How Much Do OTs In Pelvic Health Make?

Where to find my guest, Doug Vestal:

Doug's website: http://www.freedomofpractice.com
Doug's email address: dougvestal@freedomofpractice.com

Here's where to grab your copy of the salary survey. 

____________________________________________________________________________________________
Pelvic OTPs United - Lindsey's off-line interactive community for $39 a month!
Inside Pelvic OTPs United you'll find:​

• Weekly group mentoring calls with Lindsey. She's doing this exclusively inside this community. These aren't your boring old Zoom calls where she is a talking head. We interact, we coach, we learn from each other.
  ​
• Highly curated forums. The worst is when you post a question on FB just to have it drowned out with 10 other questions that follow it. So, she's got dedicated forums on different populations, different diagnosis, different topics (including business). Hop it, post your specific question, and get the expert advice you need.

More info here. Lindsey would love support you in this quiet corner off social media!

Transcript

Lindsey Vestal Super quick before we get into today's conversation, I just want to share that the first ever and annual OTs and Pelvic health salary survey results are now available and you can get it at www.functionalpelvis.com/salary. I'm so excited for you to check it out and for you to hear today's conversation. In today's episode, I'm joined by my husband, Doug Vestal, who's the owner of Freedom of Practice, where he helps OTs start and grow thriving pay practices to achieve more treatment freedom, time, freedom and money. Freedom. He actually helped me start my private practice in New York City back in 2014, and before working with OTS, he actually worked on Wall Street for 15 years, where he rose to managing director and was in charge of large teams across New York City, London and Hong Kong. Before joining Wall Street, he received his Ph.D. in statistics and applied probability. He's also the author of the forthcoming personal finance book called Financial Freedom for OTs, so that OTs can get out of student loan debt faster and create financial independence and security in their lives. He loves blending his business background and his passion for helping practitioners achieve business success faster by providing specific, concrete and tangible advice. This is the second time Doug has joined me on the podcast, and I am just so thrilled to have this conversation with him. Regarding the first ever OTs and Pelvic health salary survey. I have so much optimism regarding how this survey can be used to not only advocate for ourselves, but also to open up the conversations around what we know is such a taboo topic outside of any pelvic health issues. And that is, of course, money. 

Intro New and seasoned OTs are finding their calling in Pelvic health. After all, what's more ADL than sex, peeing and poop? But here's the question What does it take to become a successful, fulfilled and thriving O.T. in Pelvic health? How do you go from beginner to seasons and everything in between? Those are the questions and this podcast will give you the answers. We are inspired OTs. We are out of the box OTs. We are Pelvic health OTs. I'm your host Lindsey Vestal and welcome to the OTs and Pelvic health Podcast. 

Lindsey Vestal Doug, I am so excited to have you back for the second time on Late Teens for Public Health Podcast, this time talking about something really exciting, something that has not been done in our industry before, at least not for OTs and Pelvic health. I am so excited about the first ever OTs and Pelvic health salary survey results. 

Doug Vestal Yes, me too. This has been incredibly fun to work on and put together, so I'm really happy to be here. 

Lindsey Vestal Tell me what this is. Why is this so groundbreaking? What can we expect out of the first salary survey results? 

Doug Vestal A lot of transparency. You know, like pay is one of these things where typically you don't ask your friends, your colleagues, how much do do you make, you know, and what is possible to make in this specialization. So what I think our joint hope is, is that the more transparent we are around pay for OTs in public health, the more negotiating power they have, the better they are able to discern. Is this a good job offer? Is it a bad job offer? They're going to have more power and more autonomy to seek out different settings that pay better and just really lift up the profession from having a lot more transparency around something that's like critical. You know, like what you make on a monthly basis is really important for your quality of life. 

Lindsey Vestal I went to 100% agree. I also really feel like money along with Pelvic health, along with all the things we're already discussing with our clients is kind of another taboo topic, right? And so it's like, well, we're already talking about people being in intimacy. Let's go ahead and talk about money too. Yeah. 

Doug Vestal Exactly, exactly. And what I hope is that it inspires us to actually see what's possible because without data, with just like some anecdotal evidence, you know, it's it's easy to think that your existing world view, what's right in front of you is the only thing that's possible. And I think there are some insights in the salary survey results that I hope give some of us pause and ask that reflective question of like, okay, maybe there is actually more out here than I that I realize. Like I don't actually have to place more. There is big things that can be possible here. 

