RMTAO Pilot Program to Include RMTs in West Toronto Community Health Services (WTCHS)

The RMTAO is teaming up with West Toronto Community Health Services (WTCHS) to pilot a program to verify the health and cost benefits of integrating therapeutic massage into primary care teams.  

We are taking steps to integrate RMTs into the inter-professional primary care team to complement existing health services by adding a proven health discipline to the wellness options available to the patients of WTCHS.  This is a pilot that has the attention of the Ministry of Health and other health leaders.

West Toronto Community Health Services (WTCHS) was created in December 2021 via an amalgamation of three health care and community support providers: Regeneration Community Services, Storefront Humber Inc. and The Four Villages Community Health Centre. WTCHS is fully funded by the province through Ontario Health. With the amalgamation, WTCHS now provides community mental health and addictions services with supportive housing, community support services for seniors and persons with disabilities, home care, and inter-professional primary health care services within a single agency.  WTCHS has uniquely positioned itself to provide its clients and select patients referred from other models of primary care, with a full range of community health care and support services to keep them healthy and living in the community and avoid unnecessary hospital use, and this will soon include massage therapy care.

The one-year pilot program will be evaluated independently using a Quadruple Aim lens, with the findings shared widely with the objective of assessing the contributions of RMTs as part of an integrated primary healthcare model across the province.  Erika Kuehnel and Alex Kidd have been consulting with the WTCHS to provide them with clinical and practical advice.  Interviews have been conducted.  We applied for a funding grant but were not successful with our application.

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