PIP Insurance Saved in Florida

Florida's massage therapists had a hand in winning a victory for state-mandated personal injury protection (PIP) auto insurance. This means the state's massage therapists who bill insurance will be able to continue to do so for PIP claims. The state's PIP insurance program expired on Oct. 1, but pressure from health-care providers and others helped push a bill through the Senate and into Gov. Charlie Crist's office for approval, according to a report in the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper.

The president of the Florida State Massage Therapy Association (FSMTA), Maureen, Gilbert, told MASSAGE Magazine, "What it means to my members is that PIP, the personal injury protection, is one thing that massage therapists do get paid very early for from the insurance companies—and so if a therapist works on insurance, [he or she is] assured to get paid."

FSMTA members, along with other health-care professionals and citizen-advocate groups, lobbied and wrote letters to legislators, and signed petitions in support of retaining the PIP program, while the state's insurance industry opposed keeping, or resuscitating, the program, according to Gilbert.

"The driving force from the insurance [companies was] that there's so much fraud going on with personal injury protection, not necessarily with massage therapists but with other health-care areas, and they want to fight the fraud," she said.

The program mandates that Florida residents hold automobile coverage that includes $10,000 of protection for the policyholder and his or her passengers for medically necessary services, including massage therapy, regardless of who is at fault, according to Vivian Madison Mahoney, a Florida-based insurance-billing expert and frequent contributor to MASSAGE Magazine.

—Karen Menehan, MASSAGE Magazine Editor in Chief