The number depends on the model, the city, and the condition of the space. These are the categories a serious budget has to hold. The financial model prices them for your clinic.
| Category | What belongs in it |
|---|---|
| Premises | Deposit, rent during a fixturing period, and the difference between landlord work and tenant work. |
| Build-out | Design, permits, construction, millwork, HVAC, plumbing, electrical capacity, and accessibility work the space does not already have. |
| Clinical equipment and opening supplies | What you must own or lease to see the first patients, as distinct from what can wait. |
| Information systems | EMR, practice administration tools, phones, and the network. Choose them on the EMR page, then cost them. |
| Professional fees | Legal review of the lease, accounting, design professionals, and consulting. Each advisor bills for their own work. |
| People | Recruiting, training, and payroll for the period before revenue is steady. |
| Working capital | Cash the clinic needs while billings catch up to expenses. The length of that gap is an output of the model. |
| Sequence mistakes | A lease signed before the model exists, or a build redesigned during construction, shows up as extra cost. |
The size of each category depends on specialty, city, and whether you take a shell or a clinic that was fitted for someone else. A family practice and a specialist clinic should not share a borrowed total.
Related reading: the startup checklist, the timeline, and the lease mistakes that quietly move the premises number.
Questions physicians ask
What sets the cost?
Your specialty, your city, the condition of the space, and how many physicians you are staffing. We price those in the financial model for your clinic.
Are your fees in the startup budget?
Professional fees, including legal, accounting, design, and consulting, belong in the budget as a category. Your first consultation is free, and the scope of any further work is set in that conversation.