Pricing with Purpose
Strategies for Offering IV Therapy, Injectables, and Other Procedures

By Bill Hershey | Non-CPA Accountant, Business Coach
Life Stream Business

If the title caught your attention, chances are you’re offering clinical procedures, whether it’s IV therapy, injectables, blood draws, or similar services. But are these services truly generating profit, or merely breaking even?

If you’re not sure, you’re not alone. It’s not uncommon for organized and intelligent clinic owners to struggle with pricing services. Unfortunately, I’ve seen cases where the clinic owner thought they were pricing effectively, when in reality they were just breaking even or worse, unknowingly losing money. If you’ve grown your clinic past the first few years of operation, you likely realize financial awareness is important. And if you have a reliable profit and loss statement that you can track on a monthly basis, you likely have a decent sense of your overall finances.

However, pricing procedure-based services is a different game. In the world of accounting, we call this “cost accounting.” Before we jump in, I’d like to take a moment to normalize that most schools don’t teach these principles to clinicians before going out into practice. Even though you may not have trained as an accountant, I don’t think you should have to be one to get this right. Allow me to break this down.

Years ago, a Naturopathic Clinic owner hired me as her accountant and business advisor. We started by getting her bookkeeping in order so we could get clean and up-to-date profit and loss statements, but she also had some questions about her pricing strategy. She was savvy and had good instincts, she sensed something might be off with how she was pricing her blood draws and IV therapy procedures. Once we dug in, the issue became clear: she hadn’t factored overhead into her pricing. The numbers told the rest of the story. She was losing money on several services. Just by repricing her blood draws alone, we were able to generate enough profit over the next twelve months to cover an entire year of my services. No extra work. No new patients. Just an updated price tag.

Let’s break it down:

Here’s the incomplete formula clinic owners often use for pricing their procedures:
P – C = D
Price of Procedure P minus Direct Costs (direct labor + cost of goods sold) C Equals Desired Profit per Procedure D

Now, here’s the complete formula (with factored overhead included):
P – C – I = D
Price of Procedure P minus Direct Costs (direct labor + cost of goods sold) C minus Indirect Costs I (a.k.a. “factored overhead”; overhead per encounter) equals Desired Profit per Procedure D

Let’s define the terms

Direct Labor: The wages paid to clinical staff specifically for the time they spend delivering a procedure. This includes registered nurses, medical assistants, or physicians—whoever is hands-on with the patient during the service.

Example: If a nurse spends 30 minutes administering an IV drip and earns $40/hour, the direct labor cost is $20 for that service.

Cost of Goods Sold (COGS): The physical materials and supplies used to perform a service. This includes items that are consumed during the procedure and can’t be reused.

Example: IV bags, tubing, vitamins or medications, syringes, alcohol wipes, gloves, and gauze—all count as COGS for IV therapy or injectables.

Factored Overhead: A portion of your clinic’s operating expenses (rent, utilities, admin staff, insurance, software, etc.) that gets allocated to each service you provide. It reflects the cost required to “keep the lights on” and support the care being delivered. It can also include marketing, continued education, and business travel.

Example: If your total annual overhead is $120,000 and you have 3,000 patient encounters per year, your factored overhead is $40 per encounter.

Indirect Labor: The wages paid to team members who support clinical services but don’t deliver them directly. This includes front desk staff, administrative assistants, billing coordinators, and other behind-the-scenes roles.

Example: Your receptionist who schedules patients and checks them in isn’t part of the IV procedure—but their salary is still essential to clinic operations. That’s indirect labor, and it’s usually included in your overhead calculations.

The oversight represented in the first equation above is very common. Most clinic owners factor in supplies and labor when setting prices for procedures, but forget overhead. Yet overhead represents a major bulk of the costs for a clinic, and if you’re not accounting for those costs in your procedure pricing, you’re missing an important piece of the puzzle. Thankfully, you don’t need a finance degree to estimate your overhead allocation.

Here’s a simple method to start with:

Step 1: Begin by adding up all your annual operating expenses, excluding direct labor and cost of goods sold. (Side note: If you have a well-structured profit and loss statement, this should be pretty easy to do. I advise clients to segregate direct labor from indirect labor, and to use clear criterion for separating cost of goods sold from other supplies.)

