I was going to take a break and do quick, carefree blog on making no-sew fleece facerest covers. It is on hold for today. This is a quick blog about my day. It may not make sense, but that has never stopped me before.
Random thoughts, by Ivy Hultquist
I just got home from an appointment children’s therapy center. My daughter had a speech evaluation for her cleft lip/palate. The speech language pathologist sat and talked to my daughters, husband, and I for a while. We had tons of fun playing games and learning new ways to encourage our daughter to communicate verbally. Really, it was fun! Then it changed. They told us we needed to talk about insurance. It was clear the insurance company was now in control. We had to test and measure everything our daughter did. How she chewed, swallowed, breathed, signed, and closed her mouth. As we left, they told us were going to look into how much insurance would cover, how many times we could come in, and lots of other insurance rules. Rules, rules, rules. There were no decisions for us to make about the future of our daughter’s treatment. That was a decision for someone else, whom we never have met, to make now. It was much less fun at the end of the appointment for everyone involved.
Why are speech services covered and massage therapy is not?
Simple. They have found a way to show measurable results consistently. My daughter, who could not say ten words a few weeks ago, can now say 50. They have shown that their approach works. Insurance companies want to pay for something that works and shows results.
Will we ever get there ourselves?
The massage field is working hard to show measurable results through evidenced-based massage. This will surely please the insurance companies and other medical professionals. And do you know what? We will get there. I am sure of it. Doctors will write more prescriptions for massage and many more insurance will cover massage. People will be lined up for more massages. We can all breathe a sigh of relief.
Or, can we?
Will these changes please our clients?
I have those clients (and I am sure you do too) where I sit down and ask them how they are feeling today. I ask them what has improved, and what I could do differently this time. They look at me.
I can see it in their eyes:
I am not here to be asked twenty questions, Ivy. I am not here to be measured; I am here for a massage.
I can hear it in their voice:
Ivy, just do what you always do.
Handing an insurance card to your massage therapist will take away some of the financial stress of paying for the massage, but it will also take away something special about the total relaxation of the massage experience. The part where client walks in and does not need to rate their pain on a scale of one to ten and answer twenty other questions. The part where you, the massage therapist, does not need to worry about pleasing the insurance companies rules during the massage session.
Some clients love the part where they check in their stress at the door, forget the questions, get on the massage table, and let us just do what we are trained to do.
We can easily measure pain reduction, but there are some things about a massage that are immeasurable.
Just some random thoughts for today…
What do you think?
~Ivy
Nice post, very interesting. Thank you for sharing.
Massage is more than pampering. It’s medicine for every body.
Great post, Ivy! At Premier Massage, we ended up changing how we take notes to a more formal ahem… clinical SOAP way. At this time, we do not accept insurance, but there have been times that insurance companies ask us for records on our clients. It has been hard to make the change, but we are prepared for the new rules that are coming. Our clients adjusted to our new changes, too. Most of them, seem to like our more detailed approach. As for the healthcare industry, we stand next to them as a fellow professional; not just a massage therapist.
We’ve been talking quite a bit about this in class. I think it depends on the modality and environment. I think it makes tons of sense in a massage practice associated with a Physical Therapist or Chiropractor etc. Perhaps not so much in a spa?
The modality and environment are important. We cannot assume that just because we are in more of a clinical setting that the relaxation experience of a massage is not highly important to our clients improvement. I think too often we want to throw all of our relaxation work to the spas. I do not want to say to my clients, if you want a massage and want to relax at all during this massage, go to a spa.
Wow this is a great randomness thought Ivy!
My mind is already spinning with possibilities on how to find a balance.
It is sad though I think in order to find it (this balance) we will end up losing the fluid magic of a holistic hand of massage. *sigh*
Hopefully with more stricter (legal penalties) we can do away with the shady massage fronts.
(PS blasted “The Client List” for reinforcing the communal psyche!)
Yes, it is that fear of losing that magic that scares me. I truly hope a balance exists. I just do not want to see us pleasing insurance companies and other health care professionals to the point that we lose sight of pleasing our clients.
As for “The Client List”, I cancelled my cable last year. A decision I am happier with each day!
Excellent, excellent post. So thought-provoking, and raises good points for both sides of the argument. I think it points to a necessary split somewhere down the road–it seems that there is a divide between treatment-oriented work and pure relaxation massage (although relaxation is also a form of treatment, in my opinion), and eventually the profession could develop into one with different licensing requirements for different forms of massage. I don’t think it’s good or bad either way, there’s room for both, but it’s a hard balance. Getting insurance companies and the medical community to accept massage would require increased training and more stringent requirements, but it’s hard to impose those requirements before practitioners will actually see increased compensation as a result of their extra training and effort. Chicken and the egg! 🙂
Thanks for such a great post!
Thanks Abram! You read my mind!