Insure your MT business

Even though your primary job is massage therapist or bodyworker, it is important to stay aware of the fact that you also are a person in business—exchanging services for money—whether you happen to own your own massage therapy or bodywork practice or if you work for someone else.

This is key to keep in mind, because massage therapists and bodyworkers all too often place so much of their focus on being healers that they can forget the basic tenets of good business. One of these basic tenets is the need for insurance. As you do your work with members of the public, you take on a risk. This risk can and should be insured through massage therapy liability insurance.

You might be a bit puzzled at first as you consider what kind of risk you could possibly be taking on simply by providing massage therapy or bodywork to your clients. After all, this is a healing field, where the main goals tend to be alleviating pain and increasing feelings of well-being and relaxation.

The risk does not have so much to do with the hands on work that takes place in your practice. Rather, the risk is simply tied to the fact that you are in business, and your business involves working with members of the public, and in a fairly intimate way.

Think of each client you have as an external variable—a variable that you really have no control over. This is one component of your risk. You cannot predict if or when a client might claim some kind of injury or damage due to a lack of competence or skill on your part as the practitioner, or perhaps due to a particular product you used in the session room.

This could be incredibly tough to imagine, but the mere fact that it is a possibility—no matter how slim—entails risk. With massage insurance, you have a safety net to protect you against such rare, but possible, occurrences.

The malpractice insurance, or professional liability, portion of your massage therapy liability insurance policy would be there to protect you against any claims of damage or injury due to a lack of skill or competence on your part as the practitioner. The product liability portion of your policy would be there to protect you against any claims of damage or injury due to a product used in the session room.

There is another aspect of the risk you take in your work as a professional massage therapist or bodyworker. This risk is one shared by nearly every person who operates a business that involves members of the public on-site at the business. It is the risk that a client or customer could slip, trip or fall on the property of your business and decide to sue for damage or injuries.

If this ever happened at your practice, the general liability portion of your massage therapy liability insurance policy would be there to cover you throughout the legal process.

Remember, even though you are in a healing profession, you are still part of a business, and you could benefit from the safety of a solid massage therapy liability insurance policy.