Spa-Business

Water Safety

How you treat water areas and how water is treated are important aspects of maintaining a spa facility. Spas can optimize treatment results and increase sanitization in water treatment areas by incorporating a filtration system, says David Fowler, founder and CEO of the Newbury, Florida-based Wellness Enterprises.

      Fowler’s company has created one called the Wellness Shower Filter. It purifies and enhances water by adding trace minerals that benefit skin cells and increase their ability to absorb healthy nutrients. The device also helps resist the growth of bacteria and fungus at the point where water passes through the showerhead.

      Fowler suggests the following ways spas can purify and enhance water in typical treatment areas:
Pedicure baths Recent media attention has prompted the industry to embrace and intensify the practice of routine disinfecting methods. “The only way to keep that part of the spa safe is to ensure that water is, in fact, chlorinated,” he says.

Baths The piping and circulation that creates jets and bubbles is notorious for the accumulation of bacteria, even when water is drained between treatments. Unfortunately, there’s no way to completely avoid this risk, but some baths are now designed with pipeless air jet technology. Fowler expects this trend to expand in the industry.

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State proposal requires a license to massage

 

 

 

In 1983, Wilhelmina Blank was one of the first massage therapists in the area.

 

Now, Blank, the founder of the Pennsylvania Myotherapy Institute, says she sees massage therapists and day spas popping up all over the place.

That growth over the years has prompted State Rep. Keith McCall, of Carbon County, to sponsor a bill that will regulate the profession in Pennsylvania, one of 11 states that does not regulate massage.

State Massage Licensing Requirements

 

As an unregulated industry, people with little to no training are able to call themselves massage therapists. That also allows some people to practice the stereotypical parlor massage that trained therapists have worked to overcome.

 

The bill, however, would require massage therapists to obtain a

license under a newly established State Board of Massage Therapy. The license would require applicants to have 600 hours of training.

 

The bill was approved by the state House of Representatives and is currently under consideration by the Senate.

 

Bob Caton, McCall’s press secretary, said that this bill will go a long way in improving the massage therapy industry.

He said that untrained people are able to act as health-care professionals when they have no training, therefore giving reputable therapists a bad name.

 

Before there was “nowhere for the therapist or clients to turn,” but now they will be protected.

“The therapists will be given peace of mind and the client will have protection because they know they’re  getting well-trained professionals,” Caton said.

 

Blank said complaints sometimes come from clients that go to a massage therapist expecting relief from pain and just end up getting more pain because the therapist is not properly trained.

 

She hopes that the bill will make schools raise the standards of their training.

 

At PMI, students take a total of 725 hours in classes, 100 of which are clinical hours where students practice with clients.

 

PMI, runs his own massage therapy practice from Meadowview Family Practice in Hanover.

Rhodes said some therapists have a little knowledge of the practice, but pretend that they have a lot.

 

“A little knowledge is more dangerous than no knowledge,” Rhodes said.

He said the problem with a lot of therapists is that they get into a routine and perform the same massage on every client.

Jody Phillips has been in the health-care industry for 17 years and is an instructor at PMI.

 

Phillips believes that if someone is practicing “true wellness and true therapy and pain relief,” they cater to each client’s needs. Every person’s body is different and everything in their lifestyle, from their profession to recreation, has an effect on their bodies. Phillips said that even a person’s right and left arms need different therapy from one another, and to practice the same massage would not be effective.

 

“We want to produce excellent therapists with a higher level of training that are out there making a difference,” Phillips said. “If they’re not making a difference in a client’s pain, then its pointless.”

But as for the idea that licensing would do away with unethical massage therapists, Blank is curious to see if it will work.

 

“I think it will depend on whether local authorities choose to enforce it,” Blank said. She has had her fair share of experience, from reporting a spa in the area, she knows that they are out there.

 

She encountered one spa where the therapists were dressed in lingerie. She could only guess what was going on inside the massage rooms.

She has also had clients that expect more because they received a “happy ending” massage from another therapist.

 

“As a therapist you have to know where to draw the line,” Blank said “It’s just unethical.”

