Owners think they're buying hours or treatments when they set provider pay. They're not. They're buying behavior — and every compensation model is a behavior-training program whether you designed it that way or not. Pay a percentage of units and you'll get more units. Pay a flat salary and you'll get predictability and, often, comfortable underperformance. Pay a blend and you'll get whatever you tuned the blend toward. The comp plan is the single most powerful management lever in the building, and the reason it so often works against owners is that most of them set it by accident and then wonder why their providers behave the way the plan trained them to.
Operations
Provider Compensation Models: Hourly vs Commission vs Hybrid and How Each Warps Behavior
You don't pay for hours or treatments — you pay for behavior. Every comp model quietly trains your providers to do more of something, and the wrong incentive shows up in your margin and your chart.
