Physical Therapist Assistant | Illinois | Mar 24, 2015
Started out dynamic and energetic, evolved to soul- and life-sucking, draining company. No work-life balance. Just work work work.
This was initially written well over a year ago. I thought I'd share now because I am hearing from a few of my beleaguered former ATI coworkers…ATI has changed a lot. Back then... the typical day as a PTA; co-treat with PT partner anywhere from 10-15 patients in a ten-hour day. Some days more patients, some days less. On good days, my schedule did not change multiple times throughout my shift and I got to see my patients and not those of another therapist so that that PT could get an eval in or have a day off. All part of the TEAMWORK core value. I learned how necessary it is to be a team player in order to manage overlapping/double-booking patients. Some clinics triple-book; three people scheduled at once.COMMUNICATION from most PTs was great in order to maintain high QUALITY OF CARE. The people I worked with are the best and we definitely exemplified the FRIENDLY FACTOR at ATI; a lot of times PT meant Party Time! We had fun and got to know our patients well and they liked that the staff all got along and that we were a fun group. I enjoyed the positive feedback I got from my manager and appreciated that she was out on the floor treating along side of us some times during the week. The hardest part of the job got to be the long hours and late nights. Not everyone had to work until closing, though. (Not sure how some people get to pick their own working hours.) After having some seniority at my clinic, I thought I might be able to not have to work til close every da
Prosfun coworkers, had good initial ideas and and energy...
Consyou'll be worked til you bleed out your eyes from the stress of it all.
Let's get one thing straight right off the bat. YES, I have become a disgruntled employee--but I wasn't always. I've been doing this over twenty years and have always been in love with my job. That was until ATI bought my old company out. I have to believe all these glowing comments and reviews are from people who are in or near the Chicago area, where the company started, and have been there since it was small, grounded, and had a handle on what it was doing.
Unfortunately, the company is buying up everything it can get it's hands on, and becoming too big, too fast. They're trying to manage every region like it's Chicago, and it's NOT. They don't understand, and refuse to try to understand, that in more rural areas, there are constant, seasonal, and very predictable fluctuations in patient numbers. Always. Every single year. So when summer comes and the patient load takes a dive, they start screaming about numbers and laying off staff. The earlier comment from "Sinking Ship" wasn't an exaggeration...there truly are daily phone calls and emails demanding to know why numbers drop, and where are our referrals--as if we clinicians (who, by the way, are earning their money for them) have any control over who gets injured and when.
Administratively the company is extremely top-heavy, and there's a huge layer of middle-management who, while being completely unnecessary and who are getting paid a lot of money to essentially do nothing, have to do something to keep the
ProsThe Clinical Staff
ConsMicro-Management, VERY top-heavy management, mis-management, pay cuts, staff cuts, with extravagant spending on unnecessary, "showy" things.
2.0
Rehabilitation Technician | Michigan | Jun 26, 2016
Over worked, under paid
I started working for ATI thinking it was a good place to develop good skills for my career along with moving up within the company. This stayed true until I stopped playing "the game" with management which pretty much means sucking up to upper management even though I knew they just gossiped about other people in other clinics and take credit for the hard work that their employees did. However, people that were buddy buddy with managers could pretty much do whatever they wanted and leave the other people at the clinic picking up the slack for them so patient care wasn't compromised.
When working for ATI, don't expect to have much of a life outside of work no matter what your position is. Expect to work until 7:00-7:30 every night and be at work early the next day, get no overtime, and have to jump through hoops to get PTO approved that you have earned and accumulated. The ridiculous policies that this company lives by will also be their downfall. The policies make it hard on clinicians and other clinic members to maintain quality patient care as well as enjoying the job and having personal time for yourself outside of work.
All upper management cares about is their stats so they can show them off at regional meetings in order to get a chance to move up the company ladder. There were numerous times when I was asked to do something outside of my job description in order to "help" other staff members when they fell behind because they were on their personal phones all da
ProsMeet some really good people that have the best intentions but policies hinder their development
Consunder paid, under appreciated employees, under staffed
Great company vision but you will be micromanaged and work incredibly long hours
This company has great vision and passion. It is clear that management believes they are the best physical therapy company in the country. The company is growing and there are many opportunities for therapists, new grads, and athletic trainers. This company has excellent CEU reimbursement, the best I have seen. As an experienced clinician, my pay is very good but only because my company was acquired by ATI in 2011 and my salary carried over. The bonus structure for clinical directors is good but they purposely raise it to make it more difficult to meet budget.
As a clinical director working long hours is a must in the physical therapy profession in general. However, at this company it has gotten ridiculous. They expect way too much. You have to see a full patient load, manage the day to day, attend meetings and market to MDs. They have secret shoppers which can be a good idea. However, I got docked points for turning down a secret shopper for 6:30 AM appointments when I offered a 7:00!!
Management is a little top heavy. There are too many regional managers and senior regional managers. My regional manager is constantly on my case about things that do not matter. I treat my clinic like it is my own but do not get recognized for it.
