator does this live and shows it against the volume you entered.
It changes the shape of the risk, not just the arithmetic. Buying lowers monthly fixed cost and raises cash to open; leasing preserves cash and raises the volume you must hold every month to stay even. Run it both ways here, then use the device ROI calculator to see payback and break-even volume per platform.
No. Everything runs in your browser. There is no form submission, no account, and no analytics event carrying your figures — close the tab and it is gone.
Buy against lease, with payback in months and the treatments a month each platform has to hold.
Open the calculator →Margin per patient per month and the panel size a program settles at once churn and enrollment balance.
Model the program →Who may own the practice, who may treat the patient, and which board decides — in your state.
Open the map →A 15-20 minute call goes through your build-out assumptions, the device decisions, the pharmacy and prescriber structure, and the runway you are planning to hold — from someone who has watched clinics open with all four of those wrong.
Book a strategy call
15-20 minutes · Zoom · no cost, no obligation
Pick a time →Prefer to talk now? 813-544-7131 · justin@eventideaw.com
Not ready for a call? Send your info — Justin will reach out →
Educational tool for licensed medical providers and practice owners. This calculator performs arithmetic on figures you supply; the placeholder values are illustrative only and are not industry benchmarks, quotes, or estimates of what anything costs in your market. Nothing here is financial, tax, legal, or medical advice, and no revenue, income, payback period, or patient outcome is claimed or guaranteed. Your figures are processed in your browser and are not transmitted to or stored by Eventide.