A CFO for your practice, without the full-time salary.
Monthly numbers you can trust, and a straight answer on hiring, pay and cash. I'm Rob Freels: 25 years in banking, audit and CFO roles.
“I can bring him a question or business decision and work through the financial impact with much more clarity and confidence.” — Owner, multi-clinician mental health group practice
Financial leadership for practices that have outgrown bookkeeping.
I work with owner-led, multi-provider healthcare and specialty practices: big enough and complicated enough to need CFO-level thinking, but not ready for a full-time CFO's salary.
Healthcare & Specialty Practices
Multi-provider practices where payroll, provider pay, payers and cash timing now decide whether a good month is actually a good month. If you're making big decisions off a report you don't quite trust, this is you.
Is this built for my practice?Mental Health Group Practices
Run a group therapy or psychiatry practice? I built a page just for you, including a free break-even calculator that shows what a new clinician has to bill before they pay for themselves.
See the group practice pageYour numbers should tell you the truth, before it costs you something.
You can be busy, profitable on paper, and still one bad month away from a real problem.
Most practice owners don't find that out until it's expensive, because nobody's actually looking at the full picture. Bookkeeping tells you what happened. It rarely tells you what to do next.
That's the gap I fill: clear financials, real cash flow visibility, and a CFO-level read on what's actually driving (or draining) your margins.
Two ways to start
No long-term commitment required to find out what's really going on in your numbers.
Practice Financial Review
A focused, two-week look at your books. I'll surface the top issues quietly costing you money (pricing gaps, margin leaks, cash timing problems) and hand you a short, plain-English findings report. No jargon, no 40-page deck.
Fractional CFO Retainer
Ongoing financial leadership: monthly financials you can trust, a clear dashboard, a recurring strategy session, and a CFO on call for the big decisions: pricing, hiring, expansion, or an eventual exit.
What this looks like in practice
Results from a multi-provider specialty practice where I served as CFO and practice administrator. Every practice is different, and none of this is a promise about yours.
A few principles I don't bend on
Cash flow is the truth
Everything starts there. Profit on paper means nothing if cash doesn't follow.
Finance and operations are one thing
Reporting without execution is just noise. The numbers should change what happens next.
Clarity beats more data
Leadership needs actionable insight, not another dashboard nobody opens.
“Instead of feeling like I have to figure everything out on my own, or run the business on an instinct, I can bring him a question or business decision and work through the financial impact with much more clarity and confidence.”
Working with Rob Freels at Free Rivers CFO has been extremely helpful as I continue growing my mental health group practice. He has helped me make sense of the numbers behind important decisions involving clinician compensation, hiring, expenses, profitability, cash flow, and expansion.
What I appreciate most is that Rob makes financial information easy to understand and helps turn the numbers into practical solutions I can actually implement. Instead of feeling like I have to figure everything out on my own, or run the business on an instinct, I can bring him a question or business decision and work through the financial impact with much more clarity and confidence.
I would highly recommend Rob to other business owners who want a better understanding of where they are, where they want to go and how to get there, having Free Rivers CFO as a practical partner to help make informed, sustainable decisions as the business grow.
25 years on every side of the finance desk.
I've been a banker, an auditor, and for the last 16 years a CFO. That time has spanned healthcare services, physician practice operations, product distribution, and public accounting. That mix gives me a practical lens on how capital, operations, and risk connect in real businesses, especially in regulated, high-friction environments.
I'm most effective in environments that require building, fixing, or scaling the financial engine behind the business. Right now, I'm taking on a select number of fractional CFO engagements with healthcare and specialty practices that want exactly that.
Why I do this
My grandfather had a general store in my hometown. Then, Wal-Mart came into our town. So growing up, I watched his store decline and collapse firsthand. Ultimately, he filed for bankruptcy. Several years later, something similar happened again in my family, and it ended in another bankruptcy.
Nobody in my family was bad at their work. They were bad at the money part, and nobody ever showed them. That's the whole reason I learned it.
So when a practice owner tells me the numbers make them feel stupid, I don't think they're stupid. I think nobody ever sat down and explained it to them, and that's a fixable problem. It's the part of this job that actually fills my bucket: watching somebody finally see what they have, what they don't, and where they need to be.
Free, and useful before we ever talk.
Research and tools built from the same work I do for clients.
What Therapists Actually Pay Their Billers
Typical rates owners report, and the three numbers that tell you whether yours is earning it.
Read itGroup Practice Break-Even Calculator
How many sessions each clinician has to hold before the practice makes money, and what a new hire has to bill to pay for themselves.
Get the calculatorPractice Numbers Survey
A few minutes on how your practice actually handles its numbers. Everyone who answers sees the results first.
Take the survey
If your numbers feel like a black box, let's open it up.
First conversation's on me. No pitch, just a straight look at where things stand.