RMT Podcast 001 – Purpose and Vision for Reclaimed Massage Therapy
RMT Podcast 001 Show Notes
Sherman Hu:
Hi, I’m Sherman Hu from ShermanLive.com. Today I have Michelle Brown, a registered massage therapist, and clinic manager of Reclaimed Massage Therapy Health and Wellness Group. It’s a beautiful, cozy massage therapy clinic in the heart of Chilliwack. It’s located close to the mall at 7592 Vedder Road, Suite 206.
Now, what’s unique about them is they have this online booking system. Super convenient for the patients and clients. Plus, they offer direct billing to insurance providers, providing their clients with peace of mind. And the space – you’ve got to check it out. Super relaxing, cozy, beautiful. Michelle’s done a great job of staging this place and decorating it. They also have a brilliant team of registered massage therapists; you should read the five-star reviews they get from their clients.
The patients now have much-improved stability, mobility, and freedom to do what they want to do in their lives. And the RMTs do amazing work every day. So I want to invite Michelle, today, to share her vision for how Reclaimed Massage Therapy came about. Michelle, thank you for being here.
Michelle Brown:
Thanks, Sherman. Thanks for having me. A bit about Reclaimed Massage Therapy. It was a combination of my partner, Nick and me. We came up with the idea that we wanted to open our own massage therapy clinic after being in practice, both of us, for well over ten years.
So we came together, and our vision for that was, “Reclaimed,” the name itself, came from wanting to empower our patients. We want to empower them with education; we want to empower them with reclaiming their health and taking their healthcare back into their hands. Giving them the ability to feel like they’re in control of their health care, and work with them in a very patient-centered approach to health care, where we really listen to what they have, what they need from us.
We listen to their needs, and then we meet them. We have an excellent referral base that we have built over the last ten years in Chilliwack of other healthcare practitioners that we work with in conjunction to get the best for their health care, to meet their needs.
So if there’s something that’s outside of our scope of practice, we have a vast network that we can reach out to, and we can talk to, and discuss the cases with. And also send our patients, then, to those therapists, right? We work with physiotherapists, kinesiologists, occupational therapists so that our patients are getting the best care that they can get.
Another little piece of that is that “accessibility” is important for us. So, two ways that we brought that into the clinic were with direct billing, which is essential for a lot of people. Financially, It allows them the freedom to come in a little bit more frequently if they’re not paying out of pocket all the time. They don’t have to wait for their reimbursements; they don’t have to pay with cash or put it on their credit card.
It just makes it a little bit easier when you’re coming in that people can just go in and walk out of the treatment. Re-book their appointments, and then that’s it — a little bit of peace of mind for them.
The second part of the accessibility is that we created what’s called an “urgent care appointment,” or an “emergency appointment.” And we’ve left a little bit of time in our schedules most days so that if people have something occur that day, they can call into the clinic and, chances are, we’ll have an appointment available for them.
So what we do is we book our regular schedules, and then we allow a little bit of extra time there. We often have a lot of patients who, they come to see us regularly, and they book their regular appointments, but then there’s an emergency that happens. They’re in a car accident; they woke up that morning with a sore neck. But often, we’re booked months in advance. And these patients don’t have accessibility to immediate health care.
And so that’s important for us to have that accessibility, allow them to be able to get in for those appointments when they need to get in, right?
Sherman Hu:
That’s amazing. So, Michelle, share with me, just short-term vision from today, two years down the road, three years down the road, what do you envision happening with Reclaimed? What are you going to develop and grow?
Michelle Brown:
Well, it’s essential for us to collaborate with other health care professionals in the area. We have a vast referral network that we’ve been working with – other health care practitioners that we can refer our patients to when they need to. So if anything’s outside of our scope of practice or we notice something with a patient that needs more care than we can provide them with, we have an excellent network of physiotherapists, kinesiologist, occupational therapists that we can then send our patients to.
So I want to do more of that collaboration with other health care professionals. With regards to our space – I’d love to get in a naturopath at some point, or a health and wellness coach that can work with our patients for other goals besides their immediate physiological goals. We have a therapist who wants to focus on pre and post-natal massage, and I’d love to get in a midwife at some point, so we can work together so that those women are getting the best care they can during that critical time in their life.
I’d also like to have a bigger, open space where I can have a physiotherapist and a kinesiologist on-site to do treatments. But then also have that big, open space so that we can have lectures and community outreach programs and programs to educate the public a little bit more about what we do.
So that’s my short, long-ish term goal, is to work towards that collaboration. “Community” is a massive part of what care about here in the clinic. We’re always looking for outreach opportunities to work in the community, volunteer opportunities in the city. We want to be a part of our community. I think it’s so important to live and work and be in our community, not just kind of work as a practitioner in your room all by yourself – and not reach out to our community and educate them about what massage therapy and health and wellness are about.
Sherman Hu:
Yeah, I see a lot of great photos on your Instagram feed about the different local events you’re volunteering in. I love what you shared about the “whole person care”. Also that “community care” and outreach. I love what you guys are doing with that. Michelle, thank you so much for sharing that with us today.
For everybody who’s watching this, check them out at https://ReclaimedHealthGroup.com.
Visit this space in their 360 virtual tours, so you’ll see how beautiful Michelle’s staged and decorated the area.
They have a phone number on the website; you can call them to answer any questions you may have.
Michelle, thank you once again, and we’ll catch up with you soon.
Michelle Brown:
Awesome, thanks.
