Are Travel Therapy Bonuses Worth It?

October 23, 2023October 23, 2023 ~ Travel Therapy Mentor ~ Leave a comment

There’s no doubt that travel therapy can seem daunting when first starting out. One of the more confusing things for many new travelers is how travel therapy pay packages work and what’s a reasonable amount to make on a contract. Between taxable pay, stipends, tax homes, reimbursements, and various bonuses offered by companies for travel jobs, it’s certainly reasonable to feel confused by it all. Combine this with understanding how the pay packages relate to the bill rate and how much the travel company keeps of the bill rate, and it’s easy to understand how many new travelers can feel confused and be taken advantage of.

If you’re completely new to understanding travel therapy pay, then start with this comprehensive guide to travel therapy pay that breaks it all down.

In this article, I’ll be focusing specifically on the various bonuses that you might see offered in a travel contract, and if they really are just extra “free money” like some recruiters will claim.

Travel Therapy Bonuses as a Marketing Tactic

An important thing to understand is that there are hundreds of travel companies out there vying for your business as a therapist. There’s also not often all that much to make one stand out from another on the surface. Largely, the benefits of each travel therapy company are very similar. Of course, some have more jobs in certain areas, more direct clients, or specialize in certain settings or disciplines, but those are things that take a thorough interview to really discover. On a superficial marketing level, most things are pretty similar.

Some common things you’ll hear from almost every travel company if you contact them online or walk around and talk to them at a conference include: “We have travel jobs in all 50 states,” “We offer mentorship to new travel therapists,” “We offer day one health insurance,” and/or “We offer a 401k with matching.”

While nice to hear, none of that really makes a company stand out, especially when most are offering the same things. Travel healthcare companies know this and are always looking for ways to entice new travelers to work for them instead of the competition. Some of the intangible benefits of working with certain companies can definitely be enticing. One way they do this is offering a travel therapy bonus in a contract.

Let’s say you’re walking around a large conference and are at the booth of the fifth travel company of the day. All of the ones you’ve talked to have said the things above, and they have also reassured you that they have the best recruiters and will get you the highest possible pay. You feel like you’re still at square one and still have no idea which company you should work with. Then suddenly one of the booths you stop at, a recruiter tells you that they offer all of the above, but also $5,000 worth of student loan reimbursement after you work with them for four contracts!

To a naive prospective traveler, this is probably enough to sway them to work with that company. After all, they have everything the other companies have, but will also put $5,000 toward your student loans?

But not so fast, things aren’t always what they appear.

Where Do Travel Therapy Bonuses Come From?

You can see how offering a big bonus like that could be a persuasive marketing tactic for a traveler with very little else to differentiate one company from another. Unfortunately, that bonus isn’t just “free money,” and it’s often counterproductive for you to take it. Why you ask?

It all comes down to where the money for a travel contract comes from. The bill rate (an hourly amount for the time you’re on the clock at a travel assignment) in most cases is all that’s paid to the travel company from the facility. This means that everything about your pay, along with any taxes and fees, as well as the travel company’s expenses and profit have to be accounted for from the bill rate. There’s no extra “free money” to give you in a travel contract, but the money can be moved around in creative ways to create the illusion of free money.

What’s happening in the $5,000 student loan reimbursement example above is that the travel company is moving money from the bill rate around, and making a suboptimal situation sound more exciting. If they’re agreeing to give you $5,000 toward your student loans after working four contracts with them, what they’re doing behind the scenes is reducing your total weekly pay for each of those four contracts by $1,250, adding it all together in a separate basket, and then giving it back to you at the end of the four contracts in a $5,000 lump sum.

So essentially, for getting that $5,000 bonus after four contracts, you’re making $100 less each week on your pay. Remember, there’s no free money in a travel contract. It all comes from the same bill rate.

Suddenly, that bonus doesn’t seem so appealing.

Why Travel Therapy Bonuses Usually Aren’t Optimal

Okay, so the travel company is just keeping some money from you each week to then give that money to you all at once at the end of a specified timeframe, and calling it a bonus. That’s a little different than what you were thinking, but still not so bad, right? Sometimes it’s nice to get a big lump sum that feels like a windfall. But, it is actually bad for a couple of reasons.

First, you have to consider the time value of money. Money that you receive now is worth more than money you receive in the future. That should make sense, because you know that if you put that $100 that you could have been receiving each week toward your debt or into smart investments along the way, then it will be worth more than $100 a year from now. It will have earned you a return, or reduced the amount of interest you had to pay on your debt. This is the same reason that getting a big income tax return is suboptimal. It’s better to have that extra money throughout the year, instead of allowing the IRS (or travel company in this case) to collect interest on it instead.

