Re: productivity and ethical/legal limits

[Guest guest]

-

I, too, feel that walking out is not a professional option. We have a legal

and ethical responsibility to our patients to not abandon them. We also have

protected rights under fair labor laws which should be investigated by anyone

who feels that they are being " abused " or " misused " . A greater problem is the

one which involves PTs abusing their license by evaluating patients/clients

and automatically triaging them to aides, ATCs, etc. The business folks know

this is happening, see a lower overhead for personnel (which is at least

50-60% of any health care service budget), and like what happens to the bottom

line.

In terms of productivity, there is a soft rule of thumb that quite a few

people use. It is quoted on moose's book on PT Management ( a new volume is

now available). It states that you should plan to capture at least 75% of the

billable hours. For an eight hour day, this translates into 6 hours of care

that should (must) be captured to cover costs, etc. Using a 15 minute unit,

each care givers should capture 24 units/day. For this to work, it is

imperative that the staff understand and agree to what a " billable unit " is.

You would be surprised what staff thinks is unbillable time. It is helpful to

have the staff develop and agree to a " billable " unit so that they own it.

Secondly, it is difficult for some people providing bedside treatment to

produce 24 units a day. On the other hand, gym based care - which allows for

scheduling more than one person at at time - is a very effective way to

produce 30 or more units. I used to average the productivity of the whole

staff across all care settings to determine if we were ahead or behind in the

game. Hope this helps. Sinnott

______________________________________________________________________