Rehab administrators answer questions regarding University Relationships and Student Fees. IPRC archives information collected by the Pediatric Rehab Administrator’s ListServ as a public service to the entire Pediatric Rehabilitation Community. All information is posted in summary format and has been de-identified. Search through past queries for responses to rehabilitation related questions.

Original Questions:

Original Question: We currently offer level 1 and level 2 fieldwork placements for OT and PT, and accept speech student interns and CFY’s.  We have previously offered these internships and not required universities to pay us for taking their students.  Our legal department has asked that we update our contracts for 2019 and would like to start charging some universities for placing students with us for their clinical affiliation work.  I am wondering if any other facility is currently charging universities and if you’d be willing to share how much you charge or how you developed the payment price?  Thank you!

RESPONSES:

Of the 34 institutions that replied, no one is currently asking universities to pay for student fieldwork affiliations.  Some additional thoughts that were shared regarding student procedures are:

Response 1:

We have students for both adult and peds placements.  We do not charge the schools for accepting their students.  We are looking into an online onboarding software; we would potentially charge the schools to have the students complete their onboarding.  We’ve heard from another hospital that uses a similar software that they charge $50 per student; the school adds the fee to the students lab fees so ultimately the student is paying.

We take a LOT of PT, OT and SLP students, and we do have a contract with each university, but that does not entail any charge to the university.  The university, of course, charges the student tuition for the credits earned through completing the placement.

That said, we DO have an additional arrangement with a local university in which our clinicians teach a specialty clinical module (about 45 hours of direct teaching specifically about SCI) within the context of one of the university’s neuro courses. We DO charge the university for that through a separate agreement. Their students (around 100) come to our hospital for those 45 hours, and our clinicians teach that segment.  (We also bring in patient volunteers so there is ability to observe with people who actually have SCI versus simulation).

Response 2:

We do not charge in OT/PT but Pharmacy does.  Pharmacy charges $500/rotation.  Rotations are 4 weeks long.