Welcome to the WSMTA

Massage Therapy became a licensed health care profession in Washington State in 1987 regulated under the Washington State Department of Health (DOH). Since the mid 1990’s with inclusion under the “Every Category of Provider” statute Massage Therapists have had the ability to bill patient’s health plans for covered conditions treatable within the massage therapy scope of practice.  The mission of WSMTA is to Advocate for massage therapy as a recognized and respected healthcare profession.  

Our goal is to promote and ensure the accessibility and financial viability of massage therapy as a reimbursed health care service through advocacy and communication with government entities (agencies), third-party insurance payers and allied healthcare organizations .  We also will provide necessary resources for practitioners of massage therapy, including advanced education in manual therapy and healthcare business development as well as advanced credentialing avenues.

The ongoing legal and regulatory changes in our healthcare delivery system bring constant changes to health plans, health plan providers and their administrative policies that affect how massage therapy is integrated into the healthcare system.

The WSMTA’s strategic objectives with our State based association are twofold:

Healthcare integration

• Addressing pay equity issues for massage therapists along with other healthcare providers that treat similar scope of practice conditions.
• Addressing prior-authorization issues for massage therapy that is on par with other healthcare providers.
• Equal access into the provider groups assuring true network adequacy for patients requesting massage therapy.

 Advancing the profession

• Assuring the availability of qualified advanced education tools that supports the massage professions integration into mainstream healthcare.
• Providing business education and access to business tools that supports massage practices in the complex areas of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act  (HIPAA), Patient Protection and Affordability Care Act (PPACA), and other regulatory requirements of healthcare practices.

Due to Washington State’s uniqueness which allows LMT’s to bill health care insurance companies, our goal is to address these issues at the local level by bringing our voice, our knowledge, and our cooperative attitude and teamwork approach to the many regulatory, legislative, insurance panels, and other stakeholder work groups that exist here in Washington State.

We are grateful for your support and participation! We are forming programs and workgroups now to work on these important issues. If you would like to help please send us your resume and areas of interest to info@mywsmta.org. We look forward to hearing from you!