Written by: Jared Casazza, PT, DPT

“Travel Therapists Don’t Work Overtime”

When Whitney and I started traveling, we were told by most recruiters and other travel therapists that overtime in the travel therapy world is rare. We heard that facilities don’t want to pay extra to have a traveler working overtime, and they won’t allow them to get overtime. In general, that does seem to be the case for the majority of travelers, but it has definitely not been the case for me. In fact, in almost all of my contracts I’ve worked some overtime and in a couple of them I worked A LOT of overtime. I’m not exactly sure why this has been the case for me, but it is probably the combination of two factors:

1. I was very eager to work all that I possibly could in order to save as much as possible for my first few years as a traveler. I went out of my way to offer to see extra patients or stay late at each of my contracts if needed. I also always asked about the potential for overtime in my phone interview with the facility, and in some cases their answer would sway my decision of which facility to choose if there was more than one that I liked.
2. We worked primarily in small rural areas where they didn’t have PRN help. If it got busy, they were fine with me working extra hours in order to make sure all of the patients were seen. Whereas most clinics in more populated areas have PRN therapists they can call for help when things get busy, many rural facilities do not, so that means overtime for the regular staff, even if that happens to be a traveler.

It’s true that most facilities do everything possible to avoid having travelers work overtime. The big reason for that, of course, is money. Bill rates for travelers can be huge, and often the facility is obligated to pay 1.5x the bill rate for any hours worked over 40. That could mean that a facility is paying $100/hour or more for each hour of overtime that we work in some cases! Meanwhile, 1.5x the hourly rate for a permanent employee is likely in the $50-$60/hour range, which is much more palatable for them. Even though this is the case, I’ve found that often the permanent staff isn’t willing to work overtime, so with no PRN help and me being eager to work all the hours I can, they just approve it. Or, in some cases, I’ve been the only PT on staff, with no permanent PTs or PRN PTs. So in that case, if patients need to be seen outside of 40 hours of work, then I’m the only option and thus get asked to work overtime.

My Experience

In my first two years as a new grad travel therapist, I worked a total of over 400 hours of overtime! That’s an average of about 4 hours per week, but that wasn’t distributed evenly. Most weeks I worked only 40 hours (even less in some cases), but then other weeks I worked as many as 65 hours when a facility was really desperate to have patients seen. That meant some really long weeks sometimes, but I was very happy with the extra money!

Facilities/managers will often approve a couple of hours of overtime per week for a traveler, but there are rare cases where they will approve as much overtime as is needed. When those times came around, I took advantage!

Is Working Overtime Worth it as a Travel Therapist?

Whether or not it’s worth it to work overtime as a travel therapist depends on a couple of factors:

1. How much you’re earning for each hour of overtime that you work based on your contract.
2. How eager you are to make extra money.

A mistake that I made early on as a travel therapist was not negotiating a higher overtime rate, or even realizing that it was negotiable. As I mentioned above, the travel company can often make $100/hour or more when a traveler works overtime, because the facility pays out 1.5x the full bill rate, but that doesn’t mean that the extra money goes to the traveler automatically. In fact, in most cases the traveler will make only 1.5x their taxable pay rate, which often means overtime pay in the $30-$35/hour range. This means the amount they’re making for overtime hours is actually less than the amount they make during normal hours. How does that work exactly? Because during normal hours, we get paid our hourly taxable pay + our stipend pay. Whereas, if we’re only making 1.5x the hourly taxable rate with no additional stipends for the overtime hours, the overtime pay is actually less than the normal pay. In this case, the extra money is made mostly by the travel company, not the traveler, because the facility is still paying the travel company 1.5x the full bill rate.

This happened to me in the beginning, but I quickly wised up and you should too if you’re planning to work overtime. I recommend that you negotiate at least 2x (ideally 3x or more) your normal taxable pay for working overtime hours. Keep in mind that stipends can’t be increased when working overtime, because there is a max amount of stipends you’re legally allowed to earn each week regardless of working over 40 hours, but a multiple of the hourly rate should be possible. Another option that some companies do instead of writing in a certain hourly rate for the overtime hours is they’ll arrange for you to receive an additional bonus at the end of the contract for any overtime hours worked, which equals out to the extra money you should be receiving on an hourly basis for each hour worked. This has been the case with one company we’ve worked with. However, if a company tells me overtime rates are not negotiable period, then that’s a deal breaker for me in terms of working with that travel company.

Many travel therapists have no desire to work overtime. Since we already make a lot more money than at permanent positions in most cases, these travelers don’t see the need to work extra hours. This is especially the case in desirable areas where working longer hours takes away from time that could be spent exploring! This is completely understandable, and if you value your free time more than you value the extra money that you’d make while working overtime, then feel free to decline the hours. A facility can’t require that you work hours that aren’t in your contract, so you’re in the drivers seat in this situation.

Conclusion

If you look for opportunities to work overtime as a travel therapist, you can usually get some extra hours depending on the facility and location. Whether or not the extra hours are worth it depends on you and your priorities.

If there is at all any potential for you to work overtime based on what you hear during the phone interview, make sure to negotiate a higher rate for those hours than the standard 1.5x hourly taxable rate. Don’t get taken advantage of by the travel company earning a lot of extra money for your overtime hours like I did when starting out! If the travel company/recruiter that you’re working with isn’t willing to work with you to find a fair amount for your overtime work, then there are plenty of other fish in the sea!

If you’d like some recommendations for recruiters/companies that we’ve had success working with, then reach out to us here and tell us about your main priorities as a travel therapist, and we’ll match you with a good fit. If you have any other questions about travel therapy or overtime pay, contact us!