How days in A/R is calculated
The formula is total accounts receivable divided by your average daily charges — where average daily charges is monthly charges × 12 ÷ 365. The figure above uses your own numbers. It answers a blunt question: if you stopped billing today, how many days of charges are still sitting unpaid?
What's a healthy days in A/R?
Here the guidance is unusually consistent. the AAFP both put the healthy zone at roughly 30–40 days, and under 50 at the very minimum. But it moves with specialty and payer mix, and national figures have been drifting upward — so treat the benchmark as the neighbourhood and your own quarter-over-quarter trend as the real score.
What actually moves it
Raise your clean-claim rate so fewer claims bounce, work denials within days rather than weeks, and collect patient balances at the time of service. Above all, watch the over-90-day bucket — a healthy average can hide a growing pile of old, hard-to-collect claims.
Questions people ask
about this number.
WHAT IT MEANS
WHAT MOVES IT
Divide total accounts receivable by average daily charges, where average daily charges is monthly charges times 12 divided by 365. For example, $900,000 in A/R against $600,000 billed a month works out to about 46 days.
The AAFP puts the preferred range at 30 to 40 days and the minimum under 50. It varies by specialty and payer mix, so compare against your own trend and your over-90-day bucket rather than a single benchmark.
Raise your clean-claim rate, work denials within days rather than weeks, collect patient balances at the time of service, and keep the over-90-day receivables from piling up.