A very young budding doctor told me “do not go to Apollo..they will charge you Rs. 1500 for just a 45 minute consultancy”. I realised that she was stuck to some figure from her imagination and she was obviously wrong with her math. So I asked her “how much salary would you expect if you joined Apollo”. She said Rs. 50,000 if I joined now and Rs. 100,000 if I joined after my 3 year PG.

I then realized that this kid was not alone. Many doctors have asked me “how much to charge”. Most of them have no mathematical basis for charging. They just charge what the patients will pay – in the locality in which they live. So here is an attempt at putting a scientific basis for their charges. Put in your OWN numbers and tweak it.

If you are a doctor (or any professional) the ONLY thing that you have on sale is your time. Nothing else. Your hospital, services, etc. are all incidental. If you and your time was not available…nothing else would get sold! So it is important for you to know the value of your time.

From what I have spoken, read, etc. each one of us has about 2500 billable hours. I may be exaggerating…Let us say 300 working days and 8 hours a day. If you are a doctor who takes Saturday off, this will go down further. However Indian doctors do not take Sat off, in fact they may be working more than 8 hours a day, but 2500 is fair enough.

Invest your time.

First of all you should understand that  your time WILL appreciate in value. If you’re running a successful practice, your time’s value will increase as your experience increases – happens to all the doctors. So you should be INVESTING your time, not spending it. As your practice grows and develops, sooner or later the money value of your time is going to MORE THAN the importance of money. It’ll be more important for you to invest your time in moving the practice forward because your time is going to be worth more! Simple is it not? But how many doctors think like this?

From my personal experience of meeting doctors, I am convinced that Indian doctors spend minimum time in establishing processes and procedures that can save time in other areas.

Invest your time on process early, so that you do not have to  spend it later putting out fires.

So first take your Income tax return…and see the numbers. Find out how much you are earning after all taxes (before your investments…etc.) and divide it by the number of hours you ACTUALLY work.

Let us say your NET TAXABLE INCOME (Gross taxable income minus all business expenses) is Rs. 10,00,000. Let us assume that you work for about 10 hours a day..for 320 days…which means you are earning Rs 10L/3200.

This works out to Rs. 312.50 – let us say Rs 300 an hour.

Too high? too less? deserve more? deserve less?

Will do a post on how to arrive at the figure that you really want to earn…..right now go and brood.

PS: no senior banker, lawyer, …would be found dead charging so low. Doctors are unique.