From: Nancy Toner Weinberger
<weinberger@mindspring.com>
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2014 3:57 PM
To: Coalition Members
Subject: Important Coaliton of Massage
& Bodywork CE Instructors Update - RESPONSE REQUESTED!!
Holly
Foster took a fall in her yard, and at the last minute was unable to attend the
Coalition meeting scheduled for June 11th in Greensboro. Without our
guest speaker, there was not anything new or important to discuss, nor input to
give amongst ourselves. Since there were only 9 members coming to the meeting
this time, I made a decision to cancel the meeting and attempted to reach
everyone in time to save them the trip to Greensboro.
With
only 9 persons able or willing to attend the scheduled meeting in June, and the
summer months of vacations and house guests upon us, followed by the busy
teaching months of the Fall, and then the winter holidays, which is followed by
Jan and Feb months of potential bad weather for travel, a few of us are taking
a look at online meeting programs, with a live meeting in the early spring.
Michael Sitzer is researching for us, so please send him any suggestions you
might have for suitable programs for us. So far we are looking at
GoToMeeting(cost unknown) and Google Plus (free). Also Skype may be a
possibility.
I
also wanted to let you all know that Charles Little, husband of Tilly Little
passed away. Mr. and Mrs. Little’s home was badly damaged by a tornado that
came through their town which is near Washington, NC, and it was shortly
afterwards that Charles passed away. Tilly’s email address is littlekneads@suddenlink.net if
you would like to send a note.
Meeting
& Coalition Finances: Cost of the meeting room in April was $51. At the
time of the meeting we did not know the charge for the room. We had a $41
excess from money collected to cover costs of the meeting in February, which
was passed on to Cynthia Loving who booked the space for us. Cynthia collected
approximately $95 additional at the April meeting from attendees. This gave us
$85 towards the cost of the next meeting in June. We were unable to get the
low-cost room for June, and booked the LaQuinta hotel meeting space for $150
plus tax and service charge. Cynthia gave the hotel a $50 deposit to secure the
space. So that leaves us with a $35 surplus at the moment. Until we can find
out if the hotel is going to charge us for last minute room cancellation. If
money is needed, I will send out a note to everyone. I set up a PayPal button
on the Coalition website that we can use, if needed. PayPal lets you pay with a
credit card. So as I said- no money needed right now. I will let you
know.
Robert
Wooton and I spoke about what might be next for us, as a group. Since we are
not clear on what decisions have been made or not made, it is hard for us to
provide more input to the Board at this time. We agreed that it would be
helpful to come up with some pertinent questions for the Board. Robert prepared
the attached memo with my input – please read it carefully and provide feedback and additional questions
by Monday June 23rd (one week from now). Attached in
Word and in pdf, and also copied below.
Regards,
Nancy Toner Weinberger
On behalf of the Coalition of Massage & Bodywork CE
Educators
919-562-1548
http://www.coalitionofmbceinstructors.org/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To:
Coalition Members
From: Robert Wooton & Nancy Toner Weinberger
Date: 6/16/2014
This
is a wake-up call for all CE teachers. The train is leaving the station,
and while it has a long way to go, the wheels are in motion and it would be
hard to stop it. But we can still influence the way the final destination
looks and make it friendlier to us.
The
FSMTB already has a task force working on a CE provider approval program by
request of the NC Board and some other state boards, and two NC Board members
are on that task force (Holly Foster and Darinda Davis), indicating our Board’s
investment in going with FSMTB. The NC Massage Board has probably, though
not officially, already decided to move CE teacher approval to FSMTB
(Federation), taking it away from NCBTMB which has done it for 20 years.
That will affect us in a major way, making us go through a new approval program
run by a new agency. Those of us who have been approved by NCBTMB for
many years know how they kept changing the approval process and forms every
other year in the name of improving it. Perhaps we will go through the
same thing all over again while a new agency tries to figure it out.
Furthermore, it is possible that those who teach out of state may need to keep
the NCBTMB approval as well. But we don’t know yet exactly what the Board
or FSMTB is planning, so many things are possible at this point.
