How long are your physical therapy sessions?

Photo by Lukas Blazek on Unsplash

How much time do you spend at physical therapy? What's the right amount of time? This answer varies from person to person and clinic to clinic.

The answer really depends on how the clinic schedules their patients. Let's start with the first visit: the initial evaluation. Some clinics block out 45 minutes of time, some block out 60 minutes. I've seen other clinics only have 30 minutes for initial evaluations. (Consider, for comparison, that some physicians allocate 10 minutes per patient)

The first session is probably the most important one. It sets the tone for the rest of the sessions. It needs to include the interview, physical exam, diagnosis, and treatment. You might think that it can be done quickly, but does quickly equate to quality? When the time runs out and your therapist still needs to finish the initial evaluation, you may end up sharing your time with another patient.

So this leads us to our original question. If the clinic schedules multiple patients per hour and your session runs over or you need more time, what happens then?

For most clinics, it's a question of productivity. How many patients can you see in a day to be productive? In-network clinics can not survive on seeing one patient an hour. They must schedule multiple patients per hour to make a profit and to see more reimbursement from the insurance companies.

The more patients per hour, the more the physical therapist must split their time. They have to treat and supervise multiple patients at one time, which can lead to prolonged session times due to the gaps in attention or wasted exercise time. Patients may be sitting around waiting to do another exercise or may be spending time doing an unnecessary exercise because of the time crunch. (Do you ever ask why you’re doing an exercise, or why you’re doing the same exercise for 3 weeks?)

So when you ask what's the right amount of time spent at a physical therapy clinic, you have to also ask what amount of that time is spent with quality hands-on treatment and supervised corrective interventions. Two hours is a bit too long. An hour and a half may be too long as well, it depends on how much are you spending waiting or working. An hour is a sweet spot. Enough time for one-on-one care and corrective interventions.

For that hour to be effective, the time must spent with a doctor, not shared with another patient.

Your time is valuable. Don’t waste it at your physical therapy clinic with long sessions and weeks and weeks of exercise. Get better sooner, with less sessions, and less time wasted. Make sure your therapist makes you the top priority, not the insurance companies.

For more information, contact us at PAR5PT.