Why Reducing Therapist Burnout Should Be a Priority for Rehab Therapy Practices

Rehab therapy’s burnout problem might not be generating as many headlines as it did during its pandemic peak, but that doesn’t mean the issue has been solved by any stretch. Sure, not having a virus throwing every part of our lives into chaos has been a balm for everyone’s spirits, but the underlying problems that created burnout well before COVID came onto the scene haven’t changed all that much. Reimbursement remains low, keeping pay down for many providers and staff.  The number of patients seen per day is high in many practices, and documentation somehow becomes more burdensome year over year. 

The impact of burnout goes beyond patient care; it’s affecting how practices do business, and the relative success they’re able to achieve—or not achieve, based upon the turnover they have to contend with in their clinics. Dealing with and reducing burnout should remain a priority for practices everywhere, and automation can make a big impact in reducing the strain on clinicians and staff. 

Clinics can’t afford the turnover that burnout causes. 

One challenge in driving action to resolve burnout is that it’s harder to tie an exact value to the problem. A missed appointment or a denied claim easily translates into dollars lost, but what does it cost a practice when a provider gets tired of the daily grind and walks away? 

We dove into that exact question during our webinar on company retention. (I’d encourage everyone to check it out if you haven’t already.) During the session, we looked into some of the numbers and research around the cost of burnout, which roughly translates to the cost of lost productivity plus the costs associated with hiring new clinicians. The folks at UpDoc Media found that hiring costs range from 45% to 123% of a clinician’s salary, and that the process can take anywhere from three months to a full year to find the right candidate.   

The effects can be compounded, too; having a clinician or staff member leave puts more on the shoulders of others in the practice, who then pick up the slack, which only adds to the stress that drives their own potential burnout. Without a way to address staffing challenges or alleviate clinic staff workloads, there’s a risk that burnout becomes a never-ending cycle that requires constant hiring and leads to a toxic clinic culture.   

Reducing the administrative burden helps avoid burnout. 

Clinical care isn’t what’s driving burnout; most providers, regardless of how they feel about their current situation, still feel passionately about helping patients. The problem is everything before and after: endless documentation for providers, managing authorizations and benefits for the front desk, and frustrating denials for billers. 

The fight against burnout is the fight for greater efficiency and increased automation in the clinic's administrative work. For clinicians, that starts with AI-assisted documentation.  Using AI to turn conversations into compliant notes and improve coding and overall compliance is the most obvious way to cut the hours spent on notes that contribute to burnout. You’re cutting down on repetitive data entry and rework, getting documentation done during the workday, and alleviating that overwhelmed feeling that adds to stress.  

For your front desk, there’s a mountain of paperwork passing through each day—not all of which necessarily needs to be touched by staff. Online scheduling and digital patient intake are a good starting point to reduce paperwork, but AI has the capacity to do more. The right AI tool could surface potential eligibility or authorization issues, catch critical missing information in a patient’s file, or identify cancellation risks on the schedule—all in time for staff to act and avoid interruptions to care or to a provider’s schedule.   

Revenue stability also helps keep staff at your clinic. 

For billers, cleaner claims coming from providers does a lot to reduce their stress, but many clinics are still dealing with too many denials.  Using AI to manage and prioritize denials and AR can help maximize revenue and, crucially, make it more predictable month to month.   

Creating more revenue stability has the added benefit of improving your overall clinic environment. In a practice where every day is a scramble to make payroll for the month, providers are going to feel the increased pressure to do more and push their productivity even further, to say nothing of the stress that can come from worrying about that next paycheck. Establishing a financial baseline, in which expenses are covered every month and growth is possible, frees staff from at least that worry. 

If you’re going to add AI, it can’t add work. 

At the risk of stating the obvious, you can’t solve a burnout issue in your clinic by adding more work. AI is a possible solution, but it’s not a one-size-fits-all, set-and-forget answer to your problems. It won’t reduce burnout if adoption requires major changes to your current workflow or added steps to what your team does every day. 

If you’re looking at AI, you want to find a tool that fits neatly into your workflows, does what your team needs and is asking for, and actually takes work off the plates of your staff and frees them up to focus on patients, or just gives them the opportunity to breathe for a moment. If you’re choosing AI that creates more work and that no one wants to use, you’re only worsening burnout — and throwing away money to boot.  

One final consideration is the speed of AI adoption, not only within the profession but within the lives of providers, particularly younger clinicians. AI adoption is higher among Gen Z than other generations, and while opinions may vary, there’s still a large number of newly minted and future rehab therapists more accustomed to technology that eases their workloads. In the years to come, AI might be something that prospective new hires are looking for in a practice; if you’re thinking of adding it to the clinic, it might be wise to get a head start.    

Don’t let talented clinicians slip away. 

Rehab therapy clinics have enough struggles without having to worry about constantly replacing their best providers. AI can take some of the burden off their shoulders, but it’s only part of the equation. Ultimately, clinic leaders have to build an environment where therapists can do their best work without administrative burden and undue stressors, and building that environment requires meaningful, intentional conversations as much as technology.