Owned and published by ProTherapy Staffing.

How to vet a travel therapy agency

Vet a travel therapy agency by asking for its terms in writing: the full pay breakdown, the company your contract is with, how license costs, housing and cancellation are handled, and who your recruiter is and who backs them up. Size, ownership and reputation do not answer those questions for you, so put the same ones to every agency and compare the written answers side by side.

By ProTherapy Staffing, published October 24, 2026.

What should a pay package breakdown show?

Every line, separately: the taxable hourly rate, the housing stipend, the meals and incidentals stipend, any travel reimbursement, the hours per week the contract commits to, the overtime rate, and what happens to the stipends in a short week. A single weekly figure is a starting point, not an offer, because two packages with the same total can be built very differently.

The split matters to the IRS too. Its rules for allowances begin: “To be an accountable plan, your employer’s reimbursement or allowance arrangement must include all of the following rules,” and the first is a business connection to expenses you actually have (IRS guide to travel expenses). In a ruling whose example is a staffing contractor that places nurses, the IRS said that “an arrangement that recharacterizes taxable wages as nontaxable reimbursements or allowances does not satisfy the business connection requirement of the accountable plan rules” (IRS ruling on wage recharacterization). That says nothing about any particular agency; it is a reason to ask every agency how it sets the split, and to keep the answer.

Who holds your contract, and what are the cancellation terms?

Your employment contract is with the agency, not with the recruiter or the facility. The agency has its own agreement with the facility, and some of your terms depend on it: the hours, the start date, and what happens if the facility ends the assignment early. Ask for the legal name of the company that will employ and pay you, and whether it holds the agreement with the facility itself or reaches the job through another company.

Then ask about cancellation in both directions. If the facility cancels, how much notice does the contract give, are you paid for it, and what happens to housing the agency arranged? If you leave early, what do you owe: a penalty, or repayment of stipends, a bonus or license costs? The Department of Labor says the Fair Labor Standards Act “does not require payment for time not worked,” and that benefits such as paid leave “are matters of agreement between an employer and an employee” (U.S. Department of Labor: vacation leave). What the contract says is what you get, so read the clauses, not the summary.

How are license costs and housing handled?

Whether an agency reimburses license costs, and which ones, is up to each agency, so ask for the terms rather than a yes. Which costs are covered: a new state license, a compact privilege, verification fees? Is the money paid up front or repaid after you start, and do you pay it back if you leave early? Whether it is taxed is a separate question, covered in license and CEU reimbursement taxes.

For housing, where an agency offers both, ask for both in writing: the housing stipend, and the housing it would arrange instead. Neither is better in general. A stipend gives you the choice and the lease; arranged housing saves you the search and leaves the choice to someone else. Ask what the arranged housing is, whether you can see it first, and what the stipend would be instead. The IRS treats an allowance at or below the federal rate differently from one above it, and GSA publishes the federal per diem rates for each area, so you can check a quoted stipend against the rate where you are going.

If you want these answers in writing before you decide, ask a ProTherapy recruiter: Find my next contract.

Who is your recruiter, and how long have they been there?

Ask the recruiter how long they have worked at the agency, how many travelers they support, and who covers for them when they are away. None of these answers is right or wrong on its own; a recruiter new to the agency can be thorough and responsive. The point is to know who else knows your file, because a recruiter who leaves takes the spoken version of every promise with them.

Ask, too, who you would go to if your recruiter could not fix a problem: a manager, a payroll contact, a clinical contact. For the rest of a first call, see questions to ask your recruiter, and for talking to more than one agency, working with multiple recruiters.

What are the red flags?

For how a recruiter behaves, see recruiter red flags; for what reviews can tell you, see red flags in agency reviews.

What does "therapist-owned" mean in practice?

It means the people who own and run the agency are therapists. That tells you who sets the agency’s policies, and it may tell you who will understand a clinical problem when you raise one. It does not by itself tell you what an agency pays, how it writes its contracts or how it treats travelers. Those come from the written offer and from how the agency answers the questions above, whoever owns it.

So ask any agency the same two things: who owns and runs it, and who you would escalate to if your recruiter could not resolve a problem. A clear answer to both is worth having whatever the ownership. That goes for ProTherapy Staffing too, which publishes this site and is owned and run by licensed physical therapists.

Frequently asked questions

What should I ask a travel therapy agency before I sign?

Ask for the full pay breakdown in writing, the legal name of the company that will employ you, the cancellation terms in both directions, how license costs and housing are handled, and who your recruiter is and who covers for them. Put the same questions to every agency and compare the written answers.

Is a pay quote without a breakdown a red flag?

Yes. A single weekly figure cannot be compared with another offer, because the split between taxable wages and stipends changes what the offer is. Ask how the split is set and get it in writing.

Does it matter whether an agency is therapist-owned?

Ownership tells you who owns and runs the agency and sets its policies. It does not by itself tell you what a contract pays or how travelers are treated, so compare the written offer from each agency.

Sources