Lindsey Vestal Amazing. Okay, So let's talk a little bit more about what we can expect from it. Tell us more about what's inside this, How many pages this is? 

Doug Vestal It's over 30 pages. 

Lindsey Vestal Over 30 pages? Yeah. Okay. Tell me what we can expect with these 30 pages. 

Doug Vestal Okay, So, well, first things first. Like, what we did was we sent out a huge survey through, I think your email lists through social social media. We had about like 275 different responses. And the guide itself breaks down all of the data and, you know, the math guy. So I've tried to make it as entertaining as possible and relevant, not just throw out facts and figures, but really break down. What does this actually mean? Like, what can I do with this information? And so the guide itself is broken down into three different sections. When I started looking at the data, there was really three clear trends or populations, I should say, people. The first is that you have people who are paid yearly and they don't own their business, right? They're just an employee and they are a W-2 employee. They are working in the same place. The next group of people are people who are paid hourly. They also don't own their own business, but they're paid hourly. And that's actually the vast majority of the responses that we got, like 70% of people what is paid hourly. And then the third group are practice owners, which I'm also really excited to talk about since I support so many OTs in private practice. And so it's divided up into those three different sections. And we looked at the data across a range of different dimensions. So years of experience, you know, asking the question like, are you going to get paid more as an O.T. in Pelvic health if you have seven years experience versus someone with only one year of experience, you know what? What can you kind of project as annual increases? The other dimension that we looked at was the level of education. So does it make a big difference for what I have a bachelor's, master's or an attendee. And then we looked at practice setting. So what's the difference between someone working in an outpatient rehab versus a sniff? And is there any is there any setting that's going to pay more? So if you're upset with your current level, where should you go? Right. And that's in detail in the guide. And we also looked at the income by state, you know, and we adjusted. This was really cool. We adjusted the salary by based on the cost of living index for that state. Wow. Because you may have you know, I'm always interested in asking the question like, where's your money going to go the furthest, you know. Is it making a little bit more in high costs of living areas or is it making a little bit less in lower cost of living areas? So we go through all of that and then we also detail all of the results for the private practice owners as well. 

Lindsey Vestal Every time we brought up a new bullet point or a new concept, I was like, Well, I want to hear that one more about that one. 

Doug Vestal That's why it's more than 30 pages, because there's a lot that went into it. 

Lindsey Vestal That's awesome. That's awesome. What do you think? Just reflecting back on on all of this and you know, not only the data you collected, but also the way you were able to synthesize it and reflect it and like you said, make it meaningful because data for the sake of data is just not so interesting or relevant to. Yeah, exactly. Not actionable. What reflecting back on all of this, what do you think surprised you the most? 

Doug Vestal There's so many things. It's going to be hard to narrow it down. There's a there's a few things. You know, because I looked at it from both the employee perspective as well as the practice owner perspective. And I would say that the biggest thing that that was I mean, I knew it going in, but, you know, you always want to see the data behind it. And the biggest thing is just what a difference in compensation it is between being an employee and owning the practice. So I'll just give some rough stats. So the median salary for employee for O.T. working in public health is $43 an hour. Okay. Okay. $43 and $43 an hour is the median salary if you're an employee. If you are a practice owner, your median salary is $150. 

Lindsey Vestal Whoa. That's a huge difference. Yeah. 

Doug Vestal It's monumental. You know, almost four times greater. Right? So that that was huge. I mean, we know that. We know going in that that's going to be kind of thing. But seeing that disparity in the in the data was really interesting. The other thing that was really interesting is that 64% of those people who own their own practice in public health have less than two years experience. This is not something where you have been working in public health for ten years, 15 years, and you finally decide that you're ready. It is people going, you know what? If there is an opportunity in my community, I'm going to make the opportunity for myself and start seeing clients and they're not waiting. 

Lindsey Vestal So when you are sharing with us kind of like the highlights or the the areas that you have pulled out in this report, one of things you mentioned was years of experience. I was so curious about that in your data. What does it show about people just getting started with their earning potential is versus people who have been working for over a decade. 

