The Current Trends in the Massage Profession are hard to keep up with there are so many things going on.
The NCBTMB is still under scrutiny. They are attempting to create a new advanced credentialing in the massage profession but there are many who oppose them doing so. David Laurestein of the Laurestein-Conway School of Massage in Austin TX writes about “8 Reasons to Not Proceed with Advanced Certification.”(on his blog)
The Federation of Massage State Boards continues to forge ahead adding more states all the time who accept their MBLeX test as a licensing exam.
Alliance for Massage Therapy Education is being created and the leader is going to be Rick Rosen who wrote a white paper on becoming a profession(pdf) a few years ago. It is good reading if you are interested in the future of the profession.
Massage Envy now has over 800 offices in 42 states which would probably make it the largest employer of massage therapists. Massage Envy is the most controversial topic for massage therapists. Someone has to be working at all of these clinics. Maybe they thrive on the fact that it is a good first place to work because massage therapists can get the experience by working on so many people but they don’t stay long. It could be more of a stepping stone for most massage therapists but you can’t really make a decent living there without killing yourself doing too many massages. It is a good place to learn self care if not anything else! It has also been said that ME spends so much on advertising that it also helps the profession in that way since supposedly only 25% of the people who go into a ME become members. (See old posts on ME.)
Here in WA State we are contracted providers with PPO’s and get paid by insurance companies although some of them don’t pay our going rates. Each year it gets harder to get paid and benefits are reduced each year along with allowable fees. FL is the other state that can also bill for regular insurance and I am trying to find out what other states you can bill a PPO for massage services. It seems like it is a case by case situation.
These are all major events in the massage profession. What they all mean is left to be seen. Part of the problems in the massage profession is that if often seems like most massage therapists just sit by and watch as their profession is created. The other part is how all this information gets communicated. There doesn’t seem to be one place one can go to get an overall picture of all of the goings on in the massage profession to get a really good understanding of what is going on so that you can form opinions of what you want for the profession. (That’s why I keep writing to hopefully keep up with things, but even then I don’t have all that clear of a picture even with all of the reading and participating in online groups.)
What does the profession need? What would you like to see for the massage profession? How can we take all the varying responses and create a community that is accepting of all views and has a place for them?
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