The Economic Costs of Physical Therapist Burnout

I started reading Adam Grant’s new book “Hidden Potential” over the holidays, which inspired this post about the economic impact of Physical Therapist burnout.

In “Hidden Potential”, Grant emphasizes the significance of taking small breaks through the workday to improve mental clarity and unlock peak performance. Even five minute breaks can drive improvements.

It’s easy to see the contrast between these best practices and the daily workflows of Physical Therapists. PT schedules are frenetic, and most don’t have time to take short breaks during the day. Given dropping reimbursements, clinic owners are compelled to increase utilization targets to maintain profitability (most therapists are salaried employees). PTs see patients back-to-back throughout the day, and complete paperwork and administrative tasks during “breaks”. This relentless pace contributes significantly to therapist burnout.

This emotional and physical exhaustion has been discussed extensively on blogs and social media, but I’ve seen few posts or articles that attempt to quantify the economic impact of burnout. This is important because quantifying burnout costs helps justify technology/process changes to reduce burnout.

I’ll define the cost of PT burnout as the cumulative PT industry profit sacrificed as a result of excess job vacancies. The PT turnover rate is currently at 9% vs. a 4% healthcare average (WebPT 2022 PT Survey). And, per the APTA 2023 Benchmark Report, there is an 11% vacancy rate for physical therapy positions at outpatient clinics.

Since one-third of therapists describe themselves as burned out (WebPT 2022 PT Survey), I’ll assume that:

1. Burnout is the primary driver of excess turnover

2. Burned-out PTs leave clinical roles when they quit.

Given those assumptions, reducing burnout could bring PT turnover back to healthcare averages and drop vacancy rates from 11% to 6%.

What is the economic benefit of reducing PT vacancies by 5%? Assume a PT generates ~$200k/year in revenue with a ~$100k salary. Since the majority of costs beyond therapist salaries are fixed (i.e those costs all stay the same when a PT quits), a vacancy reduces profits by ~$100k/year per therapist. With approximately 250k PTs in the United States, reducing vacancies by 5% (12.5k providers) would improve profits by a staggering $1.25 billion per year.

While this is back-of-envelope math with rough numbers, the conclusion is that PT burnout has a major effect on PT clinic profits (total industry profit is ~$5B/year). Clinics struggling with excess turnover and job vacancies should evaluate novel technologies like Tapt Health to reduce burnout. Ambient Documentation solutions like Tapt automatically complete SOAP notes from visit recordings, dramatically reduce provider documentation burden, and enable therapists to redesign their workdays to reduce burnout.