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Community,
Commentary and Curriculum
for Massage Therapists
Lack of Clear Identity Stalls MT
Industry’s Progress
Posted: August 3rd, 2009
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Massage has grown both as a rehabilitative
method with the popularity of sports and athletics in the 70’s
and 80’s, and as a personal service in the spa industry when
disposable incomes grew to allow self-indulgences in the “Me
Generation”. Being helpful, compassionate massage therapists
we’ve naturally tried to include both identities, despite the
confusion this creates in the marketplace.
Many articles have been written on how to
deal with this divide – tiered profession, specialization,
market differentiation…but I believe all fail to effectively
address the problem of a diffused identity…and it’s costing the
profession big time.
 The costs are borne by discontinuous
credibility and funding for the rehabilitative side, and
commoditization with lack of representation on the spa side. The
marketplace is confused…is massage a health care intervention or
personal care service? By not clearly defining our identity in
the marketplace we face skepticism and stonewalling by
government and insurance funders, and are vulnerable to
exploitation by corporate entities wishing to cash in on the
popularity of massage.
Fees are elevated in the spa industry to
account for personal attention and time, where insurance fee
schedules and workplace benefits naturally limit rehabilitative
massage to short, specific treatments of a direct-intervention
nature. Terminology is also vastly different in these two
settings. Consider this perspective in an article I wrote for
Massage Therapy Today, May 2009, “What’s Your Massage
‘Modus Operandi’”
Your Modus Operandi (MO) determines how you deliver care, your
pricing, products and services offered and how you promote your
business. It defines the phraseology and methodology you use.
For example, a spa therapist may wear a smock or spa uniform to
provide “personal service” to “clients”, providing longer
sessions with a focus of “relaxation and rejuvenation” or
“relief of tension and stress”. The spa therapist may utilize
hot stone, body wraps, essential oils and other spa applications
to achieve results. Fees for services are typically higher than
rehab settings and spas usually work with people who have
manageable, non-complicated symptoms or are looking to
experience wellness.
Contrast this with a massage therapist working with “patients”
in a rehabilitative setting, perhaps in the office of a
physician, physiotherapist or chiropractor. The therapist wears
medically-appropriate attire as do the other health care
practitioners, and is savvy with completing auto insurance and
WSIB claims. The therapist’s treatment format is shorter to fit
insurance funding grids, provides modalities such as TENS or
ultrasound, and utilizes remedial exercise with a focus of
“treating pain” or “myofascial dysfunction”.
Why is it so important to establish your ‘MO’? From my
conversations with members of the public trying to define
massage therapy, the marketplace appears to be confused.
“Massage” can mean many things – pain-relief (or, regrettably,
pain causing!), relaxation, nurturing, rehabilitation, corporate
wellness, personal care…and of course many less favourable
associations we’d rather leave behind.
It’s our job to clearly define our service benefits in the minds
of our target market. We never want to be ambiguous about our
message, precluding our clients/patients from contacting us.
“I’ve experienced a workplace injury – does my massage
therapist treat that? How will I know?” or “Perhaps I really
need to relax and ease my stress…where should I go for this
service?” Operating from a clearly defined MO will clarify your
purpose and intention to the marketplace, making it easy for
clients or patients to procure your services without confusion.
Your MO is very important to the financial stability of your
business. For example, if you take the spa model of 1 – 1.5
hours to deliver service, with the spa rate at $120 and you
apply the same time and labour-intensive service at $65-70 to a
clinic setting, you may soon find your business unsustainable.
The spa model serves a particular clientele offering personal
services at a high premium, where the rehabilitative model works
in the insurance realm with fee caps and limited coverage...you
can’t integrate the two effectively. Again your market
determines your pricing, your product/service, your delivery
method and your promotional strategy.
“I
don’t want to turn business away…can’t I offer both spa and
rehabilitative?” I wouldn’t recommend it, and I believe this is
the main reason RMTs have trouble sustaining a business. It
simply diffuses the effectiveness of their promotion.
So here’s where the tension exists. More
regulation and academic requirements become onerous to those
employed in the spa or working part-time so efforts to move
towards more regulation, evidence-based practices and a degree
level program are resisted. Yet this is the very campaign
clinically-oriented, rehabilitative massage therapists drive to
open the door to credibility and funding.
This tug-of-war has been tolerated within
the profession generally, but infuses a degree of criticism and
separateness as each camp proclaims the values of their
approach. Trying to blend such a broad scope of methods and
philosophy - as those that exist in spa and rehab massage - is a
contentious bottleneck that, if not resolved by our profession,
will be imposed upon by government, the insurance industry and
the marketplace. For that matter, these impositions already
exist and are getting heavier.
Spas can provide treatments that could be
valued by government and insurance critics. Similar to the European model, medical spas provide
physician-guided massage and hydrotherapies, nutritional and
psychotherapies. However, with the ease of set-up and the use
of the term “spa”, there appears little attendance to the
underpinning value of spa as medical treatment in our North
American culture. Spa therapists enjoy coverage by extended
health benefits, but insurers and government are increasingly skeptical that
spa treatment produce positive neuromusculoskeletal benefits or
are just “pampering”.
Is it time for the aesthetic industry and
clinically-based massage to part ways for the sake of clarity
and serving the public more effectively?
What do you
see as the future of the MT Industry? Send your
feedback to
comment@mtcoach.com
© 2009, Donald Q. Dillon, RMT. All Rights
Reserved.
No part of this article may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without
the prior written permission of the author.
Other posts in this
series:
How Vulnerable is the Massage Therapy
Profession to Economic Changes?
Massage Therapist Incomes and Injuries
Health Care: Are We In or Are We Out?
Extended Health Plans: Are We Too Reliant?
How
Massage Franchises and Spas are Affecting Massage Therapy
Practice
Some Good News for
a Change!
HST Could Bring
Dis-harmony to RMTs
Predicting Changes in the
MT Industry
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