How Much of the Pay Does the Travel Therapy Company Keep on a Travel Contract?

March 26, 2022March 28, 2022 ~ Travel Therapy Mentor ~ 4 Comments

Have you ever wondered how much money the travel staffing company is keeping when you accept a travel healthcare contract? If so, you’re not alone.

We very often get questions about what percentage of the bill rate (the amount being paid to the travel company by the facility) should be kept by the travel company, and how much of it should go to the traveler. It’s a logical question, and we understand why travelers are curious to know. They want to make sure they’re not being taken advantage of by travel staffing companies. They want to make sure they’re getting their fair share.

Many travelers look at the situation like this: we as the healthcare professionals are doing all of the work, and the travel company is an “unnecessary evil middle man” who is taking a way bigger cut of the pay than they should be. Many travelers also jump to the next logical conclusion: maybe if we just cut out this unnecessary middle man we would make so much more money and get our fair share. This leads them down the path to considering being an independent contractor.

While I understand both of these thought processes, and went through them myself in the past: now, having looked much deeper into this topic, I’ve come to the conclusion that the financial relationship between the facility, the staffing company, and the traveler is much more nuanced than meets the eye.

While I wish the answer to the question “How Much of the Pay Does the Travel Therapy Company Keep on a Travel Contract?” (and the implied question: how much is fair for them to keep) was easy, unfortunately, it’s definitely not. The first barrier to these questions is understanding the math itself. The second barrier is looking at what costs have to come out behind the scenes before we get our pay AND before the travel company sees any actual profit. After looking at these variables, we then need to determine what we deem “fair” for each party involved.

After discussing this topic with dozens of recruiters and industry leaders over the last few years, it’s clear that even most of the recruiters themselves don’t exactly understand what all goes into calculating pay packages from a given bill rate. Almost always the calculations are done on a program or an excel spreadsheet with only a few numbers being inputted and adjusted by the recruiter.

I originally wrote about travel therapy bill rates and pay packages over 3 years ago in 2018 (currently it’s 2022 at the time of writing this). While my understanding of these topics was pretty good at that time, I’ve learned significantly more over the least 3 years about just how nuanced these topics are.

In this article, I’ll attempt to explain why determining an exact percentage that is being kept and/or should be kept by the travel company on a contract is very difficult, with lots of variables to consider.

Is the Travel Company Keeping Too Much?

Most travelers who contact us, both new and experienced, are skeptical of travel companies and recruiters. Based on stories that they’ve heard from others, they often have the belief that recruiters are always out to take advantage of them by purposely low-balling them on pay for a job. While there certainly are recruiters like that out there, based on our experience of interviewing almost 100 different recruiters since we started traveling in 2015, they’re not nearly as common as most travel therapists believe. The horror stories about really bad recruiters spread much more widely and rapidly than the less gripping stories about the really good or even just decent recruiters out there. Travelers think that the recruiters have a huge incentive to keep more of the bill rate for themselves and their company, when in reality the recruiter’s pay is often not affected by the traveler’s pay package at all. Additionally, it’s usually more beneficial for recruiters to give you their best offers up front, because they want to keep your business. So they know that by giving you their best offers possible, you’re more likely to continue to work with them and take more contracts with them, which incentivizes them to be truthful and up front with you.

When travel therapists reach out with a question about the bill rate and their pay package, usually they’re either trying to find out the bill rate in order to calculate if they got a good deal. Or maybe they somehow already know the bill rate, and they know their take home pay, and they’re trying to calculate it out to see if they’re getting screwed over.

If they know the bill rate, it often goes something like this: “I’m getting paid $1,650/week after taxes, and I just found out that the bill rate for the contract is $65/hour. That means the travel company is keeping over 35% of the money each week. Are they taking advantage of me?”

Now, on the surface, this calculation seems legit and like the travel company is keeping a lot for themselves, but in reality it isn’t as simple as first meets the eye. The traveler is simply taking the bill rate and multiplying by 40 hours, then dividing their take home pay into the product, and from there calculating the percentage that they’re receiving. Then they’re using that to extrapolate how much the travel company is keeping.

Here’s the math for this example:

$65 x 40 hrs = $2,600

$1,650 (their weekly pay) / $2,600 (total the company is getting) = .635 (63.5% = “the amount the traveler is keeping”)

1 – .635 = .365 * 100 = 36.5% (“the amount the staffing company is keeping”)

However, unfortunately this math is incorrect because it does not take into account taxes, among other factors. The big factor the traveler is forgetting in this example is that the bill rate is a gross (pre-tax) number, while their weekly take home pay is a net (after-tax) number. So simply calculating $65/hr x 40 hrs = $2600 would be an amount before taxes, while their weekly take home pay ($1650) is after taxes.

