Convert total staff hours into full-time equivalents — the staffing unit budgets, benchmarks and productivity ratios are built on.
What an FTE is
Headcount lies — three part-timers are not three staff. The full-time equivalent normalises everyone to full-time hours: total hours worked divided by the full-time standard. It’s the unit every staffing benchmark uses — support staff per provider FTE, visits per clinical FTE, cost per FTE — which is why the conversion has to be right before any benchmark means anything.
How to use it
- Add up all hours for the group per week (or any period).
- Enter the full-time standard — 40 is common; some organisations use 36 or 37.5.
- Read the FTE count and the annualised basis.
The formula
A worked example
A front office logging 190 combined weekly hours at a 40-hour standard is 4.75 FTE — whether that’s five people with one part-timer or seven people on mixed schedules. Against a benchmark of, say, 4.5 support FTE per physician FTE, the practice now has a comparable number instead of a headcount argument.
Estimates only — payer contracts, plan documents, published fee schedules and the EOB are the source of truth, and nothing here is billing, legal or medical advice. The calculator runs entirely in your browser: no patient data is entered, transmitted or stored.