Pros
While at PTS I loved my patients and my coworker peers. However this had exactly nothing to do with the fake "PTS Fam".
Cons
Companies like PT Solutions (and ATI, Athletico etc.) are the problem with PT today. They game the system, leading to the arms race of declining payments from insurance and Medicare. I fear for my profession when I see the rapid growth of PT Solutions and other corporate/private equity owned PT practices. PT Solutions culture is to not care about truth but rather have a sleazy sales attitude about everything. As I write this, their website still says PTS is therapist owned - it’s been majority owned by Private Equity firms since 2013 (New Harbor then Lindsay Goldberg). Minority ownership is not "PT owned", by that standard Amazon is "PT owned" because I have stock in it. If you work at PT Solutions you can expect to be encouraged to be constantly goaded to see patients more frequently (majority of your caseload is supposed to be seen 3x per week) and for a longer duration than they need, and told to use a cookbook “algorithmic” approach that puts people into one of 3 boxes rather than reassessing your patients each visit. Meetings are focused on encouraging increasing billing and revenue for PTS, NOT on improving patient outcomes. They trumpet evidence based care, but really only care about money. It is clear that the financial KPIs are the only ones that really matter - which is part of why they hire so many new grads and indoctrinate them with cherry picked evidence that high frequency, prolonged therapy is the way to help patients. CEU courses aren’t a total waste of time, but don’t begin to approach the quality of decent external courses. Company culture is fake “family” and talks about providing better care than competitors, but really only cares about making more money for the company and the fast growth of their subpar offerings. They claim to be ”family” but don’t share their profits with employees via better benefits - they use John Hancock for their 401k, known for excessive fees for employees, and offer no match. They offer profit sharing bonuses, but the standard to receive is ludicrous - compared with other companies that provide a bonus for averaging over 60 patients per week. With COVID-19 they shifted to pay per visit and unemployment paid more than working for PTS at reasonable mid-Pandemic volumes. They nickle and dime their employees while raking in money from over-treating and over-billing patients. If they are hurting for money, maybe their corporate office didn't need to overlook Braves stadium? Management leads from behind, asking therapists who see patients to “see more patients” and “bill more units” while minimally involved in patient care themselves. I previously worked at other high volume clinics (aka mills), but at least they understood that support staff are needed to effectively manage a higher caseload and units per patient should be expected to go down as number of patients per therapist climbs, due to federal payer regulations and ethics. PTS productivity expectations are at least 60 patients per week with 5-6 units per visit, in spite of limited support staff. This equates to 150% productivity compared with 4 units/hour. PT Solutions initially did not know insurance regulations of regional insurances, the state practice act, and had clearly not done their due diligence reading insurance contracts that would give me any confidence billing aggressively. I needed to go work somewhere I could actually provide patient centered care that I was proud of, rather than try to make PT Solutions rich. Moving on to better pay, corporate culture, and benefits didn’t hurt either.
