Home Health Physical Therapy
Pros
Working directly with patients to improve their daily function is a rewarding career. To make a difference in patient's life is the only reason to work here.
Cons
Upper management is rigid, does not accept feedback from field clinicians or local office management. There is a culture of "you do it our way or the highway" that has no respect for the clinical expertise of field clinicians or for process improvement suggestions that don't originate with upper management. Since being purchased by this company our local office has lost all but a few of their excellent clinicians. There is no respect for work life balance at this company. Salaries have been taken away and clinicians are now paid only for visits performed. Additional non-clinical time is not paid out even when it has been approved by local branch managers. Clinicians are not reimbursed for their time if they arrive at a patient's home to find them not there. Paychecks frequently leave off payment for visits performed. Micromanagement is the new word of the day with managers of clinical practice who are registered nurses frequently telling physical therapists to chance patient goals or pressuring therapists to continue or provide therapy when it is not clinically appropriate to do so. Therapists and nurses are pressured and in some cases told to do visits that their schedules can't accommodate. Patients have multiple nurses seeing them with over utilization of LPN's with minimal RN supervision. In many cases the RN is not told that they are a particular patient's case manager and additional disciplines have no clear way of knowing who the case manager for any given patient is as it is not clearly indicated on the chart. There is no support from the office to deal with complex medical or equipment issues related to patients. Many times, having asked to order a particular supply for a patient I have been told no I may not despite Medicare requiring that we provide the patient with all needed supplies during the course of the care with the agency. Often since being bought by Gentiva, I have been asked to perform job duties outside of my license's scope of practice and had to explain my scope of practice by state law to upper management.