Second, there’s a stipulation on the bonus. Imagine that you work three travel contracts with that company, and then decide to stay and take a permanent job at the third assignment location. You didn’t meet the requirement of working with the company for four contracts, so you don’t get the bonus! Even though they set some of the money you would have been making aside for three contracts to give you the bonus, they now get to keep it since you didn’t fulfill the terms.

There’s also an opportunity cost with this. If you have to commit to that company for four contracts to get the bonus, what if after your second contract, you talk to a different travel company that has the perfect job for you with high pay that your current company doesn’t have. Now you have to choose whether you want to take the good job with the other company and leave that bonus on the table, or stay with the current company and take a less than perfect job just to get that bonus after another couple of contracts. Staying with this company just to get the bonus at the end really has you locked in.

Types of Travel Therapy Bonuses

After interviewing more than a hundred recruiters and managers from over twenty travel companies, and talking to many more on a less formal basis, we’ve heard all sorts of different benefits, intangible benefits, and bonuses offered to try to attract the attention of potential travel therapists.

“Student loan reimbursement” and “contract completion” travel therapy bonuses are definitely the most common. There are also companies that offer vacations or trips as incentives for their travelers. While this is really creative and exciting, you always have to remember that what I talked about above still applies. A “free trip” doesn’t come from free money on top of your normal pay, it comes from a small percentage of all travelers’ pay each week being allocated to a fund to later pay for the trip.

As long as you understand where all of these incentives come from, then taking them isn’t always a bad thing. For example, say you find a company and recruiter you really like. They have lots of jobs all over the country with exactly what you’re looking for, and they also seem to pay higher on a weekly basis than other companies you’ve talked to. If they happen to offer a bonus or an incentive trip, then by all means, take it. The problem is really when travelers choose a subpar company and accept low pay packages with poor job options, just because they were enticed by a bonus that is nothing more than fancy marketing and moving money around in the pay package.

An Exception to the Rule

One exception to everything above is that in rare cases, a facility might offer a completion bonus directly.

There are two different types of completion bonuses. One is the travel company moving money around to give you a lump sum at the end of a contract instead of spreading it out through the contract in your weekly pay, suboptimal for the reasons above. (Time value of money, contract cancellations, etc.)

The other is a completion bonus offered directly by the facility. In this case, the facility will pay the normal bill rate to the travel company, and then at the end of a contract agree to pay an additional amount as a completion bonus that goes to the travel therapist. This is to attract travelers to that position and also deter travelers from cancelling their contract in the middle. In this case, the completion bonus essentially is free money, because nothing is being moved around in the pay package. While these types of completion bonuses are rare for therapists, your recruiter will be able to tell you if a job that you’re interested in is offering one.

Finding Good Travel Companies and Recruiters

Finding travel companies and recruiters that fit your individual wants and needs is difficult. So difficult that many prospective travelers just give up on it and pick one nearly at random or based on some marketing strategy that catches their eye. That is why various bonuses and incentives are so common. They can make one company stand out above the others in the mind of a new traveler who thinks they are getting something for free, when it’s really just often a suboptimal gimmick.

The things you really need to know about a recruiter and travel company to find the best ones for you are things you won’t learn without a more thorough interview, which is extremely time consuming with so many options out there. The traveler-recruiter relationship can make or break your experience with travel therapy. So can choosing a travel company that does or doesn’t have what you’re looking for in terms of job options or that pays very low or high for what you need.

If you’d like assistance with finding travel therapy companies and recruiters that should work well for your situation, fill out our recruiter recommendation form. After interviewing more than a hundred recruiters from over twenty companies since 2015, we’ve found ones that shine in all different types of situations. Finding a recruiter and company is certainly no one size fits all situation, so we do our best to take a look at your individual preferences and provide our best recommendations for you personally.

Other Great Travel Therapy Resources

If you’d like to see a sample of some of the best jobs currently available from the companies and recruiters we work with, check out our hot jobs page. If you have questions about travel therapy, join our Community Facebook group where we, along with thousands of other travel therapists, are eager to help. Maybe you’re new to travel and just want to get an overview of the basics: our free 101 series is best place to start. If you want more in-depth, step-by-step information on how to be a financially successful travel therapist, then check out our comprehensive travel therapy course.

