Can My Insurance Cover My Massage?

To answer the above question simply …

No! (At least not in our student clinic)

We are happy to refer your to graduates of our Therapeutic Medical Massage program. Please simply call us for a list of names and numbers.

The main reason is that you are receiving a massage from a student not a Licensed Massage Therapist (LMT). There are a variety of other reasons as well.

However, this is not to say this hasn’t happened. The best way is to have your doctor “prescribe” massage for muscle or tension relaxation. This way you can utilize the student clinic – however, we will also need to see the prescription so that we know that you are able to receive a massage.

However, you can also receive massages from our graduates renting spaces out of UTMI to start their own practice. But generally the graduates here may not be capable of completing medical billing forms etc. Only the graduates from our Therapeutic Medical Massage program have had the training for medical billing from UTMI.

Universal Therapeutic Massage Institute, Inc. is a school. UTMI has been a licensed school by the New Mexico Massage Therapy Board since 1994. UTMI has been accredited since 1996.

However, UTMI is not a medical provider. You are receiving a comfort/relaxation massage – not a “treatment”.

The important part to note is that UTMI is a school. You are receiving a massage by a student who is learning how to be a massage therapist. Your massage could be the very first massage they conduct in our clinic or their last one. In either case, UTMI follows state regulations that the student has received the minimum 100 hours of massage therapy instruction as well as 8 hours of orientation and ethics prior to them starting in the clinic. They are constantly supervised by a Registered Massage Therapy Instructor (RMTI).

Your massage was given to you by a yet unlicensed student. The charge you pay UTMI is essentially a deeply discounted rate for the rental of the room and our overhead. It also helps offset the tuition that students have to pay for their education.

Another reason is that our records are more for training aids. We still have to comply with HIPPA regulations as far as the privacy of your information, but the information we keep in your file is very basic information called “SOAP” notes.

This stands for …

Subjective (evaluation – asking the client if they have specific issues),

Objective (the visual observations such as gait, posture, skin discoloration drawn onto a human drawing – more advanced LMT may include objective testing such as range of motion, muscle strength testing etc or even objective palpation such as adhesion, hypertension, inflammation, numbness, scar tissue, tender points, trigger points etc),

Assessment (assessing further long and short term goals such as walking up a flight of stairs or measurable goals – walked up a flight of stairs with no more than moderate pain), and

Plan (of treatment – where and what type of techniques used, planning frequency of visits,duration of each modality).

Many of these are not applicable for students as they have not yet learned to utilize additional techniques. Also because many of these are so specific to massage that they are not considered “medical treatments” unless prescribed by a physician.

Also inactive client records are purged (shredded) after 8 months. Since we are not provided “medical treatments” then we are not required to maintain these records indefinitely. These are for the training of the studentsfor our repeat customers. The massages you received are not considered a typical “treatment” as normally viewed by payees, such as insurance companies.

I suggest to all clients seeking medical/insurance reimbursement, to locate a Licensed Massage Therapist (LMT) that has the ability to complete the necessary paperwork as required by many insurance companies for proper ICD-9 coding and billing to expedite the reimbursement you are seeking.

I would also strongly suggest for individuals to seek out an LMT with more of a “medical background” rather than a “spa” related education, for better accommodating of the client with injuries and conditions. Also look for someone with several years experience or advanced education in medical massage. Where they graduated from also makes a difference. Not all schools instruct students in “medically modeled” massage – some teach mainly “energy” based massage.

UTMI is however, the only school in Albuquerque or even New Mexico with a“full length” advanced educational program in medical massage where they learn how to conduct massages on injured clients or clients with various conditions. Some LMT’s have taken as little as 16 hours of additional training and call themselves Medical Massage Therapists.

UTMI graduates from our Therapeutic Medical Massage program will have completed 1,080 hours of training and clinical massages (upwards of 18 months of schooling). Just the advanced program by itself is 360 hours of further education above what a typical LMT has.

UTMI also has a paper entitled “Getting a Physician Referral for Medical Massage”. Please ask for a copy.

Thank You

UTMI Management

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