Member Spotlight
From Covid to Career Change: Finding a New Path in the Middle of a Pandemic by Katie Wadland, PT, DPT
Sometime between “Covid What?” and learning to crisis-school my kids, when wearing a mask in public became the status quo, I decided to quit my job. The funny thing is, I actually really liked my job. Seven years ago I started in home care, scared that I would hate it. I thought, for sure, that I would miss the outpatient setting: the laughs with colleagues, easy access to mentors, journal review meetings, and the clinic environment itself. I worried about hoarders, bedbugs, and about having to make hard decisions on my own. What I found, instead, were mostly sweet senior citizens, happy for the company, and grateful for the help. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this work setting. Eventually, I grew to love it. I loved walking into people’s homes, learning about their lives, seeing their family pictures on the wall, and finding out that I could not only treat them, but help them, in meaningful ways. It is one thing to have a patient report that she struggles to get in and out of bed, to set a goal, and work on strengthening. It is another altogether to actually walk her upstairs, have her lay down, analyze, and then solve the problem in situ. Fast forward seven years: I finally felt like I knew what I was doing. I wasn’t calling my manager every other day to ask if a blood pressure was too low. It had been years since I had an Oasis document returned for revisions. Home health was a whole new world, but I eventually found my way. I had earned respect within my department, I was productive with my patients, and I was working with a group to improve our physical therapy processes. I enjoyed the work. I had a great work-life balance, completed my visits in time to pick up my kids, and I was helping people in my community. The money was good. I never had to deal with billing minutes or CPT codes! It was all too good to be true. I was pretty sure I’d work there until I retired. What I didn’t foresee was having to take a leave of absence to "crisis-school" my kids in the middle of a pandemic. I did not see that one coming. Not one little bit. Despite 12 years of happily practicing without any interest in owning a private practice, I came to the conclusion that becoming an independent practitioner, a mobile PT, would not only be the best thing for me and my family, but that it could the best thing for my patients. I often grew close with the people I treated in home care. Seeing them in their homes, in their own space, surrounded by personal things and all of their personal problems, invested me in their lives. It was one of the GeriNotes • November 2020 • Vol. 27 No. 5
My office
best things about doing home care. It was also one of the hardest. Walking out the door after a discharge, the home therapist often knows full well that the person will struggle to stay compliant with their HEP and is unlikely to make it to an outpatient clinic. It doesn’t feel like a good transition. Too often, I knew I’d see them again: after their next fall or when they returned home from another hospital stay. I started thinking a lot about these individuals and how their lives could be better if they received the right therapy at the right time delivered in the best way for them. COVID-19 closed outpatient clinics and everything became virtual. I realized this was the perfect time for me to transition to a model where I could keep seeing people in their homes while giving them outpatient-level care. I hoped to develop a program that would allow me to provide services beyond a typical plan of care, venturing into wellness territory, and coaching my patients to remain active well after “traditional” discharge. Just maybe I could build a bridge from “Congratulations, you’re discharged, keep up the good work” to actually being healthy, preventing that next fall, and keeping them out of the hospital. I could help people stay home, in better control of their bodies, function, and futures. I started thinking about what a course of therapy would look like if I did it my way. Once I got the idea in my head that I could do this, on my own terms, I couldn’t shut it down. Of course, while I was already off and running with daydreams and big ideas, I also had no idea where to start. I knew that I would probably need malpractice insurance, that I would have to learn how to bill for services. I didn’t know an NPI (National Provider Identifier) from an 38