Doug Vestal So what's interesting is that if you are an employee, there is a little bit of variation in the salary for them with the years of experience, but not what you would expect. Yeah, it's all of the salary is clustered really tightly around the median salary of $43 an hour. And so the take away from that actually is that for new grads, it's actually pretty great because they can come in. You know, the average salary outside of public health is $37 an hour to $42 an hour. Right. So they can come in and be making as much as someone who's been working for five years. You know, the downside to that is that they're going to be capped pretty soon. You know, like they're not going to see the types of increases as they take continuing education courses, as they refine their skills as they move. You know, and so it's really kind of like almost a flat line. And so that was that was actually kind of surprising to me. But when I started to think about it, it kind of makes sense because there are so many downward pressures from a cost perspective in health care. And so if you're working for someone else, you're always at the mercy of those reimbursement rates and those are going down, cost is going up. And so your salary kind of ends up being a flat line. 

Lindsey Vestal What's the second thing that really surprised you the most when you think about all of this data? 

Doug Vestal I think the other thing is that, you know, I looked at it from Bachelors, Masters and otJ perspective. Yeah. And at the moment, at least with the responses that we received, I was really curious about the difference between a master's degree and a noted degree. And the results were exactly the same. There was no disparity between having a master's and having an OTD at the at the moment. You know, that can obviously change. 

Lindsey Vestal Earning potential, but there was no difference. Yeah. Well, I got to scratch my head a little bit about this because I know you have your bachelors, you have your masters, you have a Ph.D.. So someone who really values higher education. Like what? What can you extract from this? 

Doug Vestal Well, I think, you know, what it means to me is you should pursue an OTD program for more things than the money. You know, like sometimes I'll get queries and you get queries. I'll see a post and someone is stuck at a certain level and they are considering getting an OTD degree because they they hope that it's going to propel them in terms of their salary and that just isn't the case, you know, and so I'm all for doing the OTD. If you want to go to research, if you want to pursue like other things, But I wouldn't do it for the motivation that it's for the money. And so really, I would say, like if you're looking to upskill yourself and you're looking to reach that next level, then you're better off taking that $30,000 or $40,000 or whatever that your tuition be and invest that in yourself, invest that in specialty training, you know, invest that in expert continuing education, like things that are really going to build up your skills. Invest that into learning how to start your own practice, into how to get good at communication and sales and marketing, because that's going to be an investment that will actually give you the skills to increase your income ultimately. And so I think it's just important to go into it eyes wide open, making sure that it is actually the solution to the problem that you have. 

Lindsey Vestal And yeah, I mean, I would say a lot of us would assume that nobody would command, you know, more more income. And I know it's it's still relatively new. Right. And it's not a requirement as of now. For our profession to be an occupation. To have an OTD degree, to be an occupational therapist. So. Okay, that's that's fascinating. I'm excited to see where these trends go because this is something you're going to be doing annually, right? 

Doug Vestal Yeah, that's right. That's the plan. So we will send out requests for the data salary data around November so that way the results can be ready, you know, sooner than it was this time. The first time you put anything together always, always takes longer. But now we have it down to two a science. And so we'll do it on a on an annual basis and hopefully we get more and more visits for this for, for varieties sharing their information. It's all on an anonymous basis and really just create that transparency that we need so that, you know, someone just getting out of school, knows what to ask for, isn't given a lowball offer, knows what setting to pursue. And yeah. 

Lindsey Vestal So do you expect like when you when you look at this report, by the way, it's beautiful. I really, really like what you put together. Do you imagine people like taking this into interviews with them? How do you imagine them actually using this yet? 

