How Many OT Treatment Hours are Possible in a Week?

How can two school-based OTs have identical caseload numbers but vastly different workloads?

This episode promises a fresh perspective on evaluating the true demands of our roles, focusing not just on the numbers but the actual time commitments involved.

Join me as I introduce a new series of short, five-minute episodes designed to provide quick, actionable insights tailored for the OT Schoolhouse community.

Together, we'll explore:
• Misconception of measuring your caseload vs another
• Understanding the significance of workload in daily practice
• How different treatment frequency impacts your workload
• The implications of the 24-hour treatment threshold
• A shift in OT conversations from caseload to workload

So, let's break away from the norm and start asking the right questions to truly reflect the demands and responsibilities of our roles. Share your thoughts and let me know if this new format resonates with you!

Do you know your workload?

Grab your caseload spreadsheet and Identify your workload here.

Thanks for tuning in!

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See you in the next episode!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

the schoolhouse community. What's happening? It's just me. Today, this is going to be what I hope will be an ongoing series of just quick five minute episodes that I hop on here and do very, very briefly, one of my favorite podcasts that I listen to. They do this from time to time and I really appreciate these short, actionable, kind of just to the point episodes, and so we're going to try them out here at the ot schoolhouse and let me know if you enjoy them. Reach out to me via email or comment. Wherever you're listening to the podcast, whether it's Spotify, apple Podcasts, wherever it might be Just drop a review or comment, whatever you can do, and let me know if you enjoy these.

Speaker 1: 0:38

So yeah, I'm just going to kind of go into it because I don't want to spend too much time here dabbling around. So today I want to talk a little bit about caseloads and workloads. If you recall, a few episodes ago, I kind of made this my focus for 2025. I just kind of wanted to re-emphasize the difference between measuring your caseload and measuring your workload and why, as school-based OT practitioners, we need to get away from like that first question. So when we meet a new school-based OT, like asking what's your caseload? And comparing our caseloads, because you might ask someone what their caseload is and they might say their caseload is 50. Now, for the sake of this argument or this discussion, we're going to assume that your caseload is also 50, right? So when you ask this other school-based OT practitioner whether it's an OT or a COTA, and they say their caseload is 50, you are automatically comparing yourself your caseload of 50 to their caseload of 50. And you're probably thinking well, my caseload is probably pretty close to yours, right? But that might be true, but it also could be completely untrue. And what I mean by that is your caseload, which might be 50 kids at 30 minutes per week, and their caseload, which could be 50 kids at 30 minutes per month, are vastly different. Right, you still have 50 IEPs to go to both of you on a given year, give or take. Right, you still have 50 IEPs to go to both of you on a given year, give or take. Right, you still got 50 progress reports potentially that you need to do.

Speaker 1: 2:10

However, when you break this down, your 50 kids at one time a week for 30 minutes comes out to 25 hours of sessions per week. And that other OT practitioner who has 50 kids but it's 50, 30 minute per month sessions has 25 hours of treatment sessions per month. That breaks down to about six and a half hours per week. That's a big difference, right? Six and a half hours per week versus 25 hours per week, that's huge. And maybe another OT practitioner has a caseload of 50 kids, just like the two of you do, but they see most of their kids every other week for 30 minutes. Well, now you're looking at 12 hours per week.

Speaker 1: 2:53

So this is just why the idea that we are calculating our caseload by the number of kids we see just doesn't work. We're not comparing apples to apples. And this could be the same thing within your district, right? Like, maybe you have five OT practitioners within your school district or your county of education office, whatever it might be, and you all have 45 to 50 kids, have 45 to 50 kids. However, one of you leans more heavily on using a consult model and two of you lean heavily on using a weekly model of treatment services and the other two kind of try to go the bi-weekly route with a lot of kids, not to say that you probably have like a mixture, right? You don't have all kids that are one time a week, but on average maybe you lean one way more so than another therapist does. Well, your cases on paper and as the district might see them looks very similar, right? You all got 45 to 50 kids. That's pretty equal, that's pretty even. But when you actually break down the work that those 45 to 50 kids take, it is very, very different.

Speaker 1: 4:02

So I guess my point today is I think we need to stop asking one another, hey, what's your caseload? And instead start asking one another what's your workload? How many treatment hours are you providing any given week? Or maybe you want to calculate it by month, whatever it might be, but we need to start keeping track of that number, the amount of time that we're spending in treatment any given week. I don't want to go too far into this in this episode, but if you're looking for a number, my number tends to be around 24 treatment hours per week.

Speaker 1: 4:33

I think that is kind of the tipping point for school-based OT practitioners. Anything above 24 hours per week becomes very unmanageable. You don't have time for evaluations, for IEPs, for any sort of RTI or MTSS involvement. Basically, you are just doing treatment. I mean, kids are only in school for about 30 to 32 hours per week. When you calculate it all together, so that's about six hours per week that kids aren't in school, that you're also not providing treatment, and then your other time is spent, obviously, in documentation, meetings and whatnot. So yeah, again, just let's stop asking one another what our caseload is and move on to asking one another what's our workload and how much time are we actually spending on treatment any given week, and then we can also ask what we're spending outside of those 24 hours, or whatever it might be, what else are we doing? I think that's a very important conversation that we're not having.

Speaker 1: 5:25

So with that, I'm going to sign off on this very first five or so minute episode. Very little editing here, but yeah, again, let me know if you enjoyed this short little tidbit episode. I think it's going to be fun for me. I appreciate it Sometimes. Just not having a guest and just talking for a little bit is going to be fun for me, but I want it to also be beneficial for you. So let me know Email, text, comment, concern, whatever it might be. Let me know any way you can and I'd be happy to continue this on for you, take care.