This company preaches manual therapy/1;1 care. This has become impossible especially as a clinic director in this company. Productivity keeps increasing and the clinic budget keeps increasing making more difficult to obtain
2.0
Physical Therapist Assistant | Tucson, AZ | Apr 23, 2021
It’s all a numbers game
Do not let the job descriptions fool you. This was once an awesome company to work for. Work had a community culture where I didn’t mind staying late, working off the clock, and essentially going above and beyond because this company & this team was so amazing!
After the pandemic with a new CEO things have turned downhill fast. I stuck it out for another year hoping for the best, but things have only gotten worse. Here’s what it looks like now:
As a PTA you expected to see an average of 13 patients/day. However, this is usually on the lower side of things. An average would look like 17/day, a super slow day would be 9. You are expected to be well versed in all front office tasks as those are handled at the clinic level, while you are treating patients. This includes answering the phones, scheduling and rescheduling appointments, verifying insurance benefits, submitting insurance forms for authorization, all types of workers compensation paperwork, laundry, cleaning (which now includes wiping absolutely every contacted surface), taking co-pays, handling billing disputes, and all this while treating multiple patients at the same time. Usually there is at least one support staff (tech) in each clinic, some of the busier clinics have 2, but that 1 person is supposed to help out at least 2 clinicians (up to 4) at a time. It’s simply not enough hands or focus on patient care.
I will say that the pay is not terrible and the benefits are good. If you listen to the rules and play the
ProsTons of benefits, long lunches, free continuing education
ConsPoor inconsistent schedule, understaffed
1.0
Rehabilitation Technician | Kirkland, WA | Apr 6, 2021
A disappointing experience
The work day was not structured at one of their locations in Kirkland (Totem Lake). With their work place culture, work time was more focused on winning a gold belt than educating me on the therapeutic modalities or what services they provided at their clinic. This made it difficult to adapt well with patients and the secret shoppers that called the clinic. The staff that I was supposed to be learning from were more obsessed with watching Disney channel movies on the flat screen T.V in the clinic. My training session the first month consisted on pressuring me to convince patients when they first walked in to donate to their companies charity by paying the staff to do exercises for them. While doing so, they would talk about graphic shows in front of patients. The rest of the time the current senior staff would be playing jokes on one another. There were times I questioned whether I was working with licensed accredited clinicians.
With a typical day at work, the worst of it was being put with patients who have no respect for you because many patients want to see a licensed physical therapist. You are either disrespected for not being a medical professional, and contradicted in your instruction by patients who believe they don't have to listen to you because you hold a title of a aide. This is especially worse if you have to monitor three patients at a time who want individual time with a licensed physical therapist. This was definitely difficult with scheduling patients wh
ProsNone
ConsSecret shoppers, Obsession about winning a gold belt, minimal patient care, inappropriate behavior by senior staff, you are disrespected by patients that want to see a Licensed Physical Therapist, Over utilizing aides
I have enjoyed my time working as a rehab technician because I have created great relationships with patients and I have gained a lot of experience for physical therapy school, and eventually working as a physical therapist. My experience as a tech has solidified that this is the field I want to have a career in.
At my location (which is not the location listed above for privacy matters), I feel very micro-managed. I will look over and see one of the therapists staring me down rather than focusing on the patient they are working with, and while I am biased towards my own performance, I can assure that I have great experiences with the patients that I work with. I understand that if an incident were to occur that they would be held responsible, but I have been properly trained and it doesn't make sense that I am under constant scrutiny when I have never had a major issue in my year working here. Experiences will vary from location to location, but as a whole, rehab techs are on the bottom of the totem pole and the only benefit for them as seen by the company is the experience given for grad school.
As far as ATI as a whole, I see how much they are just wanting to make money and not caring for the patient population (probably because the upper management aren't even or ever were physical therapists). They only care about seeing the numbers rather than taking in circumstances of why the numbers aren't where they want them to be. The pay is also terrible (typically minimum
Great patients, staff gets close, corporate is awful.
The interview was extremely misleading. I was told I'd be doing certain day to day tasks, but when I arrived, I learned those tasks would double. I received little to no training. They would not discuss pay until the day I received my contract to work. It's much lower than it should be. They want someone with lots of experience and with a degree but want to pay you only slightly over minimum wage.
I had a conversation about a raise with HR, during the conversation I was told I would not receive any kind/amount of raise and if I am not happy with that, I should consider finding a new job. The only reason I asked is because I learned a newly hired employee with less experience and no degree was making quite a bit more than I was, even though ATI stated they could not afford to pay me more.
Corporate does not care about their employees whatsoever. The PTA's are beyond busy every single day. They will have up to 4 patients at a time. The PT's have to schedule patients every 30 minutes and could also end up having 3-4 patients at the same time. Sometimes this would go on for their entire 12 hour shift. Throughout my experience with ATI, it was clear they truly only cared about one thing, making money. They try much harder to build more clinics than make sure their employees are in a decent environment. They placed the weight of the patient experience on the clinicians, which is uncalled for.
