a community of practitioners

CAMTC Certification

As of September 2009 California massage therapists are able to become voluntarily certified through the newly established California Massage Therapy Council. The CAMTC is a non-profit organization approved by the state to issue certifications and will generally allow greater mobility for practitioners across the state. We will, however, not be "state certified" as has generally been said. We will be CAMTC certified. What are your thoughts about the new regulation? Do you plan on becoming certified?

I would like to thank Keith Eric Grant for clarifying the point that we are not becoming "state certified." I think that many of us, myself included, initially believed that to be the case.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Carl W. Brown on August 16, 2009 at 3:00pm

I own my own corporation so the W2s I issue have noting to do with the corporate massage income that I earn. Does anyone else have the same issues where W2s or 1099s do not reflect the hours they work either because they reflect profits after expenses or reflect other income? How do you prove hours?

Permalink Reply by Carl W. Brown on August 16, 2009 at 3:04pm

Both cities that I work, Walnut Creek and Pleasant Hill are planning on dropping their local licenses so the only acceptable way to practice will be with state certification. I understand Berkeley is also planning the same thing. Do you know of other cities? It look like just as I suspected this is becoming a practice act not a title act.

Permalink Reply by Carl W. Brown on August 16, 2009 at 3:06pm

It appears that the only way without large expenditures that I can get certified is the MBLEx route. Does anyone know of a good study guide?

Permalink Reply by Ariana Vincent, LMT, MTI, BCTMB on August 21, 2009 at 3:02pm

What are the rules for becoming state certified?
Is there a State Board URL I can access to obtain specific information on the certification process?
Will there be continuing education requirements once people are certified?

Warmly, Ariana Vincent, Ariana Institute, www.arianainstitute.com

Permalink Reply by Margaret Sexton on August 21, 2009 at 6:13pm

Applications are available online for California certification. http://www.camtc.org/ I mailed mine in on August 8th. Still waiting for the Live Scan application to be posted.

Permalink Reply by Selena Lee on August 21, 2009 at 8:03pm

camtc.org

there are no continuing education requirements to renew your certification

Ariana Vincent, LMT, MTI, NCTMB said:

What are the rules for becoming state certified?
Is there a State Board URL I can access to obtain specific information on the certification process?
Will there be continuing education requirements once people are certified?

Warmly, Ariana Vincent, Ariana Institute, www.arianainstitute.com

Permalink Reply by Carl W. Brown on August 24, 2009 at 8:40pm

The three exams are MBLEx, NCETM or NCETMB. It sounds like the MBLEx is the more modality neutral one so it is the one I will probably take besides it looks like other states are moving toward this test. Prior to 1/1/2012 you need to have either a) two (2) years of past Tax Returns (covering year 2008 or earlier) issued directly from the IRS to the CAMTC that you have been practicing Massage Therapy for income; or b) copies of city or county Massage Permits or Licenses to practice Massage Therapy covering at least two different calendar years (2008 or earlier)? You won’t need the school hours. See flowchart B
http://www.camtc.org/Applications/Instructions.pdf

Permalink Reply by Keith Eric Grant on September 4, 2009 at 1:52am

Robin,

There will be no state license. What SB 731 created is two levels of certification provided by a private nonprofit authorized by state law. It is not state licensing; It is not state certification. It does create a state-wide exemption from local individual provider licensing and the nonprofit is periodically reviewed by the legislature. In addition, cities and counties can't use target zoning or other onerous requirements for a massage business license if a person is certified and a sole-proprieter, or if a business only has certified persons providing massage.

Without the certification, you can still call yourself a massage therapist or a massage practitioner. You cannot, however, claim to be a "certified massage practitioner" or "certified massage therapist" or use the abbreviations CMP or CMT. With or without the certification you can't claim to be either certified or licensed by the state. CAMTC is not a state agency but a private organization authorized by state law.

The distinction between the practitioner level and therapist level is essentially just a marketing distinction. There is no difference in practice rights. There are no specific outcomes of training added for the therapist level. Your extra hours could essentially be anything massage related, so it doesn't guarantee any particular new knowledge, skills, and abilities. Essentially, there is no particular difference between therapist and practitioner other than the therapist spent more time in and paid more money to a school. Particularly at the onset, someone at the practitioner level may have years of experience and someone at the therapist level may have 250 extra documented hours of sitting in class. One will still have to talk to the provider to know what their specific training was and what capabilities they have.