Step 2: Then divide that number by your total number of patient encounters for the year. You should be able to fetch that number from your analytics reporting in your EHR. That will give you a rough “overhead per visit.”  Is it perfect?  No. But as the saying goes, no model is correct, but some are useful. There are more nuanced ways of going about it, but this basic method of estimating your overhead allocation per visit can give a decent read as to whether your current pricing structure is sustainable for your clinic. (Bear in mind that, depending on the specific details of your clinic model, this may not be the most appropriate method, and it may be worth consulting with an expert for personalized advice.)

Step 3: Once you’ve accounted for overhead, the next step is to assess who’s actually delivering the care, and how long it takes. A 45-minute IV session with an RN is a very different cost structure than a five-minute blood draw by a medical assistant. Labor costs must reflect both the person’s wage and the time required to deliver the service. If you’re not factoring this in, you may be underpricing your most labor-intensive procedures without realizing it.

Step 4: Then there’s cost of goods sold (COGS)—all the materials involved in service delivery. IV bags, syringes, supplements, injectables, gloves, alcohol wipes, gauze—it adds up. It might seem minor on a per-encounter basis, but over time, these costs accumulate. Combine your COGS, direct labor, and overhead estimate, and you’ve got a much clearer picture of your true service cost.

Step 5: Now comes a bit of strategy. Once you know your cost, you can define your profit per procedure (some call this your “margin”). I typically recommend pricing your services somewhere between 40% to 100% above your total cost. Why such a large range?  Because every clinic is different—geography, patient demographics, and value positioning all play a role. Factoring in your lifestyle financial requirements is also worth considering; how much do you need to take home? (I emphasize this because I too often see BioMed practitioners underpaying themselves.) It’s important to aim for consistency in your profit margins across services. That will help keep your revenue balanced and predictable, so that you can pay yourself and your team well (for doing the beautiful work that you do).

I’d like to caution you about another common pricing mistake: don’t let the clinic down the street dictate your pricing. Matching competitors might feel safe, but it’s often the quickest way to undercut your clinic’s financial sustainability. Although it’s worth having a market awareness of what others are charging, I’d encourage you to know your numbers and get creative. Focus on how you can differentiate. Highlight what makes your approach uniquely powerful, your team’s credentials, your patient experience, or the typical outcomes your patients get to communicate value. Remember, most people are value-sensitive, not price-sensitive. If everyone were price-sensitive, no one would buy Apple products, Starbucks drinks, or Subarus. Those brands can charge more than their competitors because they successfully differentiate themselves and communicate their value.

In the BioMed world, we all know it’s not about profitability, and we see the failings of profit-driven medical systems. But profitability is not something to be ignored either. Profitability gives you the breathing room to reinvest in the things that make your clinic worth choosing (like having an exceptional team of folks who aren’t overly stressed or burning out). In my book, that goes much further than competing on price.

At the end of the day, pricing with intention and purpose is about more than just spreadsheets. It’s about honoring your clinic’s mission and what called you to your work. I know you didn’t come into this profession for the money, but profit is what allows you to show up fully for your patients, support your team, avoid burnout, and expand your impact in various other ways. When you know your numbers, you can make decisions that serve your long-term vision, not just your month-to-month survival.

If you would like help building a sustainable pricing model for your IV therapy or injectable services, I offer a complimentary 30-minute consultation. I also have a costing template that clinic owners find incredibly helpful – feel free to reach out and ask me about that. You can email me at info@lifestreambusiness.com.

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Hi, I’m Bill 🌿

I founded Life Stream Business Services to provide strategy, coaching, accounting and bookkeeping services for integrative health practitioners who want to organize their finances and proactively grow their business, without sacrificing their values (or going broke).

I practice, study, and write about business growth and personal growth, thereby helping many of my clients grow past what they thought was possible in their business.

My work with clients applies methods of strategic business development, Somatic Experiencing, Integral Coaching, financial advisory and customized business growth models specifically geared toward Integrative Health clinics and solo-practices.

• Vision-expansive
• Trauma-informed
• Emotionally-attuned
• Financially-literate
• Dharma-inclined