In my time spent working in travel physical therapy, travel occupational therapy, and travel speech therapy, I work with a lot of candidates that come to Cirrus Allied in search of a competitive offer. Some of these candidates are new to traveling therapy, some are seasoned veterans. I wanted to put together a blog post today in order to help everyone understand how pay and benefits break down within various healthcare staffing firms.
In order to better understand compensation packages with healthcare staffing firms, we will need to take a peek ‘behind the curtain,’ so to speak. When a healthcare recruiting firm has a candidate for an open travel therapy position, the company submits that traveling therapist at set budget. These budgets are typically put together as an hourly rate, which covers all of the costs involved with hiring a traveling therapist at their facility. For the sake of this blog, let’s use an example of 40 dollars per hour to keep things short and simple. (Individual facility rates will vary, this is by no means an estimate on any specific travel therapy compensation.)
Once the client approves our 40 dollars per hour, the next step is finding out how this budget is allocated to the traveler. Typically, a compensation package will consist of four major categories:
- W2 taxable rate, or your hourly rate.
- Per Diem for meals and incidentals
- Housing (Some travel therapists take a housing stipend, some opt for company provided housing.)
- Incidental Expenses, bonuses, or reimbursements. (These are one-time payments and will vary by facility, healthcare staffing firm, and location.)
Now that we have a basic overview of how your typical traveling therapy contract will be broken down, let’s focus on the piece of every contract that is either celebrated or ignored in every contract, the incidental expenses. Incidental expenses are a big part of travel therapy benefits, and sometimes their importance is downplayed when putting together a compensation plan. Let’s take a look at an example to help us along.
Let’s say our subject, we’ll call him Joe Smith, is a traveling physical therapist. Joe has found two positions that are in great locations, with companies he trusts, and in a setting Joe is comfortable in. Position A pays more per hour, but Position B is offering a large completion bonus. Both assignments are identical, and each facility wants to book Joe for 14 weeks. Let’s see how this would work, and how you can break each offer down to dollars and cents. Here are the actual numbers:
Position A – $28 dollars per hour, no bonus
Position B – $25 dollars per hour, with a $1500.00 completion bonus.
Now, at first glance, the $1500 dollar completion bonus looks like a huge incentive, but how do these compensation packages compare once we break them down? When lookin at any one-time payment in your contract, keep in mind that these numbers are all based on an hourly rate. To break down these payments, find out how many total hours you will be working on this assignment. At 40 hours per week, a 14-week travel assginment would have a total of 560 hours. (14 X 40 = 560)
Next, let’s find out how much it costs per hour for a company to pay a travel therapist a 1500 dollar completion bonus. 1500 dollars divided by a total of 560 hours brings the total to 2.68 dollars per hour. Adding the 25 an hour rate with this 2.68 dollar cost for the bonus brings the total for assignment B to 27.68. So, while the 1,500 dollar bonus looks flashier, assignment A actually pays a bit more than assignment B.
While it’s only a difference of 32 cents per hour, the extra money you would make on assignment A would total approx 179 dollars over the course of the assignment. This is one of the main reasons you will see a lot of bonuses being offered on assignments with various healthcare staffing firms. The psychology behind this practice says that a lot of people will focus more on a larger sum of money, even if the assignment with a bonus is paying less in the long run. If you are deciding between two companies, using this method will help you find out how the two companies compare. When in doubt, ask your recruiter for more information or a simplified breakdown.
That’s it for this entry, keep checking in for the next part in this series, where I’ll be discussing the per diems and housing portions of compensation packages.
