Physical Therapists Who Take Rehab Out of the Clinic and Into the Home

Care is where the ten-year projections add the most jobs

On August 27, 2026, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its employment projections for 2025 to 2035. Total U.S. employment is projected to grow by 5.9 million jobs, or 3.5 percent, over the decade. Among major industry sectors, private healthcare and social assistance adds the most jobs: more than 2.2 million, about 37.0 percent of all new jobs. BLS pointed to the aging population together with the rising prevalence of chronic conditions such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

The direction gets clearer at the level of detailed industries. Services for the elderly and persons with disabilities is projected to add 625,400 jobs over the decade, the largest gain of any detailed industry. BLS noted that increased demand for home-based care is expected to contribute to that growth. In the same release’s table of fastest-growing occupations, physical therapist assistants rank sixth at 23.0 percent and occupational therapy assistants ninth at 21.5 percent.

Home health has its own share of the workforce

Physical therapists are a fast-growing occupation too. According to the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH), physical therapists held about 283,700 jobs in 2025, and employment is projected to grow 12 percent by 2035, which BLS classifies as much faster than average. About 13,400 openings are projected each year over the decade. Much of the demand comes from the growing older population. Older people are more likely to have heart attacks, strokes, and mobility-related disabilities and injuries, and their recovery requires physical therapy.

The breakdown by workplace shows how large this field is. The largest employers of physical therapists are offices of physical, occupational and speech therapists and audiologists (36 percent) and hospitals (26 percent), followed by home healthcare services at 11 percent. Among physical therapist assistants, 12 percent work in home healthcare services. By industry, the May 2025 median annual wage was also highest in home healthcare services at $114,740, above hospitals ($106,800) and therapy offices ($97,160). The median for all physical therapists was $102,760.

In Korea, two therapists go to the discharged patient’s home

In Korea, this work has taken shape inside the designated rehabilitation hospital system. When the Ministry of Health and Welfare designated 53 second-term rehabilitation hospitals in February 2023, it said they would also run home-visit rehabilitation, in which physical and occupational therapists visit patients at home for a set period after they are discharged from intensive rehabilitation.

The details appear in a press release the National Rehabilitation Center issued when it held a home-visit rehabilitation seminar in December 2023. The service covers patients who go home after intensive inpatient rehabilitation at a designated rehabilitation hospital. A home-visit team of rehabilitation medicine specialists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, social workers and others interviews and assesses each patient and draws up an individual treatment plan. Once the plan is set, two staff members, such as a physical therapist and an occupational therapist, visit the home and provide rehabilitation fitted to the patient’s function and living environment twice a week, 60 minutes per session, for 90 days.

Medical care at home is also expanding through other channels. In February 2026 the ministry announced that long-term care home medical centers had been set up in all 229 cities, counties and districts nationwide, bringing the total to 422. The visiting staff named in that press release, however, are doctors, nurses and social workers, and physical therapists are not mentioned. Even after Korea’s act on integrated support for community care, including medical and long-term care, took effect in March 2026, the only official material checked for this article that spells out how physical therapists make home visits is the rehabilitation hospitals’ home-visit program.

A chair and a staircase in place of clinic equipment

A home-visit treatment plan is built around the patient’s home rather than a hospital gym. The National Rehabilitation Center’s material likewise says treatment is fitted to the patient’s function and living environment. The distance from bed to bathroom, the threshold at the front door, a slippery bathroom floor: conditions nobody worries about in a hospital become treatment goals. Clinic equipment cannot come along, so the therapist needs the resourcefulness to build exercises around the chairs, stairs and handrails already in the house.

There are also many calls to make on the spot. In a hospital you can ask a senior colleague at the next table, but in a patient’s home the decision rests with you and the colleague you came with. Teaching family members who stay with the patient every day how to move and support them is part of the treatment as well, because once the fixed 90-day visit period ends, the patient and family have to carry on by themselves.

Entry requirements are no different from those for hospital physical therapists. The OOH classifies the typical entry-level education for physical therapists as a doctoral or professional degree, regardless of the industry they work in.

Inpatient rehab experience is the starting point for home visits

Under Korea’s system, home-visit rehabilitation is a service in which a rehabilitation hospital keeps caring for its inpatients after discharge. The most direct route into this work is therefore to build experience in the inpatient rehabilitation unit of a rehabilitation hospital that runs home visits. Patients at these hospitals include people with central nervous system conditions such as brain and spinal cord injuries. Working first with patients who need long rehabilitation on the ward helps you anticipate what is likely to fall apart once they are back home.

Some questions remain open. Korea’s home-visit rehabilitation was presented in the 2023 materials as a fee-schedule pilot, and this article could not confirm how many hospitals take part now or whether it will become a permanent program. If you are applying to a hospital that offers home visits, the quickest check is whether the job posting lists a separate home-visit rehabilitation team.