What the job costs #
Salary is the part everyone quotes and the smallest part of the decision. Here is the employment cost at the national median, using the rates in force for the 2026 to 2027 tax year.
£42,559
Median salary
ONS ASHE 2025 (provisional), SOC 1231
£49,282
Employment cost a year
Salary, employer NI and minimum pension
£28
Per hour worked
37.5 hour week, 46.4 working weeks
| Item | A year | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Median salary | £42,559 | ONS ASHE 2025 (provisional), SOC 1231 |
| Employer National Insurance | £5,634 | 15 per cent above £5,000 |
| Minimum workplace pension | £1,090 | 3 per cent of qualifying earnings |
| Employment cost | £49,282 | About £28 an hour on a 37.5 hour week |
Recruitment, equipment, software seats, training and cover for holiday and sickness all sit on top, and they vary too much between businesses to put a number on here.
If you want to run your own figures, the true cost of an employee tool does this with your salary, hours and on costs.
What the week is actually made of #
Here is the job as it usually runs in a business, split by whether the work follows a fixed pattern or needs a person to decide something. This split is our analysis, not a survey, and your version of the role will differ.
Runs to a pattern (3 of 12)
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Report on activity, targets and income streams monthly
Same sources, same report.
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Manage the building, equipment servicing and health and safety monthly
Schedules and checklists.
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Oversee payroll, pensions and HR records monthly
A defined monthly cycle.
Needs a person (9 of 12)
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Run the practice budget and watch income against it monthly
Priorities and trade-offs.
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Build the rota and staffing levels across clinics weekly
Demand, skills, leave and cost pulling in different directions.
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Line manage reception, admin and support staff weekly
People management.
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Handle complaints and significant events weekly
Investigation, tone and learning.
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Keep the practice inspection ready and file regulatory returns monthly
Knowing what the regulator will look at.
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Manage contracts for software, equipment and services monthly
Negotiation and renewal decisions.
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Run recruitment, induction and appraisals monthly
Choosing and developing people.
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Own information governance, data protection and training compliance monthly
Interpreting rules for this practice.
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Chair practice meetings and make decisions stick weekly
Influence, not process.
What to do before you advertise #
The question is not whether to hire. It is what the person will be doing on a Tuesday afternoon in March. Two things are worth doing first, and both take less effort than writing the advert:
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Count the week you are about to buy
Write down the jobs this role would pick up, how long each takes and how often it happens. The cost of admin time calculator adds it up and puts a cost on it.
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Separate the pattern from the judgement
If most of the hours sit in the first list above, a hire will absorb the pressure rather than remove it, and the same pressure returns when the business grows again.
Plenty of businesses do both: automate the repeated half, then hire someone to do the half that needs a person, often part time or at a level that keeps them interested. That is a better job than the one the advert usually describes.
Where this role usually sits #
This job turns up most often in private clinics , care and legal , and the admin around it looks different in each.
A note on the pay figure #
£42,559 is the median for full time employees in SOC 1231, Health care practice managers, from the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2025 (provisional). ONS publishes a coefficient of variation with every figure, and this one is 12 per cent, which ONS treats as reliable.
It is a national figure covering every employer size and region. What a specific business pays depends on where it is, how specialised the job is, and what else is on offer nearby.