Patient Information, Insurance Companies and Payment

Today we are going to talk about patient information and the unethical conduct of the insurance companies. So strap in and let's get to it.

A patient can request their personal information such as treatments notes from a health care practitioner or a health information custodian. A patient may also allow a 3rd party such as an insurance company, with written consent, to gain access to their personal information from a health care provider or health information custodian. 

All of this seems pretty standard. Right. Well there is more. This is the part insurance companies don't want you to know. 

This is from the Privacy Commissioner of Ontario's website.

Under PHIPA, a health information custodian may charge you a fee to access your personal health information, but the fee must not exceed the amount of reasonable cost recovery.

At their discretion, health information custodians may waive the payment of all or any part of the fee that is required if, in their opinion, it is fair and equitable to do so.

A health information custodian could also a charge a fee for transferring your personal health information to another health information custodian.

In 2010, our office issued recommended fee guidelines on the amount of the fee that may be charged to patients for access to their personal health information. For more information, please read Health Order (HO-009).

What does this mean. It means when a patient or an Insurance company requests patient information it is within your right as a therapist or a health information custodian to charge a Fee. If the insurance company is requesting patient information you have the right to charge them a fee. 

Well what do insurance companies do. They refuse to pay and if the health care provider doesn't provide the information for FREE they will blacklist the provider or even the clinic or threaten not to pay their future patients or put all their current patients payments on hold. They are using threats to rob you. It is as simple as that. 

If an insurance company requests patient information from you (and have the proper consent) you should charge the insurance company for providing the information. Why. Well simply put it will take you time, energy (perhaps even money) to retrieve and send the information to the insurance company. Your time has value. 

The Insurance companies are robbing therapists. An sane person can see this is a crime though the insurance companies are getting away with it using threats. Insurance companies here are no better than a mugger with a knife asking you for your wallet. 

We will be covering this matter in further detail in future posts especially since lot of therapists have reached out to us with their stories. 

Dangerous Clinic-Warning to all therapists

Since our last post about clinics which were exploiting therapists.

http://massagefacts.blogspot.ca/2014/10/stop-exploitation-of-massage-therapist.html

We have been contact by numerous therapists about a clinic. Not only have we been contacted by numerous massage therapists but also by Physio therapists and osteopaths about this clinic.

Viterna Health Center

It is run by a Chinese lady by the name of Michelle Kan.
They misuse Massage therapists and other health care practitioners licences behind their back. It has been audited by insurance companies numerous times and is currently under investigation by insurance companies. Lot of  therapists have had their licences suspended because of this clinic.


Here is what one therapist had to say

I previously worked for Viterna. I left because they were using the licence of the practitioners in appropriately. Most of the practitioners there don't know what happens behind their backs. Most practitioners just quietly leave once they find out. No one confronts them. They are very powerful and they can make it hard through their connections and networks for practitioners to find work else where. Usually people are tricked by them. They use threats and intimidation to keep people silent. 

I can tell you who runs the show. It is a Chinese Lady. Her name is Michelle Kan. I doubt thats her real legal name. That is the name she uses. She is the manager there and she runs the show. Either by tricking or by threats. Her english is perfectly fine and she will pretend not to understand you. 

This is her email address      michellekan1@gmail.com

Here is her cell                     416 617 3113

Practitioners are too scared of saying anything.


Here is another quote from a health care practitioner

They have four different clinics. 2 of them are under the same name. Viterna. They have 2 other clinics as well. Michelle Kan runs and handles all the things at all the 4 clinics. There is Vicpark, Vitality and Viterna.

They are also connected with numerous other clinics around the GTA. As in the owner is close friends with owners of many different clinics. This makes it hard for practitioners to say anything since if they do. Not only will they fire them. They will make sure they are black listed at numerous other clinics through their connections. This is something they kind of threaten their practioners with. Kind of like "you wont work in this town again". This is why lot of practitioners are scared to come out or say something. Most of them quietly leave.

This clinic has been mistreating therapists and misusing therapists licences. Therapists are too scared to say anything. They are scared if they go to the CMTO they will get blamed even if they didnt do anything and are innocent.

