Understanding Seasonal Trends in Allied Healthcare Clinics: The “April Curse” and How to Navigate It

Today, I want to dive into a topic that hits many allied healthcare clinics year after year — seasonal trends, particularly around April. Whether you’re watching this right now in 2024 or any time of the year, these insights are going to help you understand and manage those tricky seasonal dips in your clinic’s revenue.

The April Curse: What Is It and Why Does It Matter?

As Easter approaches in 2024, it brings with it a familiar challenge for many healthcare businesses: the “April Curse.” This is the term I use to describe the usual slowdown many clinics face during April because of the public holidays clustered around this time.

Interestingly, in 2024, the public holidays are spread across March and April, so the usual crunch feels a little different. But the general problem remains — when public holidays reduce the number of working days, business owners, especially in healthcare, start to panic.

Why? Because many allied health clinics run on a “one-to-one” business model where revenue generation depends on face-to-face client appointments. When your team isn’t working or seeing clients, revenue slows down, but the costs of paying your staff continue.

The Seasonal Roller Coaster: Revenue Up, Revenue Down

If you’ve ever looked at your clinic’s revenue graphs across the year, you probably noticed this roller coaster effect: some months are great, and some months take a dip. April and December tend to be the two biggest dip months.

• December is easy to understand — Christmas and New Year’s often mean clinic closures or reduced appointments, resulting in lower revenue.

• April’s slowdown is all about public holidays and how they affect the number of working days.

A Different Way to Look at Your Revenue: Working Days Matter

Here’s where a little trick can help smooth out those wild revenue swings and give you better insight into your business performance.

On Google, you can find tools that calculate the number of working days in any given month — including weekends and public holidays. For example, in New South Wales in 2024, March has 31 days but only 20 working days due to weekends and public holidays.

Why does this matter? Because if your clinic operates Monday to Friday, or maybe even a half-day on Saturdays, the number of days you’re actually open changes each month, which naturally affects your total monthly revenue.

Revenue Per Business Day: The Smarter Metric

Instead of just looking at total revenue month-to-month, try calculating your revenue per business day. This metric gives you a clearer picture of how well your clinic is performing on a day-to-day basis — and it smooths out those seasonal ups and downs.

For example, if you generate $100,000 in a month with 21 business days, your revenue per business day is about $4,761. If the next month you make $95,000 but only have 19 business days, your revenue per business day actually increased to $5,000 — showing you worked more efficiently even though total revenue dropped.

Why This Helps You as a Clinic Owner

By focusing on revenue per business day instead of just monthly totals, you get:

• A more consistent and realistic view of your clinic’s performance

• Reduced emotional highs and lows caused by seasonal changes

• Clearer insight on where to focus your efforts to improve productivity and profitability

Try pulling up your clinic’s data from last April and calculate your revenue per business day. Then track it this year and see if you’re improving.

Final Thoughts

I’m a numbers person, and I love using simple calculations like this to bring clarity to what’s really happening in the business. Instead of riding that emotional roller coaster every year, this approach helps you plan smarter and make better decisions.

Give it a try, and you might just find that the “April Curse” becomes a little less scary.