Functional Pathways Reviews

-The company plugs and expects you to memorize a list of core values, which include integrity and compassion; it claims that these are the key to being an "Elite" therapist (actual used term). Aside from being hokey, this campaign comes across as insincere, as in practice FP appears to operate just like all of the big, profit-oriented therapy companies that dominate the setting. -There is no felt incentive to do your job well, aside from one's own self-motivation. Office morale is horrible. There are no bonuses, pay raises, or significant perks of any kind, and the provided benefits are miserable. This wouldn't be so much of an issue if employees felt supported at least as therapists, but unfortunately that's not the case at all. The dreaded productivity levels are in full force with this company, meaning that therapists are constantly under pressure to see as many patients as possible for as many minutes as possible. There is no time provided for session planning or paperwork, and necessary parts of the job such as chart reviews, family education, and conferences with nursing/staff/physicians are not accounted for as productive time - you are expected to be treating 90% of the time you are punched in or risk termination. This means that treatment quality suffers, as therapists are expected to type up lengthy documentation while clocked in with the patients. The supposed justification for this is that patients should provide active input regarding therapy goals and be informed of their progress, which while absolutely true in theory does not always work out in practice, resulting in many therapy sessions amounting to the therapist typing away while patients with cognitive impairments sleep or sit in silence. -The company's technology and IT support is a mess. The systems used for the above mentioned documentation are buggy and unresponsive, resulting in frequent system crashes and even loss of documents. This means that even more time is taken out of the therapists' day having to retype paperwork or otherwise deal with tech issues, but the company is slow to resolve problems and often just waves off these difficulties as "user error". Even worse, updates to these programs are rolled out without any warning to the employees, who must then discover new quirks and glitches while out in the field, resulting in even more lost time and "productivity."

Wow! I can't believe the ignorance about rehabilitation that this company has openly expressed here on Glass Door. On July 15, 2015, a former employee mentioned "very high productivity" as a con to this company. The VP of recruiting responded with: "Thank you for posting a review. Our patient care treatment expectations for our therapy departments as a whole are very reasonable at 87.5% overall. We hold our employees to a very high standard of documentation to ensure compliance with Medicare guidelines." 87.5% productivity is excessive and does not put patient care first as you state in your values. It is obvious that this company is out of touch with the clinical situation in nursing homes. I hope that Functional Pathways has something worked out with the facility to work out times when patients are away for dialysis, eating meals, participating in activities, away at doctor's appointments, getting changed, and toileting. Although these are all things that our human patients do, we are not allowed to account for that in our 87.5% productivity. Productivity to this company means percentage of billable time. The patients must be perfectly available to participate in billable therapy, there is no waiting time for the therapist. These human essentials eat into billable "productive time". I hope that the computer network is fast, and the documentation programs are efficient and not redundant in terms of documentation since patients require extensive documentation for evaluation notes, daily notes, orders, progress notes, updated plan of care notes, and discharge notes to be reimbursable under Medicare. Writing these notes are not billable unless you do it while you are working with the patient. Are we working with the patient or writing extensive notes during the patients' treatment times? I hope that we don't have to walk to the patient rooms because this would eat into billable time. In addition, I hope that the doctors and nurses come to the therapists to discuss patient concerns as the therapists have to be 87.5% productive with their billable time and these essentials of communicating with other healthcare providers caring for the patients are not billable; although, if we are discussing patients with providers while treating another patient, this would violate HIPPA. Somehow we need some non billable time to walk to patient rooms, document, communicate with other providers, and allow patients some wiggle room in their schedule for human essentials. Please get some people in management that understand what rehabilitation in long term care facilities is all about. It is obvious that this company is more about money and not about the patient care as 87.5% productivity is not possible while ensuring a "patient first" in this type of setting.