4 BIG Benefits of Home Health Therapy Jobs

Searching for a career that offers autonomy, flexibility, and pays well? Here are four reasons you might want to start looking at home health therapy jobs. 

Home health is a fast-growing business. With changes in healthcare regulations and some extraordinary benefits that home health therapy jobs provide, more and more rehab professionals are considering home health as a career choice. And, they are very happy and successful! Below are four main reasons therapists should consider looking into home health as a career pathway.

1. Work on your own time. Are you a therapist who always misses a personal doctor’s appointment as you cannot leave from work? Or, you don’t have the time to call your landlord or bank during working hours? Perhaps you are a working mother, and it’s difficult to juggle your child’s schedule with your work schedule. If any of these scenarios describe you, it might be time to consider a career in home health.

One of the primary benefits of working in home health is the flexibility it provides. Since you are driving from patient to patient and creating your own schedule, you are able to fit personal phone calls, appointments, or run quick errands during your workday. Home health affords you the option to manage your caseload depending on YOUR availability. You can work more hours one day and choose to have a shorter day the next. The freedom starts from deciding your first visit of the day to the last, and how many days to work per week.

2. Pay your loans quicker and enjoy your lifestyle. Most home health therapists (physical, occupational, or speech) make significantly more money than therapists in any other health setting based on the national average pay rate. This enables you to pay off your student loans faster and still be able to enjoy the lifestyle you desire. Home health also affords you the ability to obtain more money with more visits. If you want to add more visits per day and work 6 or even 7 days per week, your paycheck will reflect this. So, you can check off that bucket list of vacation destinations quickly!

3. Be your own boss. Having a job as a home health therapist will allow you to become your own boss. You don't answer anyone regarding your time as long as you are providing consistent, quality patient care. You are completely independent to choose your start time of day, your total hours worked, and the days of the week you prefer to work.

Moreover, home health therapists follow different regulations for the majority of insurances and Medicare. Typically, there is no push to perform specific patient treatments. Your services are based on your clinical judgment and expertise! Home health is also a great setting to build solid relationships with doctors, nurses, or other healthcare practitioners as well as patients and their families. Sometimes, therapists are referred directly by a patient or caregiver for home health rehab.

If a doctor is impressed by your patient outcomes, he/she may also refer you to other patients. This is a great way to “get your name out there” and become a respected leader in your line of work. If you are a clinically savvy therapist with complete confidence in your treatment strategies, then you are going to love the freedom that comes with home health therapy.

4. Do less laborious work and more skilled work. Home health is functional and skilled. It does not involve the same types of tedious and laborious work as an outpatient clinic. You are directly assessing the patient’s environment and the ability, or lack thereof, of a patient to perform ADLs. Your evals are based on functional treatments that are important to your patients’ outcomes. You are going to increase the chances of obtaining active participation from your patients as they are more satisfied and happy.

Remember, the patients are in their homes desiring to do the things they love to do, which increases compliance to treatment. This type of highly skilled work brings joy and satisfaction to a therapist as well. Since you are providing functional treatment, it becomes a lot easier to justify your therapy session and need for services. In other words, less fighting with insurance providers and more clinical work!

This summarizes the main benefits of home health therapy jobs. However, as amazing as home health may sound, it is important to also consider your personality type and comfort level. Although there are many positive aspects of working in home health, know that this type of work is not for everyone. Stay tuned for our next blog on some of the disadvantages of becoming a home health therapist. Then, weigh your options to see if the job is right for you.