# Locum Tenens/Physical Therapy



## blnord (Aug 21, 2012)

Hi all, I am trying to get some clarification; I understand that the guidelines for locum tenens do not apply to Physical Therapists so my question is; if a therapist needs to have another therapist cover for him while he's out on a medical leave, what do we have to do to be able to bill for the therapist that is filling in? It seems that there must be some guidelines regarding this especially since therapy requires patients to be seen mulitple times a weeks for weeks at a time? I would appreciate any assistance with this.
Thank you!


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## Cyndi113 (Aug 21, 2012)

Good morning, 

What we did in Washington State is that we contracted the fill-in with State L&I and Medicaid. He/she really got the dirty end of the stick because he/she got all those patients. 

One of the bigger payors did allow for locums and but that didn't last for very long. You need to check with all your bigger payor other than Medicare. Remember that any PTAs that work with the locum cannot treat Medicare or patients from any insurance that do not allow locums. 

It becomes very cumbersome and for this reason, we had float PT/OTs whom were contracted at all of our facilities (20+).


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## blnord (Aug 21, 2012)

Thank you Cyndi, we're in California so I would have to reasearch our state.  The biggest issue is that we are a very small clinic, 1 therapist so this only happens maybe once a year for a vacation or in this instance a medical issue where he will be out for 3 months and depending on the fill in's situation it wouldn't always be the same person so even adding them to our office wouldn't work.  It sounds like there probably isn't a favorable answer to this but it is too bad for our patients they make it so that we have to basically close the office down in a situation like this.


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## Cyndi113 (Aug 21, 2012)

A small clinic is great in some way. However, I agree in the instance, it's not so great!! I'm sorry


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