I do PTA work PRN at a SNF but I was told that I am not allowed to count minutes in NetHealth if I am reviewing a patient chart I never even seen before. So in other words if I don’t count that review time then it kills my productivity. This seems so lame if you ask me. What do they want you to do, walk in and go straighten to the patient’s room without seeing what even is wrong with them?
I had this job with a particular HH agency that was tied to a Medicare provider, and they listed my salary pay as like $73,000. I thought that was bull crap because that only occurs if you have a full amount of visits week after week throughout the entire year.
I’m a PTA in NC. I have to have 20 CEUs every two years, which is coming up for me in January 2027. Where do you all knock out these CEUs?? I hate taking these things because the continuing competence reporting website for the NC board states that only like 10 points can come from watching some instructional videos and 15 can come from “live webinars.” I always feel stuck because I sure ain’t going to some in-person $700 lecture. How do you guys get by with doing these CEUs and never leaving your home computer? Please help!
I have had some tough experiences in my 8 years as a PTA. I’ve worked mostly in SNF and HH, with a short bit in orthopedic outpatient. Over that 8 years I had a few patients that I probably did help and made an impact, but I also had a lot that were probably not even appropriate for PT just because they weren’t interested in doing it and some are just incapable of really doing anything and I can’t lift a 300 lbs person either from a wheelchair. I also am terrible at group therapy and then documenting it appropriately. My last position was in HH where I had a bad experience with the branch manager and they chose to terminate me from the position before 90 days citing it as “not a good fit.” In spite of this, I still do PRN in a SNF occasionally and I am a good employee. For some reason I just didn’t vibe well with the HH agency that terminated me. Long story short, I reached a state of burnout there after that led me to pursue other jobs with my B.S. in biology/chemistry and I ended up landing a job in quality control for manufacturing. I make upper $20s/hour, which comes out to be pretty close to what I was making in SNF and HH. I realize some SNF jobs will advertise $30/hour but then they won’t always have 40 hours of work. It might be just 30-35 hours average. So, with that said, did I make a huge mistake by pursuing work in a different industry or should I go back to PTA (that is if they’ll even hire me and give me a chance again)? Or do I just keep going in quality control because it’s less stressful, no extensive documentation, and no grumpy patients to make my day bad. I sometimes worry that I could have made more money but I don’t know if that’s really true when you really compare everything. I feel like you hear of some of these rare outliers that make 6 figures as a PTA in HH, but typically those people are just in a very rare niche location that is constantly busy and they typically work a TON of hours just to do that. Overall, I feel like the average PTA is not out there knocking down 6 figures, probably not even $75,000, but some I think get close to $50-60K here in my area (that’s before taxes). Anyway, let me know what you think and if you think I need to go back to PTA or stay with what I’m now currently doing?
I went to school to become a PTA, and have been a licensed PTA for now 8 years. Finishing school, I had big dreams thinking I was going to have this amazing career and future ahead of me. Little did I know, I struggled to even land my first job and like many I ended up getting one in a SNF that was one of the worst SNFs around. The pay grabbed me though at first because obviously it was more than I had ever made and I thought I was onto something great. I remember my first week starting out was an absolute nightmare and I literally came home a complete zombie because of all the drama and mess I had to deal with. It’s definitely not just PT in a SNF. You literally have to duck and dodge drama all day long from angry patients to hateful nurses too. It was so much to tackle week after week. And I literally was left scratching my head thinking…”so this is what being a PTA is?” The productivity was truly awful too, literally making me feel like ai was on that game show “The Amazing Race” all day rushing against the clock and dealing with making sure I could actually bill for my time because “walking to rooms and such” is non-billable. It was brutal trying to crunch numbers and time all day on top of all the drama. It’s no wonder I was frazzled. I ended up switching to an outpatient ortho job and that ended up being a totally different scene of course, but again was like 15-20 patients a day constant hustling to get documentation done and not falling behind because the next patient is coming in and it’s their time slot, and oh crap you gotta know their diagnosis so you don’t bend their knee too far or their shoulder, etc. I finally tried my hand at home health and again same bunch of calling to schedule patients who don’t really want you coming at the times you need to come and then when you do come it’s kind of the same boring walking, stairs, or standing exercises at the sink. Home health felt more like I was a nurse that did a little bit of PT. And the pay seemed good on paper, but there were times when my visits would drop off and my paychecks suffered. But then there were also times where it was too many visits and I hated that too. It was hard to consistently have a happy medium where I wasn’t struggling to make money versus surviving too many visits in a week with spending 1-2 hours at least after I got home tying up my documentation on a horrible EMR platform called PointCare and then having to call up the next day’s patients and plan the route. People don’t seem to realize how much unpaid time gets spent in home health after the day is done. So with all that said, I feel like I tried and tried and tried and tried again to make this career work for me and be something I would enjoy for years to come, but for some reason I just never could seem to find that perfect niche where it just felt right. It always felt like a constant mind blowing experience full of high stress and rush rush rush all day so you can finally breathe when you hit the bed that night. I guess some people enjoy that hustle lifestyle, but it got me burned out and I finally walked away from it full time. I’m curious to hear other’s thoughts and even if you feel completely opposite from me and you somehow love PTA then please tell me why I cannot be like that?
Why do PT’s in SNF, especially those fresh out of school, sometimes seem to come up with some really complex and sometimes really sophisticated stuff for interventions, yet weeks later Gertrude really hasn’t significantly improved from that stuff? Why not keep it simple every time, the basics: stand, sit, walk, get out of bed. That’s really the main goal of SNF is functional training, yet I see so many PTs almost like they’re trying to impress someone with their cool interventions, but what exactly is your goal by doing some of that stuff?
I transitioned to a new career in quality control manufacturing. I was a PTA for 8 years in multiple settings. I now work 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM for 5 days a week with weekends off. I make about the same as a PTA in a SNF or the average HH PTA, so I really am making the same pay, if not maybe a little more. The question becomes, did I make the wrong move, or did I do the right thing? I was becoming heavily burned out as a PTA, and could not seem to find passion anymore from it. The insane productivity levels in SNF that left me scratching my head feeling like everyone else must be cutting corners or fudging on their time minutes entered into NetHealth, in addition to the long mileage routes in HH and evenings spent finishing documentation and calling to schedule patients for the next day’s route, patients that sometimes seemed very disinterested in the service. I just finally felt like turning the page and heading in a different direction. I can’t say the path I’m now on is golden paradise, but I do feel it is more tolerable and gives me a sense of freedom more than I felt as a PTA. However, sometimes I still have a guilty conscience and don’t always have the huge self-esteem and confidence to believe my decision was indeed right.