Best of luck in your travel therapy adventures! Feel free to reach out to us with any questions!

Written by Jared Casazza, PT, DPT – Jared has been a traveling physical therapist since 2015. He has become an expert in the field of travel healthcare through his experience, research, and networking over nearly a decade.

Do You Receive Mentorship as a Travel Therapist?

October 8, 2023October 8, 2023 ~ Travel Therapy Mentor ~ Leave a comment

A common question we get is whether or not you’re able to receive mentorship as a travel therapist. This most often comes from new grad therapists or students considering travel therapy right out of school. Occasionally, this question also comes from an experienced therapist who wants to take a travel therapy contract in a brand new setting, but who is fearful he/she won’t be able to succeed without some guidance.

As with just about all things therapy related, the answer is “it depends.” It depends on the particular travel assignment that you choose as well as on what you mean by mentorship, as we’ve found that this can often mean different things to different managers and therapists.

Choosing the Right Travel Assignment for Mentorship

Every job as a travel therapist can be completely different, so if mentorship is important to you, then this is something you’ll have to prioritize when searching for the right travel therapy assignment. You’ll work alongside your travel therapy recruiter to identify facilities that may offer mentorship. Then, you’ll need to ask questions during your phone interview with the facility to determine what type, if any, mentorship is available.

Whitney and I found out the hard way during our very first travel therapy assignments that not all of them will be a supportive environment with mentorship for new grads.

Our Experience with New Grad Travel Therapy Mentorship

Whitney and I both started travel physical therapy right away as new grads in 2015. When we started, we both had about the same level of clinical skills and the same level of knowledge about travel therapy. We started working travel PT jobs as our very first jobs as clinicians, and we took jobs less than 30 minutes from each other. Based on this, you might guess that our experiences as new grad travelers were pretty similar. That was not the case at all. Whitney had a very difficult first travel assignment with a lot of hardship throughout the 13 weeks, whereas mine was wonderful. The interesting thing about this was that before we started the jobs, we both thought that her job would be great and that I would struggle at mine.

Much of this is because we were naïve new travel therapists that didn’t know how important the facility interview is, and therefore we didn’t ask the right questions. By, essentially, luck of the draw, she got a travel contract that wasn’t supportive or helpful at all, whereas mine had a lot of support.

At her contract, after a 30 minute orientation on the first day, she was expected to jump right into to seeing a full day of patients at the large retirement community, which included several different buildings for skilled nursing, long term care, assisted living, and independent living. The facility was new to her, the patients were new to her, and she was unfamiliar with the documentation system, yet the regional manager still expected her to achieve 90% productivity in her first week. That’s completely unreasonable for a new grad, or really for anyone starting their first week in a new place. To make matters worse, she was told there would be another PT on staff there to help her and answer questions, but it turned out that she was actually filling in for the PT who was out on medical leave, so she was on her own.

On the other hand, my contract which was at a small rural hospital, knew that I didn’t have any acute care experience, and the manager was very accommodating and wanted to help me succeed in the new setting. She let me shadow a current PT there for an entire week before I ever saw my first patient. After that, I had a week long ramp up to a full caseload. I wasn’t on my own with a full caseload until the third week, which gave me plenty of time to get aquatinted with the facility and the documentation system. I didn’t have many issues, and if I did, there was always another PT there willing to help and answer my questions.

What Can be Expected on an Average Travel Contract?

Since these first assignments, we’ve learned a lot about what can be expected when starting a new travel job. The truth is that there’s a wide range of what’s normal in terms of travel therapy mentorship. Both of our first jobs were outliers on different ends of the spectrum.

It’s not often that a travel therapist is thrown right into a full caseload on day one like Whitney was, and it’s fairly easy to avoid those jobs with a thorough interview. Being at a facility with unrealistic expectations is no fun, and we advise therapists to avoid those places at all costs. However, it’s also not common to get a full two weeks of orientation, shadowing, and ramp up like I received.

Most travel jobs are somewhere in the middle, and it’s very important to use the phone interview with the facility to determine if the support provided is adequate for your needs as a new travel therapist. Picking the right contract, especially for your first one, is vital in having a good experience as a travel therapist.

Do Travel Therapists Really get Less Mentorship?

To be honest, Whitney and I were both nervous to start out as new grad travel therapists. We’d heard some good things about travel therapy and knew we wanted to see more of the country and to earn more money, but we’d also heard a lot of negative stories from professors and clinical instructors.

