Psychiatry panel size calculator
Estimate the active patient panel a psychiatrist or PMHNP can sustainably hold, from clinical hours, visit lengths, follow-up interval, intake, and no-shows. Everything runs in your browser, and it shows its math.
80% of your clinical time on follow-ups · each established patient needs about 8.7 visits a year
How the math works
The calculator turns your clinical hours and weeks into annual minutes, then spends them in order. New evaluations come first: your new patients per week, across the weeks you work, each taking your evaluation length. Whatever time is left goes to follow-ups, divided by your follow-up length to get your follow-up capacity. It removes the no-show share, then divides by the number of visits each established patient needs a year, which is 52 divided by your follow-up interval. That gives the sustainable active panel, the number of established patients you can hold without the schedule breaking.
The point isn't the exact number, it's the sensitivity. Move the follow-up interval slider and watch the panel swing: it's the single biggest lever, because it sets how much of your year each patient consumes. That's why a stable, well-controlled panel can be far larger than a high-acuity one, and why access and continuity pull against each other. For the money side of the same inputs, use the private practice revenue estimator, and for the context, see how private practices work.
Common questions
What is a psychiatry panel size?
Panel size is the number of active patients a clinician is responsible for at a given time. For an outpatient psychiatrist, it's driven less by how many hours you work and more by how often you see established patients: a shorter follow-up interval means each patient needs more visits a year, which lowers the number you can hold.
How does this calculator estimate panel size?
It converts your clinical hours into annual minutes, carves out the time your new evaluations take, divides the remaining time by your follow-up length to get follow-up capacity, removes the no-show share, and divides by the number of visits each established patient needs a year (52 divided by your follow-up interval). The result is a sustainable active panel, not a maximum.
Why is the follow-up interval the biggest lever?
Because it sets how many visits a year each patient consumes. Seeing patients every four weeks means about thirteen visits per patient per year; every eight weeks means about six and a half. Doubling the interval roughly doubles the panel you can hold, which is why acuity and stability matter so much to capacity.
Is this financial or staffing advice?
No. It's an educational model to show how the levers interact. Real panels vary with acuity, medication complexity, documentation and administrative load, therapy versus medication management, and coverage arrangements. Use it to build intuition, not to set a target for any specific clinician.
Part of The Psychiatry Operating Room, shrinkiatry's map of the profession behind psychiatric care.
Sources
This tool is arithmetic on the numbers you enter; the defaults are illustrative, not benchmarks. Panel size and productivity benchmarks vary by setting; if you want real figures to check your inputs against, start here.
- MGMA DataDive Provider Compensation and Productivity data. https://www.mgma.com/datadive/provider-compensation
- American Medical Association, panel size and practice management resources. https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management