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.

Please share if you found this post to be helpful.

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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

Please share.

 

Stop Exploitation of Massage Therapist- Clinic Black List for Greater Toronto Area

The CMTO will do nothing to help massage therapist except take their money and make sure the insurance companies are happy.

We have to take matters into our own hands (no pun intended) as massage therapist. With the help of numerous massage therapists we have created our first Clinic Black list.

The clinics on this list have exploited and treated unfairly numerous massage therapists. There are numerous reasons why these centers are on this list. One thing is common for all these places. They are not a good place for massage therapist to work at. While some of these clinics pay very poorly, some of them are very badly managed, delay payment to therapists and in some cases therapists were verbally abused by management repeatedly.

Clinic Black List For Greater Toronto Area

1) Viterna Health Centre

2) Hand and Stone Massage and Facial Spa

3) Massage Addicts

4) ACT

5) Dr Barry Shapiro formerly known as Roots to Health

6) Comfort Zone


Now you have been warned. If you still want to work at these places do so at your own risk.

If you would like to contribute to future clinic black lists you may contact us at cmtosucks@gmail.com

For a clinic to be put on the black list we need at least two massage therapists to verify that the clinic is really bad and has exploited and treated massage therapist unfairly.

Please share within the massage therapist community.

CMTO is hiking up MCQ Exam Fees

For those who did not know CMTO will be hiking up the exam fee for the MCQ exam from 225 to 500 dollars.

This is as usual CMTO's way of exploiting poor massage therapist students and registered massage therapists to be.

CMTO is a bully and will pick on people weaker than itself.

CMTO is one of the most unethical and mismanaged organizations. All they care about is making money and keeping the insurance companies happy. They do not care about the public or massage therapist.

Now the CMTO's excuse for hiking the price was costs.

The problem is that the CMTO is run by morons who do not know anything about running a organization well. ***see previous blog post about CMTO moron

The CMTO are not able to manage costs well and for their screw up- RMTs or rather in this case RMTs to be-have to pay.

Why do others have to pay for CMTO's incompetence. If they are not able to manage costs they need to stop hiring morons and hire someone decent.

CMTO is the College of Massage Therapist of Ontario and is one of the most unethical and mismanaged organizations.

ROI for Massage Therapy Students

This is a very interesting question. Lot of people want to know what is the return on investment for Massage therapy students.

The schools dont tell you and the CMTO wont tell you.

So we had some business experts crunch some numbers.

While everyone's situation is different we wanted to know the average ROI for students who study the Massage Therapy program in Toronto.

While calculating the ROI we took certain facts and used them in our calculation. For some people these facts might be different though these were the facts we took into consideration when calculating the ROI for Massage Therapy Students.

1)The School cost was around 20K.

2)The Average massage Therapist practices for only 5 years.

3)It takes about 18 months of studying without taking any breaks for summer at most schools and the program is roughly equivalent to an associate degree in terms of time required.

4)You are not working while you are studying.

5) the average massage therapist makes 36K a year

6) we also took into consideration that for those 18 months you would lose about 35K in income because you were studying. This is a relatively conservative measure of income most people might lose even more though we took a conservative measure here.

Some schools are cheaper and some programs are shorter though this is a rough approximate.

Guess what our business experts found.

The average return on investment for a massage therapy student is negative. Yes negative.

You are better off working in your current job and investing in mutual funds or bonds. From a financial point of view you are better off investing in pretty much most things than investing in an education in massage therapy.

Of course everyone situation is different though this gives you a rough idea what kind of ROI to expect from massage therapy.

CMTO lies to students, RMTs and the public

The CMTO is known to lie to people and to misguide people. The College of Massage Therapist of Ontario is known for its unethical practices.

I have been approached by numerous students as well as fellow RMTs who were lied to or misguided by the CMTO.

The CMTO does not care about its members or the public. All it cares about is making money and keeping the insurance companies happy.

A word of advise for people. When communicating with the CMTO keep records of all communication. This means either communicate with them via email or in writing. If you talk to them on the phone there is no proof of them lying to you.

You wont believe how many people have been told something in one telephone conversation with the CMTO and later told something else.

Lot of RMTs, students as well as others have maintained written records of the communication with the CMTO and you can clearly see how the CMTO has been lying to them or has been misguiding them.

CMTO hires morons

By now you might be familiar with how unethical and badly run the CMTO is. To give you further proof that there are Morons within this organization please look at the link below.

http://www.cmto.com/cmto-wordpress/assets/CMTO_Annual_Report_2012.pdf

Scroll to page 57. One of the RMTs on the cousil is a moron. How do I know this. Well because she used to teach at one of the schools in the GTA. She is completely clueless.

How bad is she. Well she cant even tell the difference between Vastus Lateralis (part of the quadriceps group) and the Hamstrings.

Pretty much everyone knew how clueless she was though her placing her hand firmly on the hamstring group and repeatedly mentioning that it was the vastus lateralis is very memorable.

I haven't mentioned her name to save her the embarrassment though this is the kind of people the CMTO hires.

