BENEFITS OF MEMBERSHIP

Benefits of Membership

As a Registered Massage Therapist, you are part of a unique group of people in the Province of Ontario, a health professional.  Even within the health professions, Massage Therapists are unique in the way in which they approach and care for their clients and the quality of services they provide which are the highest standards anywhere in the world.

There is, however, more to being a Registered Massage Therapist than you might first believe.  It is more than just learning and maintaining assessment and treatment techniques.  It is about being a professional.  As a health professional, the public has greater expectations of you than any other professional in the Province.  It is expected that you will be:

  • Linked into your professional community specifically and into the health care community generally
  • Engaged in a process of continual learning from a variety of sources
  • Not only meet the entry to practice requirements, but maintain those minimum standards and work to exceed them continually.

The Registered Massage Therapists' Association of Ontario is your professional association.  Through the RMTAO, you can be linked into not only your professional colleagues but also into the health care system itself.  The RMTAO also ensures that you have access to information about the technical and clinical aspects of massage therapy, as well as about the profession and the association and the world in which we live as Massage Therapists.  The RMTAO provides continuous learning opportunities, so that you can not only maintain your standards of practice but exceed them.

The RMTAO provides its members with a variety of benefits and services through which it helps its members meet the expectations of them.  The subsequent pages of this section of our Website provide an overview of those benefits and services, which are:

Professional Community

Membership in the RMTAO means that you are a part of the professional community, and through our services and programs you can reach out to your professional colleagues for advice, assistance and collegiality.  You become part of the group that collectively protects the profession from adverse issues in our environment.  As a member of the RMTAO, your access to the community of professional massage therapists is dramatically increased.  Programs that support the professional community include our Community Networks, On-line Membership Directory, Discussion Forums and Volunteer Opportunities.  For more information, log on to RMTAO.com and visit our PROGRAMS, CONNECT, and RESOURCES sections.

Building your base of Knowledge and Understanding

Every profession is founded on a solid base of knowledge.  An important role of any professional association, such as the RMTAO, is to facilitate building of members’ knowledge base and understanding of the world in which they live and work to allow them to grow and develop into the best professionals they can be.

You’ll have the opportunity to learn in a variety of ways and on a range of levels with your RMTAO membership, including a subscription to Massage Therapy Today: Putting Knowledge into Practice, our Education Workshops and Conference and our Resource Library.   For more information, log on to RMTAO.com and visit our EDUCATION,  PROGRAMS, CONNECT, and RESOURCES sections.  

Business Opportunities

Your professional association is your business partner.  As a member, the RMTAO will help you expand your practice by reducing expenses, increasing revenues and protecting your assets.  Programs and services such as our Professional Liability and Commercial General Liability Insurance and our Legal Expense Insurance Program both save you money and protect your assets.  The RMTAO also provides members with access to a Health and Dental Insurance Program, Personal Insurance Program, Banking Program, and Home and Auto Insurance Program, all of which are designed to protect your assets. Our MT Discounts Program and Privacy Toolkit will save you money while our Referral Service and Job + Space Locator Service will help you earn more.   For more information, log on to RMTAO.com and visit our CAREERS,  PROGRAMS, CONNECT, and RESOURCES sections. 

Advocacy

The RMTAO advocates on behalf of all Massage Therapists in Ontario, and we do so to ensure public access to the services, to ensure RMT access to the health care system and to ensure fair regulation of the profession.

Advocacy is the most important, although perhaps the least tangible, benefit of RMTAO membership.  The time and effort RMTAO devotes to representing and protecting your interests when discussing crucial issues with agencies, such as the government, the College of Massage Therapists of Ontario, and the Insurance Bureau of Canada, benefits the profession and keeps it strong. The profession can only grow and progress with the advocacy work of the RMTAO.  Our voice, the voice of the profession, can and will continue to be heard.

The RMTAO has had a significant and positive impact on the profession through its advocacy efforts.  These include ensuring a continuing role for massage therapists in the auto insurance system as opposed to being shut out, an increase of over 240% in fees paid to RMTs through WSIB, significant reductions in insurance premiums paid not only by Ontario RMTs but across Canada, orchestrating the fight against HST, increasing fees earned by RMTs through changes to our Fee schedule, providing leadership in the development of a single strategic vision and plan for the massage therapy profession.

Please Join Us...

We invite all RMTs in Ontario to join the RMTAO.  Your future as an RMT will be dependent on the ability of the RMTAO to make progress in key areas such as:

  • Building public awareness of massage therapy and Massage Therapists as health professionals
  • Increasing extended health care benefit programs to include massage therapy and without a medical doctor referral
  • Expanding the clientele of RMTs beyond female, 38 year old base
  • Increasing awareness of other health professionals that RMT’s are also health professionals.

Economic and political factors dictate that the RMTAO needs a greater number of members in order to meet the challenges that lay ahead for the profession.  Our strength will be in the number of members that are a part of the Association.  The more members, the more resources available to address issues of importance to the profession.

It is not solely the number of members but also the experience that the public and other health professionals have with RMTs.  We must, as a profession, exemplify excellence as a health profession.  It is here where the RMTAO can and does make its greatest impact.  Our programming and information sharing services have become among the best among the professions and more information is directed to our members every day.  This information and knowledge, is what will make the difference between meeting minimum standards required by the Regulator and meeting the challenge of Excellence in Care.