In any particular region, determining an adequate, quantifiable geriatrician full‐time equivalent required to run geriatric medicine services comprehensively – that is spanning both inpatient and outpatient settings – remains an imperfect science. Whilst workforce planning may be addressed through ‘demand versus supply’ simulations, ‘specialist‐to‐patient ratios’ (SPRs) may be a useful additional workforce metric. There has never been a yardstick SPR, which ‘defines’ a satisfactory level of geriatrician manpower in any particular Australian hospital catchment. Here, a new methodology is proposed (tailored specifically to Australian geriatrics), illustrating how we may begin to transparently deduce such a national benchmark SPR. Allowing for some empiricism, the method presently favours an SPR approximating ‘0.4 full‐time equivalent of geriatrician time per 10 000 head of population’ in regions with ‘average’ population age distribution; this level of manpower may afford specialist assessment of targeted patients (widely capturing geriatric cases from acute to community settings). Further discussion on workforce planning methodologies is warranted.