The traveler’s net take home pay amount is determined after deducting federal, state, and payroll taxes (social security and Medicare) from the taxable pay. Those tax withholdings are going to the government, not being kept by the travel company. In addition, the travel company also has to pay an additional 7.65% of the taxable pay to the government for their half of the traveler’s payroll taxes. These taxes are unavoidable, and have nothing to do with the company’s revenue or profit. Even if the traveler was working as an independent contractor and “cutting out the middle man,” they would be responsible for these taxes which would cut into their pay.

To get a more accurate representation of how much the travel company is keeping the traveler should, at the very least, account for all of the weekly monetary compensation paid to them including the taxes withheld by the government on both their end and the end the of the travel company. The math for the example above would look something like this assuming a $21/hour taxable rate and $1,000/week in stipends:

Math for this example accounting for weekly taxes:

$21 x 40 hours + $1,000 = $1,840/week gross pay

$21 x 40 hours x .0765 = $64 employers portion of payroll taxes withheld on behalf of traveler each week

($1,840 + $64) / ($65 x 40 hours) = .732

1 – .732 = .268 * 100 = 26.8% (percentage of bill rate the staffing company is “keeping” after accounting for taxes)

After doing the math this way, we can see that about 10% of the money that looked like it was being kept by the travel company was actually being sent to the federal and state government for taxes and future social security and Medicare benefits.

26.8% may still seem like a lot for the travel company to keep, but there’s more we need to consider here. This number we’ve come to still does not include the full extent of compensation being paid to the traveler and expenses paid by the travel company on the traveler’s behalf. Besides taxes paid to the government out of the bill rate, the traveler in this example is also not taking into account any reimbursements paid to the traveler (for example: state licensing, travel to/from the assignment, along with any others that might have been included in the pay package) as well as onboarding and credentialing costs that the travel company usually pays for on behalf of the traveler (background check, drug test, PPD test, etc.).

On top of those things, the travel company also pays for liability insurance and workers compensation insurance for the traveler and subsidizes some of the cost of the health insurance offered to their travelers. The travel company may also pay for access to an online service offering free CEUs like Medbridge or other smaller benefits that they pay for as well.

Once all of these taxes, reimbursements, and costs paid on behalf of the traveler by the travel company are factored in, we can see that although it initially looked like the company was “keeping” between 26 to 36% of the bill rate — in reality the amount they are actually keeping after all these costs is almost certainly closer to 15%-20% in the above scenario. Of course this amount will depend on the taxable hourly rate of the contract (which impacts the taxes withheld for both the traveler and the travel company) and the amount of reimbursements paid to the traveler and onboarding costs for that particular assignment.

Now you might be thinking 15%-20% still sounds like a lot of money for the travel company to keep after these costs are accounted for, but there are still additional factors to consider in the costs. An often overlooked factor is whether the contract was set up through a Vender Management System (VMS) or a Managed Service Provider (MSP). These are basically services that manage travel job openings and candidates for facilities to make finding a good fitting traveler easier for them. You can think of the VMS or MSP as the intermediary in large number of travel jobs and for the service they provide they charge a fee that can be up to 6% of the bill rate. The majority of travel jobs go through either a VMS or MSP, so this fee needs to be considered for many travel jobs. I discussed the impact of VMS’s and MSP’s in a little more depth in a recent article I wrote about which travel companies pay the highest, which you can find here.

Travel Company Expenses and Profit

All of the above costs are paid to or paid on behalf of the travel therapist and should be considered part of the total compensation that the traveler receives. Usually after all of this is accounted for, the travel company is actually keeping somewhere in the 15%-20% range of the bill rate. But is this how much they’re actually profiting? Is the company making tons and tons of money off our contracts?

The above percentage must go toward both covering the expenses of the travel company as well as allowing them a profit so that they’re able to stay in business. Some of the biggest expenses for travel companies include: payroll for their staff (recruiters, account managers, staff managers, payroll, HR, marketers, etc.), rent and utilities for offices, and marketing (conferences, ads, swag for travelers, and referral fees). Depending on the size of the company, which impacts the amount of staff they need and size of the office buildings, these costs can be pretty high.