 

Blank said that the massage industry isn’t just for relaxation anymore. Spas have been and always will be popular, but massage is moving toward “corporate wellness” and medical use.

 

According to the National Massage Therapy Institute, consumers spend between $4 billion and $6 billion a year on massage therapy. It is one of the fastest-growing industries in the U.S.

 

Many employers are beginning to take their employees’ health and wellness into consideration. It is common now for companies to have incentive programs including campaigns to quit smoking, exercise programs and now corporations are recognizing massage as a way to improve health, Blank said.

 

Blank also said that massage is becoming more prominent in the medical industry. There is a growing need for relief from pain for medical conditions ranging from cancer to geriatrics.

 

She believes that the licensing program will give therapists validity in the medical field and with insurance companies.

“The credibility is now there,” Blank said. “It will also boost recognition and credibility among people that had their doubts about massage therapy.”

Phillips also believes that the license program will make massage more accepted in the medical field. She stresses that massage isn’t an alternative form of medicine but complimentary to doctors.

 

“We want to work together,” Phillips said. She has many doctors and chiropractors who recommend their clients for massage therapy.

Although Blank said the bill will help massage therapists, she did say it has a few drawbacks.

 

If the testing method is consistent with the federal method, it will be a 600-question computerized test, which she believes measures a therapist’s knowledge but “doesn’t truly measure their skill.”

 

She also said that some states with licensing programs have high fees for those licenses and hopes that won’t be the case in Pennsylvania. Caton said whether there is a cost and what that might be would be determined by the

State Board of Massage.

 

Sherry Chenault, practices massage therapy in Westminster, Md. A 2006 graduate of PMI, she has gone through both a state and federal license program and feels that a license makes a therapist worth more.

 

In Maryland, massage therapists are required to complete 700 hours of training. Chenault said that the application process took her six months, but it was well worth it.

 

Massage therapists in Pennsylvania have been waiting a long time as well for this legislation.

The bill has been in the works for more than a decade.

“It’s been a long journey, but it’s worth it.” Caton said.

 

AT A GLANCE

A bill that would regulate massage therapists has passed the state House of Representatives and is under consideration by the Senate. If the bill passes, newer massage therapists would need to do the following steps before getting a license:

 

Complete 600 hours training approved by state Department of Education

Pass a state exam

Complete 24 hours of further education every two years.

Therapists are grandfathered in if:

They have practiced for more than five years

They have passed a national certification test

They have passed a licensing exam or have completed 500 hours of instruction approved by the Department of Education.

 

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Medical spa rules to get a makeover

Bill would toughen penalties against absentee oversight

Sherry Deppermann spent two months reading up on a new, state-of-the art form of liposuction. And after identifying a local medical spa that offered it, she checked with the state medical board to see whether the doctors in charge had ever been disciplined.

Dr. Jason Helliwell prepares a patient’s abdomen prior to using a YAG (yttrium aluminium garnet) laser at the Advanced Women’s Health Center he runs with his wife, Dr. Siniva Kaneen, in Bakersfield. The laser is used in conjunction with a solution that numbs and melts the patient’s fat cells.

Dr. Jason Helliwell shines a YAG (yttrium aluminium garnet) laser on the palm of his surgical glove at the Advanced Women’s Health Center he runs with his wife, Dr. Siniva Kaneen, in Bakersfield. The laser is used in conjunction with a solution that numbs and melts the patient’s fat cells.

“I’m a nurse, so I probably did more research than most people,” she said. “I think there are a lot of people out there who shouldn’t be doing these procedures, and most clients don’t know who’s going to be working on them and what their training is.”

Deppermann’s diligence is unusual, but officials say it’s a good idea since a loophole in state law has led to alleged abuses at some medical spas.

A QUESTION OF OVERSIGHT

In California, as in many states, a licensed physician or surgeon must be the majority owner of a medical spa. The law even requires minority stake holders to work in a health-related field.

But under current rules, the doctor in charge need not be present when a medical spa is performing certain services. They merely must be “reachable” during the procedure, said Candis Cohen, a spokeswoman for the Medical Board of California.

As a result, some medical spas have physician oversight on paper, but the doctors in charge spend little or no time in the offices. Lawmakers in several states are addressing this safety concern.