The CMTO is a bully and will pick on poor therapists since they are easy targets instead of going after the clinic. This clinic has been operating for over 15 years. We thank all the therapists who informed us of what was happening. We have kept all the therapists information confidential since our goal is to help our fellow therapist and get the truth out there.

You have been warned. Please avoid this clinic. Please also share this information with other therapists as it might help them.

College of Massage Therapists of Ontario Exposed Lying in Investigation

The College of Massage Therapists of Ontario has been exposed misleading and lying to students. There have been issues recently regarding the language requirements needed in order to practice as a RMT in Ontario.

Now it has been found out that the CMTO has been lying to students and has not been able to keep their story straight as to what is required in terms of language proficiency. The CMTO has been caught lying.

Lets go into the story a little bit more.

The CLB- "Canadian Language Bench Mark" covers four language skills: Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing.

The CMTO told some students that on the CLB-Canadian Language Bench mark they required

Listening 8  Speaking 9   Reading 8  Writing 7

We have written proof of this.

Okay everything seems fine though there is another problem.

We also have documents from the CMTO saying CLB requirements are

Listening 8  Speaking 8   Reading 8  Writing 8

We also have written proof of this.

Now to clarify this matter we contacted the CMTO and asked them the language requirements.

CMTO has told us on the CLB they required

Listening 8  Speaking 8  Reading 8  Writing 7

We also have written proof of this.

At this point we have the CMTO saying 3 different things. All these documents are within months of one another. So either this is the worst managed organization or they are out right lying to students and therapists.

We investigated the CMTO because they were lying to the students. We were contacted by students and therapists who had been dealing with CMTO and asked if we could look into it.

While we do have lot more information about the CMTO lying and misleading students and therapists. We have not gone into too much detail to protect students and therapists.

If you want to know more about this matter contact the CMTO. Maybe they can give you a good excuse for their lies. We will let you know more as we find out more ourselves.

Lies and the Truth about Massage Therapist's Salary

We are going to discuss some of the lies and flawed information out there about the amount of money Massage Therapist make.

Here is a study below which mentions the amount of money Massage therapist make.

http://www.rmtao.com/massage_therapy/2013_rmt_earnings_survey.htm

The study is extremely flawed. The sample they have taken is not a good representation of the population of Massage Therapists. It is a biased sample. The study focuses on people who have been practicing for 7 to 10 years people. This is like focusing on only the A students in class.

People who stay in the profession for over 5 years usually have some sort of edge which allows them to earn higher than average. While I can spend hours going over everything wrong with this study, what I want to get across is this study is not a good source of information.

Here is another piece of garbage published in the globe and mail

"Mr. Lewarne says most full-time massage therapists earn about $60,000 to $72,000" 

from
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/career-advice/life-at-work/i-want-to-be-a-massage-therapist-what-will-my-salary-be/article19701634/

Again useless information. They are lying to people. What planet is Mr Lewarne from. Really most full time massage therapist make 60 000 to 72 000.

Lies or rather misrepresenting information.

First what do they mean by full time. If you are working 20 hours as an RMT a week than you should consider that full time. Why. Well it is very hard to get more hours than that.

For one most people want to come between 4pm to 8pm during the week usually after work. Second even if you massaged only for 20 hours you would take time doing treatment notes, setting up the rooms between patients and doing a bunch of stuff you might not get paid for.

Also clinics which tend to be busy with lot of clients through out the day dont pay well. Think about it. If a clinic has lot of patients for you through out the day they are going to try to give you a lower hourly rate. If a clinic has few patients they might give you a higher rate to get you to come in.

Realistically What Salary should an average massage therapist expect.

In my experience and after talking to numerous other massage therapists the average yearly salary of a Registered Massage Therapist in Ontario is between 30,000 to 40,000. For men the number is lower.

In my experience most massage therapist make between 30,000 to 40,000 a year.

Dont let the CMTO or the massage schools lie to you.

The College of Massage Therapist of Ontario is one of the most unethical and mismanaged organizations which lies and misleads people.

