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Community,
Commentary and Curriculum
for Massage Therapists
Predicting Changes in the MT Industry
Posted: June 3, 2009
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Previous
articles outlined the history and some current threats and
opportunities for the massage therapy industry. Although
predicting the future can be sketchy, based on historical
development and current economic pressures, I'm betting we'll
see more of the following:
 More
Massage Therapists will become employees.
Spas and massage franchises offer solutions to many of the
business problems sole practitioners face - limited marketing
and accounting expertise, establishing brand/market presence,
cash flow and capital expenditures. Spas and massage
franchises offer recognized brand, high-traffic commercial
space, existing operations/administration and management
systems, coordinated marketing campaigns, equipment, supplies
and leasehold improvements already provided, and the opportunity
to work with staff and other practitioners to be competitive and
valuable in the marketplace. Many sole practitioners will
recognize time and money-savings, and potentially greater
earnings working in an established business.
Massage
Therapy mainstream - but secondary and supportive - health care.
Although I live in a province where massage therapy is one of
twenty-four regulated health professions, massage therapists
still face barriers to funding in provincial health care, auto
insurance and worker’s compensation. The reasons stated by the
powers that be are i) lack of degree-level education and ii)
insufficient research. Massage therapy is seen as helpful yet
lacks credibility to receive full health care funding. We are
therefore reliant on gatekeeper health professions to gain us
access to this funding.
 There
is a trend to download more duties and responsibilities to
lesser trained, lower salaried positions in health care. What
physicians do now nurse practitioners or registered nurses do.
Nursing assistants do what nurses formally did, dental
hygienists and assistants do what dentists used to do themselves
and there is a new position…physio and occupational therapy
assistants to perform some of the tasks previously only provided
by PTs and OTs.
On the
professional trajectory massage therapy has advanced past
skilled trade but as need yet arrived as a regulated health
profession (with associated access to funding) and we may recall
massage has roots in nursing and physiotherapy.
I predict
we’ll see massage therapists as skilled workers providing care
alongside nurses and physiotherapists as adjunctive to their
care - not fully arriving as an independent profession but
supplemental and supportive to their care – and it is here where
massage therapy will make inroads to health care funding.
In a
technology-saturated world, massage therapy will be more
important than ever.
Massage, like anything good, has attracted the opportunists and
has become more commoditized, to the chagrin of many
therapists. However once people receive the power of bodywork
and become more informed they will seek ever higher forms of
it.
Remember
the human potential movement? What happened to that? I think
we’ll see a renaissance, with more people seeking embodiment in
a culture that continuously disembodies, and more practitioners
going on to advanced training in Rolfing, Osteopathy and other
sophisticated forms of bodywork/manual therapy to help transform
people to new levels of self-awareness and life-actualization.
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
articles 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
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