There were no resources for travel therapists online back then, so we had no way to know how to choose the right travel companies and recruiters, which was also a big impediment to our success.

We thought about taking a permanent job to get mentorship and experience before traveling, but we were really eager to start exploring. Many permanent jobs in our area advertised mentorship to new grads but were vague as to what that really entailed. As we later found out, in most cases mentorship didn’t really mean much at those jobs.

After a couple weeks at my first travel contract, I talked to many of my PT school classmates to hear how their first jobs were going. They all took permanent jobs, so I was very interested to see how their experience would differ from mine. To my surprise, I actually got more mentorship at my first travel contract than all but one of them did at their permanent jobs. It turned out that most of the clinics that were offering mentorship really just meant that they would get a week ramp up period to a full caseload and have another PT in the facility to answer questions. So much for the “mentorship” I thought I was missing out on as a travel therapist!

As we’ve gotten further into our careers, we’ve learned that our area wasn’t an anomaly. While there are some facilities that offer a dedicated mentorship program, most facilities that advertise mentorship for new grads really just mean an orientation, a ramp up to a full caseload, and another therapist in the facility to ask questions if needed. This is exactly what most new grad travel therapists get as well, so the difference between permanent job and travel job mentorship is often minimal.

Different Types of Mentorship as a Travel Therapist

In addition to the mentorship that travel therapists receive being similar to that of permanent therapists in many cases, I believe that travel therapists receive a different type of mentorship that is more valuable.

In my first two years as a travel therapist, I worked alongside several dozen different therapists at different facilities all over the country. I learned from all of these therapists and got a broad view of the different treatment styles and therapy perspectives out there, which made me a more well rounded clinician. Had I worked at the same permanent job for those two years, I would have had a much more limited perspective.

I also got to learn what I liked and didn’t like about the policies and procedures at the various different facilities. Some were run extremely well, whereas others needed a lot of work. That taught me what I would want to look for in a future permanent position to have the best possible work-life balance.

On top of the above, I also got to thoroughly try out a variety of different settings and learn from each about the various stages of healing and rehab. This gave me a much better view of the patient as a whole and the progression from acute care to outpatient therapy. Trying out different settings also made me realize that although I loved outpatient, a future permanent job in a different setting might be better for me long term. I probably would have never given any other settings a try if I had taken a permanent job right out of school, and I wouldn’t have known what I was missing.

Mentorship and growth as a clinician comes in all shapes and sizes. With all things considered, I think what the average travel therapist receives is more valuable than what the average permanent therapist receives.

Types of Mentorship to Ask About as a Traveler

When it comes time to search for travel therapy jobs, you’ll want to keep in mind the different forms of mentorship you can receive and be sure to ask about these.

As we’ve already discussed, the most common type of mentorship will be another clinician on staff who can help you and whom you can ask questions. Be sure to ask if there will be a clinician of your same discipline on site, full time, at the same facility with you. Also be sure to ask about training/orientation and ramp up time as well, especially if the job is in a setting that is unfamiliar to you.

In addition to on site mentorship, you can also ask your recruiter if there is a mentor available by phone through the travel company. Often they will have clinical staff (sometimes called a clinical liaison) who works for the travel company and can help you in any tricky situations at your travel therapy contract. They may also be able to connect you with a mentor who is an experienced travel therapist who you can talk to and get advice from.

Is Travel Therapy Right for You?

If you’re considering travel therapy and are concerned about the mentorship aspect, I hope that this article sheds some light on what’s available. If you’re relatively confident in your skills as a clinician and pick a good first few contracts based on your phone interviews, then you’ll be in good shape.

On the other hand, if you aren’t confident and feel that you need more in depth help starting your career, then searching out a permanent job with a more structured mentorship program might be a good idea. While most mentorship programs at permanent jobs are minimal, we have seen some over the years that are very thorough and helpful for new grads that need to build skills and confidence.

If you plan to start as a new grad travel therapist like we did, it’s vital to be prepared and as informed as possible about the process to avoid a first contract like Whitney had. A great place to start your learning is our free travel therapy 101 series. It covers the basics and has links to more in depth learning on important topics. If you want a step by step guide to becoming a successful and financially savvy travel therapist, then our course is ideal for you. If you need help getting connected with great recruiters who are very supportive, fill out our recruiter recommendation form so we can get you in touch! Feel free to message us with any questions. Best of luck in your travel therapy journey!

Tag: travel therapist