Another often overlooked expense for travel companies is money that they keep aside for things like contract cancellations, short hours, and “orientation hours”. Since travel companies have a big upfront cost on contracts with paying for credentialing and some reimbursements before the traveler ever actually works any hours, if the contract is cut short early on either by the facility or the traveler, they often lose money on that contract. The risk of losing out on those costs in case of cancellations has to be accounted for in their margins. The same goes for short hours if the traveler has a 40 hour guarantee in a contract or guaranteed stipends. In some cases, the facility won’t pay the travel company for those hours, but the travel company is still on the hook for paying the traveler. This means that the travel company has to account for that by keeping some money set aside from the bill rate on each contract to be paid out to the traveler. Along these same lines, some facilities will not pay for what they consider to be orientation hours. This can be 1-2 days worth of hours that the facility doesn’t pay the travel company for at the beginning of a contract due to the facility asserting that the traveler is getting oriented and not being as productive. This may seem crazy since experienced travelers know that the majority of contracts have little actual orientation or sometimes none at all, and we’re expected to be productive right off the bat, but that doesn’t stop some facilities from sometimes refusing to pay for those hours. The travel company still pays the traveler for those hours though and this also has to be accounted for in the margins.

After everything above is accounted for, the actual profit kept by the travel company from the bill rate is probably less than 10%. The profit amount will obviously vary drastically depending on how the contract actually unfolds as well. On some it might be 10% while on others they might actually lose money if a traveler or a facility cancels the contract very early on, or if there’s some major unforeseen event that causes the facility to stop paying the travel company completely, like during the beginning of the pandemic.

How Do You Calculate How Much You Should Be Keeping From a Contract Bill Rate?

As you can see, even if you know the bill rate on a contract, determining how much the company is actually keeping and the amount of money that’s going toward other costs is a difficult task. Therefore, determining what is a fair percentage of the pay you should be keeping is even more difficult.

At the minimum, to start doing these calculations, you would need to know:

whether the job was through a VMS or MSP
whether the facility is paying or not paying for orientation hours
whether stipends are being guaranteed on missed hours
whether the travel company is subsidizing a portion of your health insurance cost
how much they’re paying for liability and worker’s comp insurance on your behalf
the combined amount of reimbursements and credentialing costs paid upfront
and the amount of tax being withheld from your taxable pay and from the travel company for payroll taxes on your behalf

If you were able to find out all of this information, which is very unlikely, then you would need to deduct those costs out first to then see what’s left for you to take your fair share and the company to take their fair share.

But, if you don’t know all of these variables, then determining a fair percentage of the bill rate that you should be receiving in compensation each week is all but impossible. Because of this, most recruiters won’t even share the bill rate for a contract because, with all of the factors involved, the transparency often causes more confusion and skepticism than clarity.

Like I said, this is all pretty confusing. Therefore, a recruiter telling a traveler (especially one not well informed on all of the variables above) the bill rate usually leads to quick back of the envelope calculations that are wildly inaccurate and cause the traveler to think they’re being taken advantage of when they aren’t.

What’s the Solution?

As you can see, for a traveler working with a staffing company, there are a lot of costs and calculations that go on behind the scenes that we don’t have much control over. For some travelers, it may be worthwhile to consider being an independent contractor to “cut out the middle man” and try to recoup some of the extra money. However, for most, this is more work than they want to take on. As an independent contractor, you have a lot more to deal with, such as finding and negotiating your own contracts; setting up the legal contract itself; handling your own benefits, taxes, credentialing, liability insurance, and more. Additionally, since there is no “middle man,” there’s no safety net & no pay guarantees. You take on all the responsibilities yourself. Plus, as we outlined, there are many costs that are unavoidable (taxes, insurance, etc) that you’ll just be taking on yourself instead of the company paying on your behalf. So, you’ll really only keep a little bit more (the amount that the travel company is actually keeping). If this seems like something you’re interested in, then you’ll have to do a lot of research to determine how to make it work.

However, for most of us, we’d prefer to go through a staffing agency who takes care of all of these headaches for you. They deal with all the behind the scenes work and help you set everything up. And of course for providing this service, yes they must also have a profit. But how do you make sure they’re not keeping too much?

In order to try to mitigate this, some travelers will choose to work with only smaller companies which theoretically have less overhead and keep lower margins, meaning theoretically the traveler keeps more of the money. But there is always some give and take when you consider “big” vs. “small” companies. While big companies may keep larger margins, they also may have access to direct jobs that don’t require any VMS or MSP fees, while the smaller companies may have these fees. Additionally, larger companies may offer some additional protections, like guaranteeing stipends. This comes out of their margins, but it also means more security for you as the traveler. As you can see, nothing in the travel healthcare world is black & white. There’s no perfect solution.