 

What kind of Percentage Split are Massage Therapist Getting?

Lot of massage therapist work as independent contractors and are self employed. One of the most popular payment systems between clinics and Therapist is a split system.

This means massage therapists get a cut of how much the customer pays.

So what is the cut.

Well many years ago before the CMTO flooded the market with massage therapists the cut usually was around 60 to 70 percent.

This meant massage therapist got 60 to 70 percent of what the patient paid.

What is the story today. Well the CMTO has flooded the market. Today the split on average is much lower. It can go as low as 35 percent. Yes as low as 35 percent.

Usually it is now around 40 to 50 percent  currently. Some places do still go up to 60 percent though it is not as common as before.

Massage Therapist are getting a lower percentage split now than they did before. All thanks to the CMTO.

CMTO or the College of Massage therapist of Ontario is one of the worst run organizations and is focused totally on making money and keeping the insurance companies happy. They don't care if they screw therapists and the public in the process.

The CMTO does not care about the public or the therapist.

How many hours does an average massage therapist work in a week?

Massage therapist on average work 15 to 20 hours a  week doing massage.

Usually massage therapist are self employed and work as a independent contractor with a clinic or center.

Do Schools mislead Potential Massage Therapy Students?

Guess what if you ever remember going to different schools to find out about the profession you probably know how the schools try to mislead students about massage therapy.

The goal of these schools is to get you to join since it is all about money. There have been numerous investigations where schools were caught over inflating how much massage therapists make or misleading students.

Students are misguided into joining programs based on lies by these schools.

Sometimes the schools are very tricky they wont directly lie though they will mislead and withhold some vital information from the students.

I have had students from various schools come ask me about the massage therapy and they were very surprised by the facts that they did not know about.

The schools are tricking students and what is the CMTO doing about it.

Kikawa, CCMH, Suderland Chan..........and many more.

They all mislead their students to a certain degree to get them to join the program.

Maybe there might be one or two schools which might be totally honest though most of them are misleading.

Why did the CMTO reduce the number of stations on the OSCE exam.

The CMTO has been making it easier for people to get the RMT licence the last couple of year.

Why you may ask.

Simple the answer is money.

The number of RMTs were going down a while back and this meant that less yearly membership fees for the CMTO to collect.

What was CMTO's solution. Make the exams easier to get the number of RMTs up again.

Dont worry though most people and schools know that the CMTO is starting to work on making the exams harder again since now it has flooded the market with RMTs and there is a surplus.

If there is a surplus and there are too many RMTs then lot of people will start to leave the profession which will, you guessed it, will lead to less membership fees for the CMTO to collect.

All about money with CMTO they dont care about the public or the therapists.

CMTO is Racist

The CMTO has shown a racist attitude towards Chinese people.

Lot of Chinese students have been singled out because of language issues even if they passed the CMTO exams. I have been approach by numerous Chinese students who have been having issues with the fact that the CMTO is not being fair.


When I studied to become a RMT many years ago there were lot of Russian students whose English was Terrible.

Guess what not one of those Russian students was singled out for language issues.

I have seen so many RMTs with terrible English though the CMTO lets them slide as long as they are white.

While I agree that RMTs should know how to provide service and communicate in English while in Canada, I dont agree with the double standards the CMTO has based on skin colour.

I have dealt with Chinese RMTs and Russian RMTs and guess what. Some of them knew how to speak English well and some of them did not.

I have dealt with Chinese Massage Therapy Students and Russian Massage Therapy students. Again some of them knew how to speak english well and some of them did not.


One thing was for sure it had nothing to do whether they had white skin or not.
  

Sexist Hiring Policy in the Profession and the CMTO

Unlike other professions where women might be discriminated against, in Massage Therapy Males get Screwed over.

Guess what no matter how good of a Massage Therapist you are lot of  people will not hire you if you are a male.

This discrimination is done openly.

Male Massage Therapist are treated like crap. No one says anything. Men are being screwed over and no one is saying anything. How come.

People openly say they dont hire male massage therapist.

You know something else. Men on average are stronger than women.

All other things being equal the stronger massage therapist will be the better massage therapist.

The CMTO doesnt care or do anything. The CMTO is only worried about making money. They want to make sure the insurance companies are happy. Since if the insurance companies stop covering massage therapy under their plans no one will register with the CMTO.

The CMTO does not really provide much value for its members.

They dont give a crap about sexist policies in the profession.

Average Professional Life of a Massage Therapist

5 Years. Yes 5 years is the average professional of a Massage Therapist.

Within 5 years most Massage Therapist Move on to another profession since they cant make enough money in massage or their hands wear out or they decide to study some more.

Massage Therapy is not a very long career. The money is bad, the work is hard and most people look down upon it.

It will wear out your hands very quickly. Most Registered Massage Therapist Retire within 10 years because their hands cant last any longer.

Average Salary of Registered Massage Therapist in Ontario, Canada

The average salary of a Registered Massage Therapist in Ontario is about $36,000 per year.

Men usually make less than women and don't remain as long in the profession as women.