Health care and social assistance is the largest employer sector in the United States, and it is overwhelmingly a small-business sector: 693,801 employer firms ran 976,418 establishments in 2022, and 85.6 percent of those firms had fewer than 20 employees. Together they took in $3.33 trillion, with about 38 cents of every dollar going to payroll. Every figure below comes from the Census Bureau or the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
How many healthcare businesses are there in the United States?
There are 693,801 employer firms in health care and social assistance (NAICS 62), operating 976,418 establishments and employing 21.2 million people, according to the Census Bureau's 2022 Statistics of U.S. Businesses. The part of the sector where most owner-operated practices live is ambulatory health care (NAICS 621): 504,777 firms, 678,288 locations and 8.4 million employees.
Inside ambulatory care, the biggest groups are offices of physicians (145,305 firms), offices of dentists (120,488) and offices of other health practitioners (165,423), a category that includes 39,298 chiropractic firms, 38,819 mental health practitioner offices, 31,687 physical, occupational and speech therapy firms, 18,708 optometry firms and 6,639 podiatry firms. Home health care accounts for another 28,198 firms, outpatient care centers 28,324, and medical and diagnostic laboratories 9,025. Nursing and residential care (43,215 firms) and social assistance (147,715) make up the rest of the sector.
How many healthcare businesses are small businesses?
Most healthcare businesses are small by any definition: 593,927 of the 693,801 employer firms, or 85.6 percent, have fewer than 20 employees, and 367,849 (53.0 percent) have fewer than five. In ambulatory care the concentration is even stronger, with 90.2 percent of firms under 20 employees and 56.7 percent under five. Among dental offices 94.2 percent of firms have fewer than 20 staff; among physician offices the figure is 89.0 percent, and 71.3 percent of other-practitioner offices (chiropractic, therapy, optometry and similar) have fewer than five employees.
The flip side is that employment is concentrated in the large organizations. Firms with fewer than 20 employees account for 12.9 percent of all healthcare jobs (2.72 million of 21.2 million), and 24.0 percent of ambulatory care jobs. The industry is built from hundreds of thousands of small practices and a comparatively small number of hospital systems, large groups and chains that carry most of the payroll.
How much revenue does a small medical or dental practice make?
The averages below are computed from Census SUSB 2022 receipts divided by the number of firms in each size class, so they describe a typical practice rather than any one business. A dental practice averages $1.33 million in annual receipts across all sizes; a dental office with fewer than five employees averages about $422,000, and one with five to nine employees about $957,000. A physician office with fewer than five employees averages about $525,000, and physician firms with fewer than 20 employees about $931,000.
Across the other practitioner categories, a chiropractic firm averages about $419,000, a mental health practitioner office about $538,000, an optometry firm about $1.11 million and a physical, occupational or speech therapy firm about $1.43 million. Home health care averages about $4.0 million per firm overall, but a home health agency with fewer than five employees averages only about $242,000, which shows how quickly that industry scales with headcount.
What share of healthcare revenue goes to payroll?
Payroll is the dominant cost in healthcare, and the Census data lets you see the ratio by industry. Across the whole sector, annual payroll of $1.28 trillion equals 38.4 percent of the $3.33 trillion in receipts. In ambulatory care it is 40.7 percent, in physician offices 41.8 percent, in dental offices 37.2 percent and in chiropractic offices 35.5 percent. The labor-intensive services run far higher: 48.3 percent in physical, occupational and speech therapy, and 49.5 percent in home health care.
Those ratios are the margin reality for a practice owner. Before rent, supplies, malpractice coverage, software and the owner's own draw, roughly 35 to 50 cents of every dollar collected is already committed to staff wages, and that staff is paid every two weeks whether or not insurers have reimbursed the claims for the work. That timing gap between payroll and collections is the single most common reason healthcare practices look for medical practice funding.
What does the healthcare labor market look like for practice owners?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that overall employment in healthcare occupations will grow much faster than the average for all occupations from 2025 to 2035, with about 1.9 million openings projected each year from growth and replacement needs. The median annual wage for healthcare practitioners and technical occupations was $86,530 in May 2025, and $38,340 for healthcare support occupations.
For a small practice, those numbers describe a hiring market where a dental hygienist, a physical therapist or a medical assistant has many employers competing for them, so wages and recruiting costs tend to rise faster than reimbursement rates. Owners who plan to add a provider or open a second treatment room usually need to fund the staffing step before the new revenue arrives.
What these numbers mean for financing a practice
The data describes a sector of small, labor-heavy businesses with steady but delayed revenue, which is why practices qualify well for working-capital products that are sized on collections rather than on collateral. A dental office buying a new chair or imaging unit typically uses equipment financing, while a practice covering payroll between insurance payments more often uses a line of credit or a short-term advance. Our pages on funding for dentists, funding for chiropractors, funding for physical therapists and funding for home health agencies walk through the options for each practice type.
The Broker Shop is a funding broker, not a lender. One application is matched to the lenders among 50+ whose guidelines fit your practice, and those lenders compete for the deal, so you compare several offers instead of taking the first one. Checking your options won't affect your credit score, and it is free to apply.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many medical practices are there in the U.S.?
The Census Bureau's 2022 Statistics of U.S. Businesses counts 145,305 employer firms classified as offices of physicians, operating 210,756 locations, plus 120,488 dental practices and 165,423 offices of other health practitioners such as chiropractors, therapists, optometrists and mental health professionals. All ambulatory health care combined comes to 504,777 employer firms, 90.2 percent of which have fewer than 20 employees.
What is the average revenue of a dental practice?
Dental practices with employees averaged about $1.33 million in annual receipts in 2022 ($160.2 billion across 120,488 firms), according to Census SUSB data. The average depends heavily on size: a dental office with fewer than five employees averaged about $422,000, and one with five to nine employees about $957,000. Roughly 37.2 cents of every dollar a dental office collects goes to payroll.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau — 2022 Statistics of U.S. Businesses, firms, establishments, employment, payroll and receipts by NAICS 62, 621, 6211, 6212, 6213, 621310, 621320, 621330, 621340, 621391, 6214, 6215, 6216, 623 and 624, by enterprise size · Bureau of Labor Statistics — Occupational Outlook Handbook, Healthcare Occupations (2025–35 projections, annual openings, May 2025 median wages)
Found these figures useful? You are welcome to cite or link to this page. Suggested attribution: “Healthcare Small Business Statistics 2026,” The Broker Shop — thebrokershopinc.com/healthcare-small-business-statistics.html. Every figure links to its original primary source; averages and shares are computed from the Census totals named above.
Funding sized to your collections, not your collateral
Payroll comes due every two weeks; insurance reimbursements do not. One 2-minute application is matched to the lenders whose guidelines fit your practice. It's free, and checking your options won't affect your credit score.
See What I Qualify For →The bottom line: Healthcare is 693,801 employer firms, 86 percent of them under 20 employees, in an industry that spends 35 to 50 cents of every dollar on payroll before anything else; practices that grow are the ones that fund the gap between staffing up and getting paid, instead of letting it stall them.