You need an OT. You don't need another hire.
Koumentis places contract and embedded pediatric occupational therapists with ABA centers, private practices and school districts across the Phoenix Valley. You get the clinical coverage and the billable hours. We carry the recruiting, the retention and the vacancy risk.
The role stays open because you are bidding against every other setting for the same licence.
This is not a recruiting-effort problem and it is not your job post. The market for a pediatric OT licence is fiercely competitive, and adult, inpatient and rehab settings compete for the same clinicians you are trying to hire. They are not going to stop.
So the posting sits open. The referrals you can't serve go to a competitor. The families on your list wait. And when you finally do hire, the therapist leaves inside eighteen months for an offer you couldn't match — and the kids start over with a stranger.
We solve the hiring problem, not you
Recruiting, screening, licence verification, insurance and retention are ours to carry. You get a named therapist on your schedule and never run a search for this role again.
You pay for hours, not for a headcount
No benefits load, no payroll tax, no unemployment exposure, no severance conversation. Coverage scales up when your caseload does and stops when it doesn't.
The vacancy risk moves to us
If a therapist leaves, backfilling is our problem and our cost. Your schedule does not go dark while a req sits open for five months.
Four kinds of buyer, four different gaps.
ABA centers
You are already running OT on your service menu, or you want to. Families ask for it, your BCBAs want the co-treatment, and the OT line is the hardest one to fill. Several centers in this market openly say they are still working on staffing OT — that is a live gap, and it is the one we were built for.
Private practices and SLP groups
Adding an OT line is the obvious next revenue step and the riskiest hire you'll make. Start with contract hours against real demand. If it fills, convert — we'll help you hire the person directly rather than hold you hostage.
School districts and charters
When a district can't staff OT, the IEP minutes are still owed. We place for the school year or per-diem, we understand the procurement and vendor-registration process, and we know that registering on a bid portal alone does not get anyone paid.
Pediatric and developmental practices
You are writing OT into evaluations and sending families out the door into a four-to-twelve-week wait. An embedded OT session or two a week keeps the family — and the revenue — inside your practice.
Three arrangements. Pick the one that matches your risk.
| Arrangement | What it looks like | Best when |
|---|---|---|
| Embedded contract | A named OT works set days in your space, on your schedule, integrated with your team. Same therapist every week, so your families see one face. | You have steady volume and want continuity of care without a headcount. |
| Per-diem / flex | Coverage by the day or the block. Use it for overflow, a leave, an evaluation backlog, or to test whether the demand is real. | Your volume is lumpy, or you're proving the OT line before committing. |
| School-year placement | An OT assigned for the academic year against your IEP minutes, with the vendor paperwork handled properly on the front end. | You're a district or charter with owed minutes and no one to deliver them. |
Licensed, verified, insured
Every therapist we place is licensed by the Arizona Board of Occupational Therapy Examiners. We verify the license, carry professional liability, and hand you the documentation before day one — not after you ask twice.
Pediatric and autism-focused
We are not a general medical staffing firm that also does kids. Sensory processing, regulation, daily living skills, feeding, fine motor and school participation is the whole practice.
No hostage clauses
If you want to hire our therapist directly, there is a conversion path and a fair fee. We would rather keep your business honestly than trap it.
What practice owners ask first.
What does it cost?
Contract pediatric occupational therapy runs roughly $85 to $120 per hour depending on setting, caseload complexity, drive time and commitment length — evaluations and specialised placements at the upper end. We quote your actual number on a fifteen-minute call rather than make you fill out a form to find out. What we will not do is win on being the cheapest.
Who supervises the therapist clinically?
In an embedded or school placement, the therapist works within your clinical structure and your documentation system, the same as any contracted clinician. We handle the employment relationship, the license verification and the insurance. We will put the specific supervision and scope terms in writing before anyone starts — that boundary matters and it should not be improvised.
How fast can you place someone?
Honestly: we are building the Valley bench right now, so today the answer is Q1 rather than next week. If you tell us your gap now, you get first call on it — and we would rather say that plainly than promise a start date we cannot hold. Ask any staffing firm that promises you two weeks how many candidates they actually have in hand.
W2 or 1099?
It depends on the placement and on what the arrangement genuinely is. Misclassification is a real risk in therapy staffing and we are not interested in handing you one. We will structure each engagement to match how the work is actually controlled and supervised, and say so in the agreement.
Do you take insurance or bill payers?
No — you bill. We are a staffing and contract placement company, not a billing entity and not the clinical provider of record. The therapist delivers care inside your practice, under your payer contracts and your documentation.
Who is behind this?
Koumentis is founded by a doctoral occupational therapy clinician training at Mayo Clinic, building the practice she wanted to work in. The premise is simple and it is not a slogan: pediatric OTs are underpaid relative to their license, that is why nobody can staff the role, and a firm that fixes the pay side can solve the coverage side for everyone else.
her photo, her call.
Alexandria Koumentis
Koumentis Occupational Therapy is built by a clinician training inside one of the best health systems in the country, who looked hard at the field she is about to enter.
What she found is the thing this company exists to fix. Pediatric occupational therapists in the Phoenix metro earn about $41 an hour. The same license, in adult or inpatient care, pays $48 to $54. Therapists who want to work with children take a twenty percent pay cut to do it — so many eventually don't, the roles go unfilled, and the families wait.
That is not a problem you solve with a better job post. You solve it by paying therapists what the profession pays, and building a business that works at those numbers. Everything here follows from that one decision.
Alex — this part is yours. Where you came from, why pediatrics, why autistic kids specifically, and what you want this practice to be for a family on their worst week.
Say it in a voice memo and it goes here in your words. Nothing about you gets published that you haven't read first.
Tell us the gap.
How many hours, what setting, when you need it covered. We'll come back with a real rate and a real date, or tell you we're not the right fit.
OTs and COTAs: we pay above this market, on purpose.
A caseload you agree to. Documentation time inside the paid day. Drive time and mileage paid. A real continuing-education budget. Clinical autonomy that nobody overrides to hit a number.
New grads, school-based OTs looking to leave the district, and COTAs are all welcome. So are therapists who just want to know the number before committing to a conversation.
Confidential. We will not contact your current employer.