Permalink Reply by Keith Eric Grant on September 4, 2009 at 2:26am

Nickie Scott said:

As far as the exam goes it will probably be modeled much like the national exam for the 500 hour level of certification. The board will probably have to hire a consultant to make up the 250 hour level exam which will take some time to complete.

An exam is not a requirement at either level. An approved exam is an alternate path for qualifying for the therapist level certification. The board will approve existing exams, not create new ones. There is no corresponding exam provision for the 250 hour tier in SB 731.

As it stands, this exam provision is one area that has some controversy. SB 731 simply states that one must provide at least ONE of a) completing 500 hours of training or b) passing a competency exam approved by the board. The CAMTC board is adding requirements such as meeting NCBTMB certification prerequisites or two-years experience for using the MBLEx -- requirements that extend beyond passage of an exam. The bill also does not state a time-limitation for this exam option, while the board has proposed only allowing this until the end of 2012. It would probably require a court case to determine whether this is within their power or whether they have overstepped what the bill authorized. Certainly, they are going beyond the explicit language of SB 731, and that in itself seems worrisome as to making them legally vulnerable.

Permalink Reply by Keith Eric Grant on October 29, 2009 at 10:49pm

For any that have submitted applications to CAMTC and are still waiting, they've been swamped. The original assumption of likely numbers of applications for August and September was 2,250. The Number received was 5,300. The management company handling the processing has been adding more staff and was approved today for some additional reimbursement They are trying to take care of the backlogs as rapidly as possible.. They also noted that they have been swamped with phone calls and leading people through the web pages. Since the people handling the phone calls and the people processing the applications are the same, this has had an impact also. A lot of time is also going into getting information on the certification out to cities and, in some cases, dealing with less than cordial reception. Several of draft minutes from the last several BOD meetings were approved with minor changes. This should imply that they will shortly be up on the CAMTC web pages. There had been a disconnect getting copies of draft minutes out to the BOD itself, so that they could be approved.

I flew down to the BOD meeting in Sherman Oaks today and, part way through, was seated on the board as the representative from IMSAC.

AB48 was also recently signed into law. This reestablishes state oversight of private postsecondary schools, including many stand-alone massage schools. That will simplify CAMTC's job of verifying validity of claimed education in the future. That law isn't in effect until January 2010 and the new bureau likely won't be actively approving schools again until July, so it doesn't help with the immediate wave of applications. Schools that were approved before the sunsetting of the prior school oversight agency are currently taken as being "approved schools", except when the is some form of explicit indication that they should not be so taken.

Permalink Reply by Rajam K Roose on November 4, 2009 at 10:19am

It was very frustrating moving here to CA from a regulated state, where I owned my business. Here in San Diego, you cannot open your own business unless you have the HHP license, which is 1000 hours of education. If you have just the 500 hour massage license you can only work under someone. Fortunately, I have now a little more than that in CEU's and CEU's were accepted by this city and the city of Chula Vista (where I also work).

In some parts of San Diego county you can't open a business no matter how many hours you have, all therapists are only permitted to work under a chiro, spa, PT, or other. In La Mesa (15 min from downtown San Diego) where I actually live, I can't get a license in my own city b/c for a 500 hour or more education the therapist is required to pay around $560/year for a license and the HHP can pay around $120. Of course, they don't realize that prostitutes can afford those fees, but legitimate mt's can't. I have yet to find out if they'll also accept my CEU's towards the HHP.

All the various cities here require a license, and this ain't like other parts of the country where cities are 30 minutes and more from eachother, many are only 10-15 minutes away and it can't be helped but to have a job in different places. Those fees definitely add up!

Anyway, Schwarzenegger and the most of CA doesn't like regulations and have a history of fighting any type of regulatory processes. One way to resolve this is to regulate the schools themselves and then only graduates of regulated schools could apply for the generic massage license. Business licenses and zoning issues are part of running a business no matter what field you are in. From working with PT's, I would say that their problems stem from working under the umbrella of accepting insurance and dealing with insurance regulations, not necessarily regulations from the PT field.

In my opinion a lot of this backup stuff and other confusion is that the bill itself is so wishy-washy as CA legislation had to make everyone happy just to get anything passed--it seems they over-compromised for it, but good for us who have to pay a new license and a new fingerprint scan and a new health exam for each and every city we work in!!

Permalink Reply by Jody C. Hutchinson on November 5, 2009 at 9:13am

I just heard from a friend that there is a 6 month backlog in applications. How is this going to work as many cities are expecting to start this on Jan. 2010? And, by the way, how will this certification be enforced and are the cities going to be given any of the $, as they will lose revenue by not taking $ for massage business licenses?