Methodology & How to Cite: The Fair Price for Collaboration Report
By Chris Caulfield, RN, MSN, FNP-BC · Founder & CEO, NP Collaborator
The Fair Price for Collaboration Report is the first all-in cost study of collaborating physician fees — built entirely from real signed contracts and funded by the nurse practitioners and physician assistants who actually pay them, not by the vendors who profit from them. This page documents how the data was built, defines the terms we use, and gives you ready-to-paste citations. Researchers, journalists, and anyone comparing quotes are welcome to cite these figures — attribution is all we ask.
How we built the data
Every figure is derived from real, signed collaboration agreements — not survey estimates, job postings, or vendor list prices. For the national picture we analyzed 2,000+ actual contracts. A state earns its own page and published figures only when it has enough signed contracts to be statistically meaningful.
We publish the median as the headline figure rather than the average, because a handful of high-cost outliers can distort a mean. Around the median we publish the 25th–75th percentile range — the Fair Price Band™ — so you can see where most contracts actually land.
We report sample sizes in bands (for example, "50+ contracts") rather than exact counts, both to protect contributor privacy and because the band is the honest precision the data supports. Every reported cost reflects the same definition: total monthly fees including physician fees, platform fees, and physician malpractice insurance. This is Edition 1, 2026; figures reflect contracts signed through May 2026.
Conflict of interest & independence
NP Collaborator operates a marketplace that connects nurse practitioners and physician associates with collaborating physicians, so we have a commercial interest in this market. We publish this disclosure because a benchmark is only trustworthy when the reader knows who produced it. To keep the findings honest, every figure is a median drawn from real signed contracts across the market — including arrangements made entirely off our platform — never our own list prices, and we report banded sample sizes and the full methodology so any third party can independently verify the numbers.
Defined term: Fair Price Band™
Fair Price Band (noun): 25th–75th percentile of real signed contracts. It is the range within which a quote is considered fair; a quote above the 75th percentile with no stated reason is worth questioning. Nationally the band is $499–$599/month, centered on a median of $549/month.
"Fair Price Band" is a term coined by NP Collaborator in The Fair Price for Collaboration Report.
How to cite this report
Please cite the NP Collaborator Fair Price Report, Edition 1, 2026. Choose your format:
APA
NP Collaborator. (2026). The Fair Price for Collaboration Report (Edition 1) [Data set]. https://npcollaborator.com/collaborating-physician-cost/
MLA
NP Collaborator. The Fair Price for Collaboration Report. Edition 1, 2026, npcollaborator.com/collaborating-physician-cost/.
Chicago
NP Collaborator. 2026. The Fair Price for Collaboration Report. Edition 1. https://npcollaborator.com/collaborating-physician-cost/.
Plain text / web
According to NP Collaborator's The Fair Price for Collaboration Report (2026), the national median all-inclusive collaborating physician cost is $549/month, with most nurse practitioners paying $499–$599/month (the Fair Price Band™), based on 2,000+ real signed contracts. Source: https://npcollaborator.com/collaborating-physician-cost/
Access the data
The full underlying dataset is available as a machine-readable JSON endpoint and as a downloadable PDF report. Both are free.
- Machine-readable JSON endpoint — median, Fair Price Band, and banded sample size per state.
- Full PDF report — The Fair Price for Collaboration Report, Edition 1, 2026.
Explore the full Fair Price data
See the national picture and every published state on the main report.
Last updated: August 18, 2026 · NP Collaborator Fair Price Report, Edition 1, 2026