Because of this, we recommend having a few recruiters at different companies (both large and small) that you can trust that will be open and transparent with you on all things regarding travel jobs and pay. That way, whether you know the bill rate or not, or whether you know the operating costs of the company or not, you can rest assured that the recruiter is going to bat for you on negotiations and paying the most they possibly can for any given job. Then, you can eliminate that factor and concern from your mind, and you can just focus on comparing the rates that each company offers you, and choose the ones that work best for you. Of course you can always negotiate and try to ask for more, but if you have a trustworthy recruiter, you really should not have to push for more. They’ll give you their best rates up front and be open and honest with you about what each job is paying and how much their company can offer for a contract.

Since finding good recruiters can be hit or miss, we created Travel Therapy Mentor to do some of this work for you in finding trustworthy recruiters and companies (in addition to all of the great educational content of course :D). We’re constantly interviewing, adding, and removing recruiters from various companies based on our interview with them, their reputation, their performance, and feedback we receive from travelers that we send to them. We do our very best to work with and send travelers to only the highest quality recruiters and companies that meet their individual needs. If you’d like recommendations to companies and recruiters that we trust to not take advantage of travelers, that should work well for your specific situation, fill out our recruiter recommendation form here.

I hope this article provides some additional clarity on pay packages and all that goes into calculating them based on a given bill rate. If you need further clarification on anything, send us an email, or let us know in the comments!

Watch the video we did on this topic to learn more

**Written by Jared Casazza, PT, DPT** – Jared has been a traveling physical therapist since 2015. He has mentored and educated thousands of healthcare travelers and is a leading expert in the field of travel therapy.

Working as a Healthcare Traveler in Hawaii

March 21, 2022March 23, 2022 ~ Travel Therapy Mentor ~ 2 Comments

For many healthcare workers, taking a travel assignment in Hawaii would be a dream come true. Who wouldn’t want to get to live and work in the beautiful Hawaiian Islands for a few months? In fact, many travelers who take an assignment in Hawaii end up extending their contracts, returning for future contracts, or even staying there permanently. Fortunately, taking job in Hawaii is a real possibility for many healthcare travelers, but it doesn’t come without some logistical hurdles.

I had the opportunity to work as a traveling physical therapist (Travel PT) in Hawaii in the summer of 2021, and I want to share with you some of the logistics that you’ll need to know if you also want to take a travel healthcare job in Hawaii!

Competition

As you can imagine, getting a travel contract in Hawaii can be pretty competitive. It’s a highly desirable area to live and work, particularly in the more popular areas like Honolulu.

On the other hand, sometimes there can be a lack of healthcare workers in the more rural areas of Hawaii, so you’re more likely to be able to find a travel contract if you’re open to any island and any town in Hawaii. Trust me from having visited all four of the major islands: you’ll still get to experience so much no matter which island and which town your contract is in. Even on the largest of the islands, you can get from one side to the other in 2 hours or less. So your weekends can be filled with adventure in any corner of the island (or you can hop a quick flight over to another island) no matter if your contract itself is right in the middle of the action or not.

Since jobs are generally more competitive, it also helps if you have more experience on your resume before applying to travel jobs in Hawaii, including years of experience and sometimes variety of settings. You’re less likely to be able to beat out the competition and get a job there if you’re a new grad.

In general, it’s best to be as flexible as possible when looking for a job in Hawaii in order to increase your chances of being chosen for a job. If you’re open to all settings and any location, and you have some experience, you’re much more likely to get a contract than if you’re being too selective on both setting and location.

Pay

Unfortunately, pay tends to be lower for healthcare jobs in Hawaii. This goes for both travel and permanent jobs. One major reason for this is that insurance reimbursement is lower (particularly for therapy). In addition to that, higher competition for jobs (since it’s a desirable area) means that employers can also usually get away with paying lower and they’ll still have plenty of applicants. This is an unfortunate truth when looking at jobs in Hawaii, even though the cost of living is fairly high.

So you’ll have to go into your search for jobs in Hawaii knowing that you’re not necessarily going to make (and save) a ton of money compared to other travel healthcare opportunities on the “mainland.” You’ll have to look at it as more of a “working vacation.” This is another reason that we generally don’t think it’s best for new grads or new travelers to try to seek out jobs in Hawaii right away. It’s best to get some experience as a traveler on the mainland first, which will both help build your resume and your savings account! Having some savings going into working in Hawaii is always a good plan.