Doug Vestal So that's that's a great question. I have a whole section on how to increase your income as an O.T. in public health. And really there are four things. So number one is I would absolutely show these results to your employer. So if you're in a job, you love it. You just don't love your pay or you don't love the increases that you've gotten and you feel like you're underpaid first, check yourself against the stats. You know, like how do you sign up? You know, because sometimes we can have the perception that we're underpaid, but actually it's right in line. So the first thing I would do is check your numbers against what's in the report. So compare yourself to your peers in your unique situation. And then if you feel like you're you're underpaid, I would absolutely print this out and hand it to your employer with the data showing them what the median salary is for your given practice, setting for it for your state. So that's one way that you can increase your income. The other way is and this isn't available to everyone, but we saw, especially after we did the adjustment for the cost of living index, great disparity among the states. If you look nationally, nationally, salaries of bOTs don't really change that much from one state to the other. There is some fluctuation, but after you adjust for the cost of living index, you are much better being a you're much better off being O.T. in Oklahoma than in Hawaii, for instance. Just from a pure perspective of how form and where they can go. So if you're a new grad, if you are, if you like travel, if you have flexibility, the other thing to do is consider a move. I know it's not on the table for everyone, but for some people it will actually work. They have that ability to do it. The third is change your practice setting. So that was also something that was pretty surprising to me is there is a great disparity in income in practice and so we have a whole section for whether or not you're paid hourly or annually listing out what are the highest paid practice settings, what are the lowest paid practice settings. So if you don't want to be a business owner, if you don't want to work for yourself and see clients privately and you can't move, then where can you change from a practice setting? Because you're also going to be able to probably increase your income and decrease some of your frustration because many times it was much better to work in a private practice that was owned by someone else than to work like, let's say, in a sniff or in acute care rehab. And then the fourth way in, which is obviously my my favorite way is start seeing clients privately, you know, start seeing clients privately. You can do it mobile in their home. You could do it through renting something on an hourly basis. So you only have to pay when you see a client. But moving towards that perspective where you're really taking more control over your career and more autonomy, you get more pricing power, you get a lot more benefits from a private payer perspective. So those are really the four ways that you can increase your income as it stands right now. 

Lindsey Vestal That's that's fantastic. So obviously, I think you said you had 275 responses. Yeah. So obviously, the more data you get, the more rich, the more robust, the more compelling and actionable this report is going to be. So anyone listening to this podcast, if you were one of those 275 people, thank you so much for absolutely for your contributions because you made this possible. 

Doug Vestal We can't do it without, you. 

Lindsey Vestal No, And then number two, like be on the lookout in November. The ways you're going to hear about it are if you're on the email list, how you get on my email list is go to functional pelvis dot com. You can download I think it's my OTs Mac to the world of Pelvic health right now. That's just an easy way to get on my email list. I'll also be talking about it in my Facebook group for pelvic health. We have over 6600 members in that right now, so please, please, please consider it's all anonymous. But it really does create so much of a written report when we're able to see the trends across the country. So please be on the lookout for that. 

Doug Vestal And you can go and download this guide for yourself. It's electronic. So just go to functional pelvis dot com backslash salary. And there you can get the guide so that you can see and compare, see the results, compare yourself to to your peers so that you can take informed action. 

Lindsey Vestal Okay. I'll also have that link in the show notes for anyone that just wants to click on it. But you said functionalpelvis.com/salary. 

Doug Vestal That's right. 

Lindsey Vestal All right. Well, this is incredibly exciting. I think this is just going to create so many meaningful conversations. I can't wait to see and hear from the community what they're able to do with this, how they're able to use it. Drop me an email like send me a DM on social media because the more you share with us how you're using these results and how it's helping you create the life that you really want. The more we get ideas, the more we can inspire them. And I saw you spending the last few months working on this dialog and just the ideas that you were able to spin off of that data that really like concrete black and white data. So just how we can make more money, like how we can optimize some of these things. I think these all come from from our community, like these ideas. So really excited. Please drop myself or Doug in a line or include Doug's email in in the show notes as well. Let us know how you're using it. Let us know what changes you're able to make because I just know that's going to continue to help us create an even better version of this next year. 

Doug Vestal Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, everybody, so much. 

Lindsey Vestal Yeah, Thank you, Doug. 

Outro Thanks for listening to another episode of OTs and Pelvic health. If you haven't already, hop on to Facebook and join my group OTs for Pelvic health, where we have thousands of OTs at all stages of their pelvic health career journey. This is such an incredibly supportive community where I go live each and every week. If you love this episode, please take a screenshot of this episode on your phone and post it to IG Facebook or wherever you post your stuff and be sure to tag me and let me know why you like this episode. This will help me to create in the future what you want to hear more of. Thanks again for listening to the OTs and Pelvic health podcast.