The biggest concerns for most therapists when considering starting out as travelers include pay and benefits. Whitney and I were no exception here. I wanted to make as much as I possibly could while also getting decent health, dental, and vision insurance.
However, over the past several years as travel therapists, we’ve learned that there are other important factors to consider when deciding between travel companies which we call the “intangible benefits” of the companies. The reason these things are intangible is because they don’t show up directly on your weekly paycheck or in your health insurance package, but they can make a big difference in some cases.
Day One Insurance
Depending on your situation, not having to wait 14-30 days before your health insurance benefits take effect can be really important. For Whitney and I, this isn’t necessarily a deal breaker when working with a particular company since we rarely use our health insurance anyway, but it is important to consider. We prefer to work with companies that offer health insurance benefits starting on the very first day of the contract and encourage you to ask this question when interviewing potential recruiters as well.
401k Contributions and 401k Matching
I’m a big proponent of contributing to tax deferred retirement accounts. Not only does contributing to these accounts lower your income taxes, but also your income based student loan payment as well, so working with a company that doesn’t offer a 401k is not something that I’d do very often except in some sort of extenuating circumstance. A 401k match is also a perk that isn’t always offered and may have limited usefulness to travelers in some cases, but should be considered when deciding which travel company to work with.
CEU Reimbursements
Not all companies will offer CEU reimbursement, instead putting that extra money directly into your weekly pay. Depending on your weekly pay and your other reimbursements for a contract, this may or may not be a big deal to you. For us, if we are offered jobs by two different companies with similar pay but one offers a certain amount of CEU reimbursement per contract, that can sway us toward that company. Others may offer access to MedBridge or other online CEUs while on contract with them, at no additional cost to you, which can be a nice perk.
Free Gifts and Trips
Some travel companies will reward their therapists with free gifts such as: shirts, cups, mugs, bags, food, or even all-inclusive trips! These things are always exciting and can be a huge benefit in some cases. Usually we’d prefer to just make more money each week instead of that money going toward gifts and trips, but if two companies offer similar pay, but one offers a free trip each year in addition to the pay, then that company would be hard to pass up! Depending on the traveler’s personality, even small surprise gifts can turn a bad week into a good one, which can make a big impact over the long run.
40 Hour Guarantee
40 hour guarantees (sometimes also called guaranteed work weeks “GWW”) have been huge for me and Whitney! In fact, in almost 4 years of traveling, we’ve never accepted a contract that didn’t have a 40 hour guarantee included. If we take contracts, we want to be sure that we will always be getting full pay even if the facility suddenly starts having fewer patients for some reason and tries to decrease our hours. The security of knowing we’ll be getting paid our full amount no matter what is vital for us.
Most companies offer 40 hour guarantees on some or most contracts, but this varies from company to company. Also, as we’ve found out over the years, all 40 hour guarantees are not created equal. Some companies will only pay you for the full 40 hours if the census is low at the facility, but not if there’s a holiday or inclement weather that causes the facility to be closed. In most situations, we go with companies that pay the full 40 hours no matter what, with all other things being equal. Getting paid even on days when the facility is closed has meant I’ve made thousands of extra dollars over the course of my traveling career. This is one of the biggest intangible benefits for me.
Number of Available Jobs
I’ve talked in the past about smaller companies being able to pay higher weekly amounts with a given bill rate due to lower overhead, but this doesn’t always mean that smaller companies are the optimal choice. Bigger companies often have more available jobs, including exclusive contracts, which means more options for the traveler and potentially less down time between contracts. An extra $100/week can easily be offset by a few weeks of unintended time off due to not finding a contract that fits the traveler well, which could sometimes happen with smaller companies with less job options.
Job availability is even more important when traveling as a pair like Whitney and I, or Travis and his wife, Julia. Having one person in the pair accept a job while hoping to find something for the other person before the job starts can lead to a lot of unpaid time off. Whitney and I have had very good luck with finding two jobs that started exactly when we needed them to over the years (except a couple cases), and we attribute most of that to working with several different companies (most of them bigger) that have the most job options.
Conclusion
Having a high weekly pay rate is certainly important as a travel therapist and the most important thing to me, but it’s important not to forget about the intangible benefits that can directly or indirectly lead to more or less money in your pocket over the course of your traveling career. Make sure that you’re informed and consider all of the variables when deciding which travel companies to work with and which travel assignments to take to ensure that your travel career is a success!
If you would like some suggestions for companies/recruiters that we’ve found to have the best offerings in terms of pay and intangible benefits over the years, then reach out to us here!
If you have any questions about travel therapy or these intangible benefits then feel free to contact us!
Written by: Jared Casazza, PT, DPT
Great post 😁
Nicce post thanks for sharing