For travel therapy jobs (PT, OT, SLP), we typically see pay around $1400-1700/wk after taxes. This is on the lower end for what we usually recommend for travel therapists. Typically we look for jobs on the mainland paying more in the $1600-1900+ range. But, for Hawaii, $1500 seems to be pretty typical. For nursing and other disciplines, pay in Hawaii also tends to be on the lower end compared to mainland jobs, unless it’s a crisis job for a specialty such as ICU. You may get lucky and find higher paying jobs in Hawaii sometimes, but don’t be surprised if you see what looks like lower pay for a travel contract.

You may also be wondering about reimbursements you can receive as part of your pay package for a job in Hawaii, for things like traveling to Hawaii for the job (plane ticket), licensing, renting a car, etc. Keep in mind that almost always, reimbursements for these things have to come out of the bill rate for the job. So, if the recruiter adds in reimbursements for you, then it will likely affect your weekly take home pay. But you should definitely ask if it’s possible to get reimbursed for these additional costs and how it will affect your total weekly pay if they do reimburse you.

Job Search

As always, we recommend working with 3-4 different recruiters to assist you in your travel job search. If you’re looking for a job in a very competitive location like Hawaii, working with multiple recruiters is particularly important to see more job options!

If you’re a therapist, you can contact us to get connected with recruiters who we know tend to have more jobs in Hawaii. When I was searching for my travel job, I knew specifically from our connections which companies were more likely to have outpatient physical therapy jobs in Hawaii, which was my first choice for setting. I was flexible and willing to consider a hospital position if it was some inpatient and some outpatient, but I was fortunate to be able to find a contract that was strictly outpatient (private practice) that worked really well for me.

Traveling as a Pair

Since Jared and I travel together, we originally considered trying to find two Travel PT jobs together in Hawaii. However, knowing that the jobs are more competitive there, and since we are now “semi-retired” and don’t work full time, we figured it would just be easier if only one of us took a contract rather than trying to find two jobs.

But, to our surprise, when it came time for our job search, there were actually quite a few places looking for two PT’s. So we could’ve both worked there in reality, but at that point Jared hadn’t even started the process to get a Hawaii license (more on this below) and I had mine, so we just stuck with going for one job.

With that said, it is always going to be more challenging as a pair to find two travel jobs together in the same location. So if you’re trying to do that in an already competitive location like Hawaii, being flexible on setting, location, pay, start date, etc. is of the utmost importance.

Licensing

Licensing can be a hassle for any travel healthcare job, but I’d say that the license process for Hawaii is one of the worst. They’re well known for being “on island time,” and processing new licenses is definitely a slow and tedious ordeal there.

I started working on getting my license during a particularly poor time, during the height of COVID in 2020. Unfortunately due to many hassles and delays, my physical therapy state license for Hawaii actually took nine months to receive! I will say that this seems to be an unusually long time, and most therapists have told me that theirs only took 1-3 months. But, needless to say, it can take a while, so you’ll have to be on top of getting your license early!

All licensing for all professions in Hawaii goes through the Hawaii Professional & Vocational Licensing Division. It’s really hard to get anyone on the phone to get the answers you need, and their website is not user friendly, so I suggest emailing them instead to follow up (the appropriate email addresses are not easily found on their website, so I’ve included them below for therapists & nurses):

For Physical Therapy: phys_therapy@dcca.hawaii.gov
For Occupational Therapy: occ_therapist@dcca.hawaii.gov
For Speech Language Pathology: speech@dcca.hawaii.gov
For Nursing: nursing@dcca.hawaii.gov

When it comes to your job search in Hawaii, you pretty much have to already have the license, or be very close to receiving it (all documents submitted & you’ve called to check on the status) before you start applying to jobs. There are certain states where you could potentially find and sign a contract, and then get the license. Unfortunately Hawaii is not one of them. Most employers will not hire you unless you already have the license in hand.

Housing

Finding affordable short term housing in Hawaii can sometimes be a challenge. The cost of living is very high there, so you can expect to pay a lot for short term furnished housing, especially if you want your own unit. It’ll be important to get housing that includes all furnishings and housewares, as you won’t be able to bring much with you when flying to the island from the mainland.

The best we were able to find when we were there was $1800/mo for a private “Ohana” unit (like an in-law suite, attached to someone’s home) which was furnished and included all utilities. We found our housing on Furnished Finder. We had previously heard of friends paying $1500 for a similar unit (pre-COVID). But we also saw listings for $3000+/month for similar units on Airbnb.

