Tag: Pay

Do Travel Therapists Work Overtime and Is It Worth It?

Do travel therapists work overtime and is it worth it?
~ Travel Therapy Mentor ~ Leave a comment

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!

 

Understanding a Travel Therapy Contract Bill Rate

Understanding a travel therapy contract bill rate
~ Travel Therapy Mentor ~ 16 Comments

Written by: Jared Casazza, PT, DPT

All travel therapists want to get the most money possible out of their contracts. In fact, the increased pay associated with travel therapy is the #1 reason that most people that we talk to choose to travel in the first place, so not getting as much money as possible would be no good. While there can often be room to negotiate when presented with an initial offer from a recruiter, there is, of course, a limit to how much they can actually pay a traveler for each contract. The big limiting factor in the equation of pay for any travel contract is the “bill rate.”

What is a Bill Rate?

A “bill rate” is the amount of money that the facility (hospital, clinic, nursing home, etc.) pays the travel company for each hour that a traveling therapist works. As travelers, this is a number that we rarely ever find out about, since it is negotiated between the travel company and the facility usually before they ever even list the job or present it to travelers. Most recruiters do not wish to share this number with travelers either, but you really can’t blame them for that. The bill rate is much higher than the hourly rate that the traveler receives, but that is because it has to account for all overhead costs and company profits as well, so sharing the bill rate could make the traveler feel like they’re being taken advantage of, even when that’s not the case. BluePipes wrote a great article on other reasons why travel companies don’t divulge bill rates as well, which you can find here.

How Much is an Average Bill Rate?

Bill rates vary drastically depending on setting and area of the country (just like traveler pay), but I’ve heard of ones as low as $60/hour and as high as $80/hour, which shows why there can be such variation in traveler pay across the board, since it’s all based on the bill rate. In some situations, the bill rate can even be higher if the facility is in urgent need of a traveler and is willing to pay more to get someone there quickly. In general, the facility is going to pay the travel company as little as possible, while ensuring that their opening will be filled, so how desperate they are can have a big impact on the bill rate.

So if a company is receiving around $70/hour ($70 x 40 = $2,800/week) from the facility, while the traveler is only getting a take home pay of about $1,600/week, where is that extra money going?!

Costs that have to be Subtracted from the Bill Rate

Overhead costs of running a travel company can be pretty high. The company has to pay staff (recruiters, managers, payroll department, benefits department, etc.), for rent and utilities on their offices, for marketing, for taxes, and they also have to make a profit in order to stay in business. This all usually adds up to about 20-25% of the total bill rate, depending on how big the company is and how much their overhead costs in total. That means that after overhead costs are subtracted out, that $2,800/week turns into about $2,100/week.

From there, we have to consider that the company pays for part of the traveler’s health insurance (assuming the traveler chooses one of the company sponsored plans); maintenance fees on 401k plan; CEUs (if offered by the company); FICA taxes on the traveler’s hourly pay (7.65%); and credentialing costs for the traveler for each assignment such as: license reimbursement, travel reimbursement, drug tests, TB tests, and backgrounds checks.

They also usually have to keep a small percentage to account for contract cancellations, since when a traveler’s contract is cancelled early, not only does the traveler lose out on money, but so does the travel company. I think of this as like an “emergency fund” for the travel company for when unexpected events occur.

It’s also important to keep in mind that the “take home pay” amounts that we usually use to discuss travel contracts is after the traveler’s taxes are subtracted out, which means that the travel company actually pays you more than that amount, but that’s the amount you see on your paycheck after federal, state and FICA taxes are subtracted. So “take home pay” refers to after-tax, or net pay, not gross pay.

For example, a $1,600/week “take home pay” usually means that the travel company actually pays out $1,800/week in gross pay to the traveler. It’s easy to see how the $2,100/week devoted to the traveler’s pay can quickly be reduced to much closer to that $1,800/week figure paid out to the traveler each week, once all of the above costs are factored in.

Getting the Highest Pay Possible

In most cases, honest recruiters are doing their best to offer the highest pay possible to the traveler, within the bounds of the bill rate that they have to work with. Many travelers hear about how high some bill rates can be and quickly assume that recruiters are trying to take advantage of them, without first considering all of the costs incurred by the company, taxes they have to pay, and also also the benefits offered to the traveler that aren’t seen in the weekly take home pay number. Don’t forget to consider these factors before jumping to conclusions! But, it doesn’t hurt to push for more money when you feel it’s warranted, have considered all the “extras” already included in your pay package, and have considered the type of job, location, and cost of living!

The bill rate is also the reason that it is important for travelers to push for higher pay for overtime hours worked. Overhead costs don’t need to be factored into overtime hours worked, due to them already being accounts for in the initial 40 hours. With overtime, the company will get the same bill rate (sometimes 1.5x the bill rate even), while the traveler only receives 1.5x their taxable pay rate in most cases. This is a great situation for the travel company, but a terrible situation for the traveler. So understanding how the bill rate works and how your pay is broken down is a key factor here in advocating for yourself with a higher overtime rate!

Conclusion

It’s very important to have an understanding of the bill rate and all the costs that must come out of that hourly pay amount the travel company receives from the facility, in order to understand how your weekly take home pay is determined as a travel therapist. The more you understand, the better you can advocate for yourself and get the highest pay possible.

I hope you have a little better insight into how the weekly take home pay amount is calculated now with a basic understanding of bill rates!

Thanks for reading and feel free to ask any questions you may have on bill rates or anything else travel therapy related in the comments below or contact us directly. If you need some recruiter/travel company recommendations that we trust to not take advantage of you as a traveler, then send us a message here and we’ll help you out!