Home Health & Hospice Week

Cut therapist workload confusion with this tool to gauge your staffing requirements.

It's like the old joke, "How many therapists does it take to screw in a light bulb?" But in this case, it's "How many therapists do we need to serve our patients effectively?"--and the answer is no laughing matter.

In a recent teleconference sponsored by Eli, "Find--And Keep--The Best and Brightest Therapists in Home Care," physical therapist Cindy Krafft offered this formula to estimate your therapist staffing needs: 1. Determine four factors: your average therapy visits per episode, your total number of episodes per time period, the total number of working days in that time period, and your productivity target in visits per day.

Pitfalls: Your therapy visits per episode average should include even those episodes with no therapy visits, explained Krafft, director of rehabilitation services for OSF Home Care based in Peoria, IL. And don't count weekends in your number of working days for the period if therapists don't staff them.

2. Multiply your visits per episode by the total number of episodes.

3. Multiply your number of working days by your productivity target.

4. Divide the sum of #2 by the sum of #3 to arrive at the total therapist FTEs your agency needs. Example: An agency has 3 therapy visits per episode, 200 total episodes, 20 working days and a productivity target of 5 visits per day (step #1). Multiply 3 times 200 to equal 600 (step #2), then multiply 20 times 5 to equal 100 (step #3). Finally, divide 600 by 100 to arrive at 6.0 FTEs (step #4).

This rough model allows you to tweak the different factors involved to see the effect on overall employment requirements, Krafft pointed out. "It's more than just I have x amount of visits per month and I need x to cover it." 

Note: For more ideas on recruiting and retaining therapists, order a transcript or recording of Krafft's teleconference at http://codinginstitute.com/conference/tapes.cgi?detail=374 or by calling 1-800-508-2582.