When searching for housing, we recommend checking multiple sources just as you would for any contract. Furnished Finder is usually our first choice if there’s anything available, but also check Airbnb, Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, VRBO, and Facebook housing groups (search “travel nursing” and “travel therapy” housing keywords). You should also ask around with travelers who have worked in Hawaii before and ask the facility to see if they have any connections.

As a last resort, you can have your company book housing for you. But keep in mind this will likely cut into your pay a lot because you won’t receive the housing stipend.

Transportation

Something else you’ll have to figure out while living and working in Hawaii is transportation. For the most part, you’re going to need a car, with very few exceptions. The only case when you might be able to get by without a car would be if you work in Honolulu and could be walking distance to work, get just a bike/moped, or rely on Uber/public transportation. But even then, you’ll probably want to have your own vehicle to explore the island when you’re not working.

For any other locations outside of Honolulu, you’re going to need to have a car. Most travelers will rent a car, but some will choose to buy a used car (“island car”) then resell it when they leave. Buying a car would probably only make sense if you plan to be there 6+ months. For shorter stays, renting is likely your best bet.

At the time of writing this (early 2022), there is a shortage of rental cars and used cars due to COVID/supply chain issues, making finding a car in Hawaii an even bigger challenge. This was definitely the case for us in the summer of 2021 when we were there. We ended up finding out through word of mouth about a local who rents his own used cars out to traveling healthcare workers. We were lucky and got our car for $600/mo from this person (yes that’s actually cheap compared to alternative options we had!). We’ve since found out about other locals who do the same on different islands. So it’s a good idea to ask around to other travelers who have been there before and see who you can get in contact with for car rentals (we only have info for the Big Island, so you can ask us for contact info there- we don’t have contact info for the other islands so you’ll have to ask other travelers).

Besides renting from a local, your other rental options would be checking Turo (like Airbnb for cars) or car rental agencies, but this is likely going to be more costly than going through an individual. Another option could be shipping your car from the mainland, but this can be an expensive and timely endeavor. So it’s probably not worth it to do if you’ll only be there a few months.

As a last resort, you could have your travel company try to arrange a car for you, but keep in mind they’ll be searching the same methods as above, and this will likely cut into your pay a lot if they book a car for you.

Packing, Flying & Moving

Figuring out what to pack for an assignment where you have to fly can be tricky. As a traveler, you have to learn to become somewhat of a minimalist and pack only the essentials. For Hawaii, you shouldn’t need to bring much besides your clothing, shoes, and essential personal items. You should plan to have all the housewares you need at your furnished place. And any odds and ends you can get on the islands at Walmart or Costco! Think of only packing for about a 10 day vacation, then plan to wash, rewear, and interchange all your outfits. You’ll need a few work outfits, your bathing suit, hiking/workout clothes, and some summery outfits. Plan to only bring a few pairs of shoes (work shoes, sneakers, sandals). Luckily the weather is pretty much the same year-round and you only have to pack for one type of weather. The only time you’ll really need a jacket is if you plan to go to the top of one of the volcanoes!

As far as flying to Hawaii in the age of COVID, be sure to check any current regulations. The state of Hawaii was originally being fairly strict on their COVID entry/exit requirements, but it looks like they’re going to be lifting a lot of these requirements, so make sure to check their website for the most up to date information. Visit this site for up to date information on travel requirements.

The Fun Stuff

While all of this may sound daunting, trust me it’s worth it! You’ll have some hurdles to get through before you can make it there, but once you do, you’re going to be living in Hawaii for a few months! Talk about living the dream!

Living and working in Hawaii is a very culturally enriching experience. You’re in the United States… but not really. The culture there is very different, so taking a travel healthcare assignment there will be like no other assignment in the US.

In Hawaii, there are endless new things to experience: from volcanoes, to gorgeous beaches, to traditional Hawaiian music and dance, to unique foods, to epic hikes, and so much more. Once you get there, you’ll surely want to stay longer, or come back for more!

If you want to learn more about our experiences in Hawaii, check out the articles and podcasts below! Feel free to message us if you have any questions, or want to get connected with some recruiters who can help you land your dream job in Hawaii!

Additional Hawaii Content:

Written by Whitney Eakin, PT, DPT, ATC – Whitney has been a traveling physical therapist since 2015 and has mentored and educated thousands of current and aspiring healthcare travelers.