Stressed

I am so glad that tomorrow is my last day at this particular skilled nursing facility. They asked if I wanted to work next Thursday and Friday, 1/2 day each, but I'm 99% certain I will say no. Fortunately, they didn't ask me face-to-face as it would be a very uncomfortable conversation. My point person for the agency e-mailed me and I told her I would have to mull it over.

I just can't wrap my mind around their high productivity expectations, greater or equal to 85%. This would mean 7 hours of direct-patient contact each eight-hour day. At my former job, we were expected to have a productivity of 75% (6 hours of direct-patient contact each eight-hour day). An article I read from the Physical Therapy Journal Productivity Among Physical Therapists said "productivity standards include an ideal goal of six hours of direct-patient contact each eight-hour day, an expected standard of five hours of direct-patient contact each eight-hour day".

Now I understand I'm a contract therapist so I am not expected to do case management and care conferences; and thus, my productivity should be higher than that of staff therapists. But sometimes I do have to confer with a nurse, doctor or another therapist about a particular patients or patients and that can take minutes, non-billable minutes. Also, I have documentation for every patient that I see, not to mention learning the mode of documentation which takes learning time.

So given their greater or equal to 85% productivity expectation, I should spend 408 minutes total for direct-patient care. At this facility, my planned treatment time total was 425 minutes for, I'm assuming (especially if I'm billing for this time) direct-patient care. This means I have 55 minutes left for documentation and conferring with the staff (if applicable). Not I'm including rest breaks, which by California law, requires 2 10-minutes breaks if working an eight hour day. If that is the case, then I'd have 35 minutes to document along with other non-billable tasks. For so-so documentation, it's doable. But for good documentation, it's cutting it tight. But when you have an evaluation to write or a few, it certainly is not enough time! Does that seem fair? I think not. Now I calculated my productivity and I was in the ideal goal of 75% productivity.

Some patient's can't tolerate 75 minutes of one therapy session at one time, but when you have 2 continuous 75 minute therapy sessions; I highly doubt a patient will optimally perform nor tolerate it, especially many with co-morbidities. In this facility, they do most of their treatment in a gym and most of the time, they do one therapy session after another. Anyways!!! I'm could go on and on, but I'll spare you....but not Chuck:) At least, I have only one more day there and now I think I'm 100% sure I won't go back.