The CMTO does not care about the public or the Massage Therapisst. They only care about making money and keeping the insurance companies happy.

Percentage Split for Massage Therapists Part 2

If you haven't already please read the previous post linked down below before reading this post.

http://massagefacts.blogspot.ca/2013/08/what-kind-of-percentage-split-are.html

This post is a follow up on the previous post. Here I would like to discuss some of the points that would be important to go into that I didnt go into detail previously.

We have discussed how the CMTO flooding the market has had a negative consequence on the Split Massage Therapist are getting. There are though other factors to consider.

First regardless of the percentage split a therapist is getting he or she must also consider the absolute value as well.

For instance if a clinic charges 200 dollars an hour and the RMT is only getting 40 percent. Thats 80 dollars an hour the Massage Therapist is getting.

If a clinic charges 100 dollars an hour and the RMT is getting 60 Percent. That is 60 dollars an Hour the Massage Therapist is getting.

So when deciding between two or more offers- the percentage split is not the only thing one should look at. As can be seen from the example above.

What are other factors.

Non Registered Practitioners make about 25 to 30 dollars an hour. Those are people who are doing massage without having a licence and perhaps dont have much training. They most likely didnt go to school and didnt have to pass the CMTO licencing exams. They are getting 25 to 30 dollars an hour.

If that is the case in all honesty the Registered Massage Therapist should make more. Otherwise why would anyone even bother to go to school and get registered with the CMTO.

In my opinion after discussing with many therapists the take home message is that  RMTs should make a MINIMUM of 40 dollars per hour. That is absolute minimum. So that is what you should keep as your lower number regardless of percentage.

Ideally most RMTs I talked to said anything less that 40 dollars an hour means that either the clinic is ripping you off or is devaluing your services to sell more.

So if 40 dollars an hour is considered minimum for what massage therapist should make. What would be considered a decent rate. Ofcourse most RMTs I talked to said the more the better though they thought a decent hourly amount would be between 45 to 60 regardless of the percentage split. That means regardless of what the clinic charges for the RMTs services, the Massage Therapist should get between 45 to 60 dollars an hour if not more.

Yes 45 to 60 dollars an hour is considered fair by most massage therapist.

Ofcourse the exact amount also depends on other factors. Such as the the skill level of the therapist, experience, number of patients, types of massages and likelihood of being tipped.

We will go into these other factors in future posts to come.

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Basic Exercise Program for Massage Therapists

Massage Therapy is a Physically demanding profession. It is in the interests of Massage therapist to stay in shape. Here is a basic exercise program to help massage therapist stay in shape.

This workout should be done 2 times per week with at least 2 days rest in between.
e.g Monday and Friday

Will take about 45 minutes to 1 hour to do

5 minute total body warm up - e.g walking on treadmill

1)Pull Ups or Pull downs- 1 warm up set plus 2 working sets of 8 to 15 reps

2)Press- 1 warm up set plus 2 working sets of 8 to 15 reps

3)Bent Over rows- 1 warm up set plus 2 working sets of 8 to 15 reps

4)Deadlift- 1 warm up set plus 2 working sets of 8 to 10 reps

5)Bodyweight Lunges- 2 sets 10 to 30 reps each leg

6) 1 set Reverse Crunches 20 to 30 reps superset with Planks hold for 30 sec to 1 min (work up to 3 min)

7) 1 set Side planks hold for 30 sec to 1 min each side

8) Facepulls- 2 sets of 20 to 30 reps


You will notice that there is no bench press in the program as massage therapist tend to get very tight in the chest with all the down ward pressing movements during massage. Hence we have focused on the traditional press.

Some of exercises help balance pattern overloads which develop with massaging while some help strengthen muscles used during massage.

Make sure to stretch post workout for 5 to 10 minutes. Again problem areas for massage therapist tend to be forearms, pecs, lower back. Though this varies with some massage therapist having issues with legs and hips as well as their neck.

Aside from the obvious benefits of exercising, for a massage therapist exercising can help prolong their career.


Any questions contact us at cmtosucks@gmail.com

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