What Does 90% Productivity Mean?

A 90% productivity target means 90 out of every 100 paid minutes should be billable treatment. In an 8-hour paid day, that’s 432 billable minutes (7 hours 12 minutes) and only 48 minutes for notes, setup, walking between patients, phone calls and meetings. It’s higher than the median requirement ASHA reported for every setting in its 2025 survey of SLPs.

By the Best Therapy Productivity Calculator team · Last updated October 2026

90% productivity by shift length

Paid shiftBillable minutes at 90%Billable timeNon-billable minutes
6 hours (360 min)3245 h 24 min36
7 hours (420 min)3786 h 18 min42
7.5 hours (450 min)4056 h 45 min45
8 hours (480 min)4327 h 12 min48
10 hours (600 min)5409 h60

Run your own numbers in the therapy productivity calculator.

How does 90% compare with what therapists report?

ASHA’s 2025 SLP Health Care Survey asked SLPs with a productivity requirement what it was. The medians:

SettingMedian requirement
Skilled nursing facility85%
Hospital, rehab, home health80%
Outpatient clinic78%
Pediatric70%
All settings80%

A 90% target sits above every one of these medians. We haven’t found a comparable public national survey for PTs or OTs.

What does 48 minutes have to cover?

Picture an 8-hour SNF day with 10 patients.

TaskMinutes
Notes at 4 minutes each40
Moving between 10 patients (under a minute each)8
Morning huddle, phone calls, a care-plan questionNo time left

Something has to give. Usually it’s documentation moving to lunch or after the shift. The Lakeland survey of 116 PTs found 32% documented at home.

Bar chart of non-billable minutes in an 8-hour day: 144 at 70 percent, 120 at 75 percent, 96 at 80 percent, 72 at 85 percent and 48 at 90 percent
Non-billable minutes left at each target

Is a 90% productivity target realistic?

It can be, on days built for it: back-to-back patients in one gym, notes written during the session where that’s appropriate, few meetings. It gets hard fast when you add:

  • Evaluations with long write-ups
  • Patients spread across floors or buildings
  • Cancellations you can’t fill
  • Required meetings that aren’t billable

APTA’s House of Delegates adopted a policy in 2021 supporting productivity standards that respect clinical judgment and the APTA Code of Ethics and balance patient outcomes with the economics of care. The 2014 joint statement from AOTA, APTA and ASHA says care decisions belong to clinicians using their clinical judgment.

What can you do if 90% feels out of reach?

  • Track a week honestly. Use the weekly productivity calculator and log every non-billable task.
  • Ask what counts. Does documentation with the patient present count? Co-treats? Group time? ASHA’s survey found 8% of SLPs could count documentation time when the patient wasn’t present.
  • Bring numbers, not frustration. “My notes alone take 45 minutes a day, and the target leaves 48” is hard to argue with.
  • Ask for protected time for evaluations or new admissions.
  • Never shorten medically necessary care to hit a number.

Frequently asked questions

How many billable minutes is 90% of an 8-hour day?

432 minutes, or 7 hours 12 minutes.

Is 90% productivity common?

In ASHA’s 2025 survey, the median requirement in every setting was below 90%. Some employers do set 90% or higher.

Can my employer require 90% productivity?

Employers set their own targets. Clinicians are still bound by their licensing rules and payer requirements, which put medical necessity first.

Does 90% include unpaid lunch?

No. Productivity is based on paid time, so an unpaid lunch is taken out before the math.

Related: 85% productivity · 80% productivity · Productivity pace calculator · Therapy productivity benchmarks

General information, not legal or employment advice.

Sources