Labor and Industries Insurance and Massage Therapy

Labor and Industries Insurance provides massage therapy benefits for you, if you have been injured at work.

When you are injured at work it is your treating doctor's office who actually opens the claim for your injury and assigns you a claim number that other medical providers will then use to bill with. Because massage therapy is natural pain relief, many patients prefer the faster results and effective treatments, compared to the side effects and issues with taking prescription medications.

In the State of Washington, if your physician prescribes massage for your injury, you are initially allowed up to 6 treatment visits. If you are well after 3, your treatment stops. If, however, after 6 treatments you are still having pain or other problems, your doctor would need to prescribe a second set of 6 visits in order for you to continue with medical massage treatment.

In some cases these 12 massage therapy visits are not adequate to bring you back to normal activity. If this is your situation, your doctor would need to prescribe continued treatment.

After a total of 18 visits, the Department will not authorize any more massage treatment for your injury and at this stage you will need to have a discussion with your doctor and massage therapist on what to do next. As most work injuries are not severe, most of our patients are back to normal activity, without pain, well within the number of visits allowed by the Department of Labor and Industries.

If the company you work for happens to contract privately for workers compensation services, many of the same above rules usually apply. However this will need to be evaluated on a case by case basis, and our insurance expert, Tina will be able to assist you.