A bill pending in the California legislature would strengthen penalties against such absentee oversight. Introduced by Alan Nakanishi, R-Lodi, Assembly Bill 2398 would expand penalties — which are now usually fines — to include license revocation.

The bill also would give an attorney general the option of filing criminal charges. Currently, any discipline is the sole jurisdiction of the state medical board.

But attorney David Shane says failing to require the supervising doctor’s presence at the medical spa means the bill doesn’t go far enough.

The physician’s name “lends an aura of respectability, but in reality, it’s misleading” if the doctor isn’t there, he said.

“What does ‘reachable’ mean, exactly?” he said. “In this day and age, everyone’s reachable if they have e-mail or a cell phone.

“That’s such a big loophole that it doesn’t really provide the care that consumers expect.”

Shane represents a 57-year-old Mill Valley man who is suing The Laser Center of Marin. His client alleges his skin became so hypersensitive to light after a botched laser hair removal treatment that he now suffers severe pain in the sun. There was no doctor at the facility to handle the complications of the treatment, Shane said, and the injury seems to be permanent.

The patient, Dom Martin, declined to comment and The Laser Center of Marin could not be reached late Friday.

MEDICAL SPAS COMING AROUND

The bill’s proposed changes to the Business and Professions Code regulating the state’s medical facilities has yet to win broad support from the medical spa industry.

“A lot of this is dermatologists and plastic surgeons trying to corner the market on medical spas because they don’t like the competition,” said Hannelore Leavy, executive director of International Medical Spa Association. “Some states are trying to restrict ownership to certain kinds of doctors, but if the person is properly licensed and trained, there’s no reason why they can’t perform these services.”

The association hopes to reduce the need for new laws by developing a national accreditation for medical spas, Leavy said. They hope the new system will be implemented in the next year or two, she said.

But Dr. M. Christine Lee, who is lobbying for the bill’s passage through a trade organization, says a lot of “misinformation” about the bill has “scared medical spa owners.”

“What opponents don’t realize is this doesn’t create a new law, it just increases the ability to enforce existing law,” said Lee, who runs a medical spa in Walnut Creek and teaches dermatologic surgery at the University of California, San Francisco.

That was enough to sway Jina Pappas, a nurse practitioner who runs Aescala Skin Care, a cosmetic division that High Grove Medical Center opened more than three years ago in its downtown building.

“I do agree that doctors should be accessible and aware of what’s happening at medical spas,” she said. “Some of these treatments are serious medical procedures. I do a lot of laser tattoo removals, and they work by burning off the skin, so it heals like a burn.”

Bakersfield’s Dr. Jason Helliwell has already seen the benefits of close oversight.

“We used to offer our cosmetic and clinical services in two different locations, but we consolidated them at a new building in April,” he said. “It was for both safety and convenience.”

Helliwell co-owns Advanced Women’s Health Center on Brimhall Road with his wife, fellow OB/GYN Dr. Siniva Kaneen. About 20 percent of their clinic’s work is now cosmetic services such as the Smart Lipo he performed Friday on Deppermann, he said.

“My wife and I do all the Smart Lipo ourselves, and we use an R.N. (registered nurse) and physician assistant who are specially trained for the Botox injections and laser treatments and things like that that aren’t surgical,” he said. “But if anything goes wrong, we’re right down the hall, which makes me a lot more comfortable.”

SAFETY TIPS

Candis Cohen, spokeswoman for the Medical Board of California, says prospective patients should:

Find out the name of the medical spa’s director and check to see if the Medical Board of California has disciplined that person before undergoing treatment.

Find out who will be actually performing the treatment, and check that person for any disciplinary actions on their record. Also investigate their background and training, including how many times they have performed the procedure.

The medical board can also tell you which types of aestheticians, therapists and health care practitioners are licensed to administer a given treatment.

Visit before the procedure, if possible, and look around. Is it clean? Does it look sterile?

Trust your gut. If you’re not totally and completely satisfied with the answers to your questions, go somewhere else.

To check discipline records, call 800-633-2322 or see records online Note that the Web site doesn’t list pending complaints.

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