The only thing that made this job halfway enjoyable to me was the relationship I buil
Fun, hard working people, very knowledgable but don't expect raises
Company has only given the employees raises of 1 - 2 % over last 3 years. Company claims funds not available to be giving raises, yet in each of it's clinics they have TV's advertising that they either bought out other companies or opened up new clinics each and every week. Their priority seems to be on growth and expansion and not taking a break occasionally to reward it's employees who to me are the hardest working, knowledg eable, and caring employees I have worked with. The clinicians and techs make the physical therapy for patients a caring and fun experience when possible. My job was fabulous, I had worked up great relationships with my co-workers and with the patients that I transported to and from their homes and the clinics. In three years I may have only had one patient that was not pleasant. Hardest part of the job was keeping up with the schedules due to time run overs in therapy, traffic situations and patients readiness (sometimes due to their disability) at time of arriving to pick them up. I enjoyed my patient riders conversations and just getting to know a lot of great and wonderful people. Upper management was out of Chicago area and did not seem to listen much to the workers in MD. Local management doesn't manage as they should and seems to pass some of their responsibilities to others. I couldn't even get my supervisor to talk about my reviews and they weren't even giving raises. I wrote emails to the Presidant and the CEO of the company about
They bought out my original company and changed the environment from caring and compassionate to employees and patients to more of a 'let's shove as many patients into a day as possible'. We went from 10-12 patients per day to 14-15 per day (8hr per day) and the Front Office staff were told to move patients onto PTA schedules to put in new patient evaluations. Patients were frustrated that they'd be passed around and I was frustrated because I had a plan of care in place that wasn't followed. We became Eval machines. My Clinic Director was awesome as she was my manager prior to the buyout. I was having to work on documentation much later than had been with the prior company and on weekends as well, just to stay on top of it all. ATI has their own documentation system which was very tech-archaic in nature to all of the current web-based EMR systems out there today. I stayed for about 2 years after the buyout, only because I loved working with my colleagues. Eventually, I just didn't want to be a part of this corporate BS and I quit. Out of the other PTs, 2 have quit also and the last two are on their way out the door. Such a shame. Also, without letting any of the Washington State clinics know, they stopped all CE funding for outside of ATI CE courses to "revamp" the CE program for a 6-8 month period. Their CE program now will only let you take certain CE courses. Colleagues who were on track to test for certain certifications, had to back out, as they were no longer going to
ProsMy colleagues and my 2 mile commute.
ConsEval heavy, poor work-life balance, care more about the dollar than the person
Questions And Answers about ATI Physical Therapy
If you were in charge, what would you do to make ATI Physical Therapy a better place to work?
Asked Jan 21, 2018
I would change it to a one on one setting.
Answered Sep 22, 2021
Make physical therapist work again with patients the entire time. Period.
Answered Sep 5, 2021
What is the work environment and culture like at ATI Physical Therapy?
Asked Sep 8, 2016
Very poor place to work!
Answered Dec 19, 2021
Scared in coming in to work being a physical therapy aide. You will only be defended if you are like by the license physical therapy staff.
Answered Oct 1, 2021
What is the best part of working at ATI Physical Therapy?
Asked Dec 11, 2019
There was no good times working at one of there poorly run physical therapy clinics.
Answered Dec 19, 2021
Nothing. I wish I turned down the offer to work for them and walked away.
Answered Dec 19, 2021
What tips or advice would you give to someone interviewing at ATI Physical Therapy?
Asked Nov 4, 2019
Don't be fooled by the attractive starting pay. It may seem nice, but the possibility for future growth is very limited unless you want to sell your soul and become solely a numbers person.
Reminder: many clinics are moving toward mandatory Saturday hours. If someone isn't willing to work every Saturday, clinics start a rotation where people switch off on Saturdays, which isn't conducive to continuity of care for patients. To explain, if a clinic has 4 clinicians (two PTs and two PTAs), you will work one Saturday per month. Since you aren't allowed ANY overtime, your hours for one of your work days are shortened to accommodate Saturday hours. This then means that, if someone needs Saturday appointments, they are forced to see 4 different therapists on a regular rotation.
If you are a PTA, be prepared to see WAY more patients than any PT. Don't be surprised if you are suddenly double-booked so a PT can get another evaluation in. The name of the game at ATI is this: get as many people in, as fast as possible. New patients need to be scheduled within 24-48 hours of making an account, so if they need to double-book someone in order to get the new patient in, they'll do it. Instead of focusing on the patients that they have, they need more, more, more.
Answered Nov 16, 2020
Do not disclose your desired pay. They will blacklist you, even in the midst of a pandemic when people need jobs. If you need this place for a job, just tell them your pay is negotiable. If they don't take that as an acceptable response then don't even bother.
Answered Nov 11, 2020
How are the working hours at ATI Physical Therapy?
Asked Sep 11, 2016
Either 7-4 or 10-7 with an hour lunch. And its usually one day 7-4 next day 10-7 and then flipping back and forth from there, This does not include documentation time though so if you cannot document while treating patients then you run the risk of needing to stay extra hours, but they also frown upon overtime so you end up doing a lot of your work off the clock.
Answered Jun 4, 2021
Last patient at 6 pm, finish around 7 and finish all your notes and get home around 7:45-8:00. Eat a late dinner. Not ideal for a normal life.
