I'm still a PT tech (I start PT school in August) but one of the PTs I work with does them. I can give you some of my experiences, but they would lack some of the clinician perspective!
I will say that the company we work for offers a raise for going through the training, no idea how much, though.
A few short bullet points:
- THEY TAKE FOREVER. Literally the therapist has to work one-on-one with the patient for 5+ hours.
- The paperwork takes AT LEAST two hours to do. The therapist that I work with might have one FCE per month, and it takes up his entire morning. He usually sees patients in the afternoon so not only does he have to do documentation for the FCE but he also has the documentation for the patients he will see in the afternoon. I would suggest to your boss that you try to devote your entire day to the FCE, at least the first couple that you do. Trying to do an FCE and then see patients later in the day is a lot, IMO.
-Workers Comp reimburses really well for FCEs, but Humana/Anthem, etc. do not. WC literally reimburses ~$500 for all that work (5 hours w/ patient + another 2 hrs documentation) whereas Humana/Anthem, etc. will pay $90ish (they will not deviate from their "per diem" type rate).
- I know I've made them sound bad but they're really not terrible. The test isn't bad at all it's just long and a bit tedious. The documentation is the worst part.
- I think the program that my company uses is called WorkStrategies?
