Bye-Bye Burnout: How Rehab Therapists Thrive at Work and Go Home on Time

Burnout is an epidemic amongst clinicians, and while there are several contributing factors, documentation burden is not only one of the most significant culprits—it’s also an unnecessary one. WebPT reported in its annual "State of Rehab Therapy" that rehab therapists average 13.5 hours per week in non-clinical work, and 85% of clinicians document at home in some capacity.

Similarly, Prompt EMR asked 215 rehab therapists who are members of The Clinician Transition, an online community for rehab therapists (PTs, OTs, SLPs) who are either considering a nontraditional role or have already taken one, why they are considering leaving traditional patient care. 79% of respondents under age 30 reported excessive workload as their reason for leaving, and 68% of total respondents said emotional burnout was a top reason. 

AI solutions have entered the healthcare scene and are here to stay. They offer clinicians a way to document better, code more accurately, and help improve organizational outcomes while reclaiming the other parts of their lives that bring them joy and fulfillment. This means engaging with family at home without the distraction or pressure of catching up on notes. It's also the time and energy to pursue hobbies and goals outside clinic hours without the weight of long sign-off times and open charts looming.

The Burnout Burden: What’s Your Documentation Personality Type?

While documentation styles aren't one-size-fits-all, there are some common behavior patterns in how rehab therapists approach their documentation to complete their notes along with the rest of the clinic responsibilities. PredictionHealth analyzed documentation and sign-off times across its user base to identify common documentation behaviors and understand how they might impact a clinician’s daily workflow. 

1. The Methodical Organizer: This personality exhibits a highly structured and predictable documentation routine. They begin working in the EMR slightly before 8:00 AM, continue until midday, and resume again at 4:00 PM to wrap up their tasks. By 5:00 PM sharp, they are out of the EMR without fail, demonstrating remarkable discipline and time management. This methodical behavior reflects a highly organized individual who prioritizes efficiency and routine. Their ability to maintain a consistent schedule ensures timely documentation without unnecessary delays.

1. The Task Batcher: This personality approaches documentation in batches, opening multiple patient records at once and finalizing them all together in groups. For example, they might complete the notes for four patients simultaneously, then move on to another set of four, and so on. While their day starts early and progresses steadily, their documentation rhythm revolves around these grouped completions.
2. The Early Riser: This documentation personality begins their documentation before most people wake up, often starting before 6:00 AM. They finish a significant portion of their work before 8:00 AM and continue addressing patient records throughout the day. These therapists capitalize on the quiet early hours to either prep for upcoming visits or catch up on lingering documentation from previous days.
3. The Weekend Warrior: Weekend warriors dedicate significant time to catching up on documentation over the weekend. Their EMR activity spikes on Saturdays and Sundays, often spanning multiple hours. These therapists use their weekends to finalize notes left unfinished during the week. Some may even combine batching with this weekend pattern, drafting notes earlier and polishing them during weekend sessions.
4. The Deadline Racer: This personality completes notes just before deadlines, often late at night, sometimes minutes before midnight. This therapist likely works for an organization with a strict policy about note sign-offs every day.
5. The Multitasking Scriber: This personality frequently sacrifices lunch or break times to work on documentation. Gaps in the middle of the day are filled with quick bursts of note-taking, often while multitasking. Their workflow reflects a balancing act of simultaneously managing patient care and documentation, often foregoing personal breaks like lunch to catch up.

What do all of these documentation personalities have in common? They all have inherent strengths and risks. Each documentation personality has found some rhythm to help them provide great patient care and complete the administrative tasks of being a provider. Still, even the Methodical Organizer can be prone to over-documentation in an effort to be thorough in documenting patient care. And over-documentation doesn't equal better compliance and can sometimes even hinder it. 

Documentation patterns that take place consistently after hours or even over several days introduce a higher risk of mistakes and errors as it becomes increasingly difficult to remember the details of a patient's visit, background, injury, and parts of the assessment with increased time between patient care and completing the documentation. 

AI Scribing: What It Is and How It Solves Documentation Challenges

AI scribing solutions are relatively new but are growing in adoption quickly. Designed to alleviate the documentation burden and help clinicians reclaim their time, this technology uses ambient listening powered with AI to distinguish who is speaking, add context, and deliver clinical documentation from the provider-patient conversation. While the basics of various AI scribing solutions are similar, several factors differentiate them, including: 

• EMR integration
• Specialty-specific models vs. generic models
• Compliance
• CPT Coding
• Accuracy: how the model was developed and how it is maintained

We cover each of these in more detail below in “Getting Started: What to Ask Every AI Scribing Vendor & Why It’s Important.” 

In Rehab Therapy, AI scribing solutions vary in how specific they are to the industry and whether or not compliance and CPT coding help are built into the solution. These are important distinctions because PredictionHealth analyzed data points across its Sidekick user base, PredictionHealth’s AI scribing solution, evaluated changes in sign-off times, time-to-sign-off, compliance scores, and use of functional CPT codes. These reflect significant outcomes for rehab therapy organizations as they impact not only burnout but also reimbursement rates and audit risk.

Sign-off Times

Without AI scribing, 50% of rehab therapy groups average more than 48 hours to sign off on patient charts, some seeing outliers that take over a week to sign off. Long sign-off times and after-hours charting contribute to more than burnout; they drive lower compliance scores, too. When organizations used AI scribing (Sidekick) to document patient visits, the average hours to sign off dropped by 62% within one month. 

Enhancing Compliance and Coding Accuracy

Documentation compliance and CPT coding are critical aspects of healthcare, but they’re often viewed as tedious and complex. AI solves this by providing real-time insights and recommendations so clinicians can adjust their documentation behaviors without a learning curve or added burden.

For example, therapists may default to general codes like TherEx, even when interventions justify more specific functional activity codes. An AI scribing solution tailored to this use case identifies these opportunities at the point of care, helping therapists code more accurately while adhering to compliance standards.

The results are clear:

• A 30% improvement in compliance scores for therapists who previously scored the lowest.
• A 20% increase in the use of functional codes for therapists who previously underutilized them.

These changes reduce audit risks and support better patient outcomes by emphasizing functional progress.

The Future of Therapy Documentation

AI is reshaping how therapists approach their work and solving big challenges that previously strategies either couldn’t or were too resource-intense to sustain. Tools like AI scribing demonstrate how powerful an ally technology can be to providers and leaders alike, reducing administrative burdens while improving compliance and coding accuracy.