How to start a sports medicine practice

To start a sports medicine practice, decide which patients and settings you will serve: office visits, procedures, team coverage, or a combination. Match that plan to your license, training, referral network, and malpractice coverage. Then complete the business setup and review your employment agreement. The critical planning step is to map what happens when an athlete needs care beyond the clinic or the sideline.

This guide covers practice operations, not return-to-play decisions or treatment protocols. Legal and credential sources were checked October 12, 2026; have counsel and your carrier review the rules for your own settings.

How do you start a sports medicine practice?

Write separate plans for clinic work and event work, even if the same clinician does both. Each needs a schedule, equipment, documentation process, backup coverage, and payment arrangement. That separation makes it easier to explain the practice to patients, teams, referral partners, and an insurance carrier.

1. Define the patients, visit types, and procedures you are equipped to provide.
2. Confirm your license and any required collaboration, credentials, or privileges.
3. Review your employment agreement, including ownership of existing team contracts.
4. Identify imaging, physical therapy, surgical, and other referral partners.
5. Confirm malpractice coverage for the clinic, off-site work, procedures, and travel.
6. Complete the entity, identifiers, payer enrollment, and records steps in the private-practice guide.
7. Rehearse a referral and a post-event follow-up before opening the schedule.

Which sports medicine credentials should you describe?

Use the exact credential you hold. Sports Medicine and Orthopaedic Sports Medicine are different subspecialty certificates on the ABMS chart. “Performance medicine” is not a certificate on that chart. A practice name should help patients understand the service, while your biography explains your actual training and certification.

For family physicians, ABFM's Sports Medicine CAQ requires ongoing family medicine certification, at least 12 months of accredited fellowship training, an application, and a passing examination. The ABOS pathway is for board-certified orthopaedic surgeons and has its own fellowship and case requirements. Neither is a substitute for checking state scope.

An NP-led service needs its own scope and collaboration review. The nurse practitioner practice guide covers that planning path.

What should be on the clinic service list?

Describe the work in terms of decisions and handoffs. “Imaging available” is less helpful than knowing where the study happens, who reads it, and who calls the patient. Use the service list to find missing relationships before they become a delay for someone trying to return to activity.

Service	Settle this before advertising it
New injury assessment	Appointment access, records needed, and route for concerns beyond the clinic's capacity
Procedures	Training, supplies, consent, coverage, and follow-up responsibility
Imaging	Ordering process, performing site, interpreting clinician, and result delivery
Rehabilitation referral	Referral question, records handoff, and progress communication
Surgical referral	Who receives the referral and how the patient gets an appointment
Performance consultation	What is assessed, what is reported, and which claims the evidence supports

For example, walk through an athlete who is seen after an event and needs an outside scan. Who places the order, confirms it was completed, reviews the report, and arranges the next visit? Write those names or roles into the workflow.

Does clinic malpractice cover sideline and team travel?

Ask the carrier to confirm your exact role, locations, procedures, and travel in writing. A clinic policy and a team agreement are different documents. Federal law provides a specific framework for some traveling sports medicine professionals, but it is not blanket permission to provide every kind of care in another state.

Under 15 U.S.C. 8601, qualifying team or athlete care can receive liability and licensure protections in a second state. Conditions include a written agreement, prior disclosure to the insurer, and limits tied to state scope. The statute excludes care at a health care facility as it defines that term. Its definition treats arena, stadium, practice, and temporary event facilities differently from ordinary healthcare facilities. Counsel should check whether the particular event, professional, and services qualify.

Setting	Documents to review together
Clinic	Policy, location, procedures, and any payer requirements
Local sideline or event	Event agreement, role, equipment, emergency arrangements, and policy
Team travel	Written team agreement, insurer disclosure, itinerary, scope, and applicable licensure rules

If you leave a job or change a claims-made policy, review malpractice tail coverage separately. Coverage for new work does not settle protection for prior work.

How do you budget for a sports medicine practice?

Build separate budgets for appointments and event commitments. Include travel time, documentation after events, supplies, backup coverage, and follow-up visits, alongside the usual rent, staff, and software. A game-day fee is difficult to evaluate if the schedule ignores the work before and after the game.

Use the startup-cost guide to collect quotes. Before buying equipment, compare the expected use, training, maintenance, and space requirements with an outside referral arrangement. For insurance billing, confirm the service and your effective date with each payer. For direct payment, define what the fee includes in advance.

What should a team agreement clarify?

The agreement should make the working relationship understandable before the first event. Ask counsel to define the covered people and events, communication boundaries, clinical independence, records, payment, cancellation, and what happens when you are unavailable. Coordinate the operational plan with the team's existing emergency arrangements.

If the agreement comes through your employer, settle whether you can continue it after leaving. Review notice, outside work, patient communications, and records access before announcing a new clinic. The employment-contract checklist is a useful starting point.

Where can Vye Health help?

Vye Health helps providers launch, run, and grow private practices. Vye manages licensing, credentialing, malpractice insurance, and your website, and payer contracts if you want them.

Bring the proposed clinic menu and any event or team commitments. Apply to Vye Health.