One of the things that really gets me on my soap box is the issue over ‘medical massage vs. relaxation massage’.

The issue is that neither of these types of massage is defined adequately by the massage profession and there is an organization who is attempting to define it mainly for their own profit.

Medical massage is the ability to bill insurance companies for massage therapy services.  It is not a type of massage or a specific tecnique.  All that is required that you be able to prove that your work is ‘medically necessary’ - that is that it is required for the rehabiliataion of a condition or disease.  The way a massage therapist communicates this to insurance companies is through chart notes.

The whole idea that there is even a category of relaxation massage is often misleading.  The one person I ever saw in 18 years of doing massage who said they just wanted a relaxation massage had just run a marathon the day before and could hardly walk.  The closest thing may be a so called ’spa’ massage or a massage from a place like Massage Envy, but even then a massage therapist must be quailfied to handle working with any diseases, conditions, tight muscles that they want relaxed and that entails knowing something about pathology and how to do massage.  How much education that is required to do that is yet to be researched or discovered.

The thing is that many massage schools are promoting their massage school programs and massage therapy careers as being able to do medical massage.  This is often misleading.  Here in WA State we are able to become contracted providers with HMO’s and PPO’s but the schools fail to tell you that you need to have 2 years experience to get on a list and then most of the lists are closed to new practitioners anyways.

Most states allow massage therapists to bill for injuries due to motor vehicle accidents and Labor and Industries (or workman’s compensation or whatever it is called in each state.)  You do not need any additional techniques or knowledge to be able to do this as some groups are leading massage therapists to believe.  All you need to know is how to write chart notes and how to bill the insurance companies to get paid.  You can learn most of what you need to know on my site www.thebodyworker.com

You also need to know the rules and regulations about billing insurance companies and how much risk is involved.  Some of the issues are around billing a different rate to insuarnce companies than you do for your cash clients.  I have written about this extensively on my other blog at www.massagepracticebuilder.com

I also have other articles on www.thebodyworker.com about the issue.

The reason why this gets me so worked up is that what is happening here in WA State is that insurance companies are starting to define our profession and determining what we will get paid.  Motor vehicle insurance companies are joining the networks which means that we have to take a discounted fee if you signed up with a network.  What was once a profitable business is now being reduced to a business where WA State massage therapists have to work harder doing more clients and getting paid less.  Our cash clients are having to make up the difference and pay for the losses we take doing business with insurance companies.  I really think that it is only a matter of time before this will start happening in the rest of the country and affecting massage therapists all over the US.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 26th, 2007 at 9:29 pm and is filed under Licensing and Legislation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.