Physical therapy Archives

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

The Benefits of Extending a Contract

If you are a prospective or current traveler whose primary goal with travel therapy is to earn as much money as possible (likely to pay off student debt), then extending contracts when possible is a great idea. Whitney and I always try to extend contracts in places that we enjoy, and I actually extended my very first contract as a new grad twice for a total of nine months there. Extending a contract means less, or hopefully no, downtime between contracts since you don’t have to move to a new location. Most travelers choose to take at least a week off between contracts to move to their new assignment location. but that missed work means less money earned. Mitigating time off is a primary way to earn more throughout the year. Additionally, extending a contract is also easier because you’re already accustomed to the facility, staff, and patients.

Another big benefit of extending a contract is that you can almost always earn more money on the extension than you did on the original contract, either in the form of a bonus or an increase in taxable hourly pay. We usually try to get about $1-$2/hour extra when extending a contract, which ends up being $40-$80 more per week or $500-$1,000 more over the course of a 13 week contract! A dollar or two extra per hour may not sound like much, but it really adds up over time. Another option is to have the travel company reimburse travel expenses incurred while traveling back to your tax home if you plan to do that at any time during the contract. A reimbursement is almost always better than increase in taxable pay, if possible, because reimbursements aren’t taxed and therefore will mean more money in your pocket.

Understanding “Extension Bonuses”

Some travelers believe that getting an extension bonus means that the recruiter was keeping more money than they needed to be on the original contract, and now they’re somehow able to offer you more money the second go round, but that is not the case. So where does the extra money come from? Let’s investigate the answer to this question!

When you start a new contract as a travel therapist, the travel company has some upfront costs that they have to cover in order for you to start. These costs include things like: travel reimbursement for you to get to the new place, license reimbursement if applicable, background check, drug test, and TB test. All of those costs added together can end up being a significant amount of money that the company pays out in the beginning before you ever start working at the new place. These costs have to be accounted for by the company of course, so they reduce the amount that you make each week so that these costs can be recovered throughout the course of the contract. This reduction in the traveler’s pay is to be expected since all of our pay, reimbursements, and the travel company’s overhead costs, as well as their profits, come out of the “bill rate” that the facility pays the company. In other words, all the money has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is what the facility pays the travel company. Under normal circumstances where the traveler moves to a new facility after every contract with no extensions, the company has to incur these costs again before each new contract. On an extension however, these costs aren’t incurred again, which means that there is extra money that can be added to your pay!

Negotiating Extension Bonuses with Your Recruiter

Most experienced recruiters understand that by the traveler extending in a location, there will be extra money to allocate to the traveler on the extension. But I’ve worked with recruiters in the past that say that an extension bonus isn’t possible since the bill rate is the same for the extension, and the facility “isn’t offering any additional money.” Unfortunately, they were overlooking these costs that the company would be saving on the extension. After explaining how they would be saving money on the things I mentioned above for my extension, I’ve always been able to negotiate some amount of extra pay or bonus for the extension.

It’s important to discuss this with your recruiter and make sure you are on the same page. You are your own biggest advocate and need to be an informed and educated traveler.

Bottom Line

Less missed work and higher pay on an extension make it a no-brainer if you’re at a facility and location that you enjoy AND the facility needs continued help. Always be sure to ask for more money on an extension if the recruiter doesn’t automatically give it to you, and be sure to mention the costs that they would save by you extending instead of taking a new contract to back up your request.

If you have questions on this topic or would like recommendations from us on a contract, extension, or working with travel recruiters/companies, please reach out to us and we will be happy to help!