My
hope is that we can win some concessions for CE teachers already approved by
NCBTMB and maybe help the NC Board make recommendations to the FSMTB that will
result in a better approval process the first time. The Board has created
a Continuing Education Ad Hoc Committee. As per Holly Foster, “As the newly appointed Chair of this committee, the
members of the committee (Dr. Preston, Darinda Davis and myself) will be taking
the position papers submitted by Rick Rosen, the NCBTMB, and the Coalition,
comments from Laura Allen, FSMTB and other continuing education providers to
determine where there is common ground, and what additional consideration the
NC Board may wish to make to the FSMTB regarding the approval of continuing
education for NC Massage & Bodywork Therapists. We will also be
carefully considering any and all input as we consider next steps in re-working
the rule regarding continuing education for license renewal (section .0700).”
Our
input is requested, and to that end we need to ask some pertinent questions so
that we can have a context for providing usable input. Here are some questions
that Nancy and I have come up with. Please send Nancy your input and then
she will send a letter to the Board. Please also see the information after the
questions about the Practice Act versus the Rules.
1.
What are the reasons (besides the 3rd
party legal issue) that the NC BMBT (our Board) has decided to embrace a whole
new CE approved provider program? What problems exist with the current program?
How will moving to FSMTB solve those problems?
2.
Will the FSMTB be approving CE Providers,
or CE courses, or both?
3.
Will the NC BMBT continue to determine what
course content is acceptable and/or not acceptable for LMBT license renewal? Or
will this determination pass to the FSMTB?
4.
Will courses taught by teachers approved by
NCBTMB continue to be accepted (Our preference)? If not, will there be an
interim period? Can teachers currently approved by NCBTMB and who have been
teaching for a number of years be ‘grandfathered’ in or given streamlined
approval in the new program?
5.
Does the new FSMTB teacher approval program
have to be approved and adopted by all the member states for it to go into
effect? Or can each state opt in or out or even have a custom made
program administered by FSMTB? The latter could create a patchwork of
teacher requirements across neighboring states making it difficult for teachers
and therapists to cross state lines to give and take CE courses.
6.
We are CE teachers and we are concerned
about the quality of CE for therapists. Collectively we have hundreds of
years of experience and we would like to help you move forward in a way that
benefits our profession and the public. So we want to be included in your
decision making process. But we can’t give useful input if we don’t know
what proposals you are considering. Is it possible for some of our
members to attend the meetings of the ad hoc committee you have created for CE
or at least receive a report from the committee?
Practice Act Versus the rules in regard
to CE
Only
one thing about CE is in the Practice Act (which is law and can only be changed
by the state legislature) and that is the number of hours of CE required when
renewing. There is not even a definition of continuing education.
§ 90-632. License renewal and continuing
education.
(a) The license to practice under this
Article shall be renewed every two years.
(b) The continuing education requirement
for the initial license renewal is as follows:
(1) If the licensure period is two years or
more, each licensee shall submit to the Board evidence of the successful
completion of at least 24
hours of study, as approved by the Board, since the initial licensure
application date in the practice of massage and bodywork therapy.
(2) If the licensure period is less than
two years, but more than one year, each license shall submit to the Board
evidence of the successful completion of at least 12 hours of study, as
approved by the Board, since the initial licensure application date in the
practice of massage and bodywork therapy.
(c) For subsequent license renewals, each
licensee shall submit to the Board evidence of the successful completion of at
least 24 hours of study, as approved by the Board, since the previous licensure
renewal submission date in the practice of massage and bodywork therapy.
Everything
else about CE is in the Rules and Regulations of the Board so it does not have
to go through the legislature, but it does have to go through a legal process
which has several steps and opportunities for public input. If you go to
this page: http://www.bmbt.org/pages/DocumentCenter.html
you can download a copy of the Rules. All of the pertinent rules for CE are in
section .0700 which begins on page 36.
Right
now the rules say:
For the purposes of this Section, "approved continuing
education" means a course offered as follows:
(1)
by an approved provider as defined in Rule .0702;
(2) a course approved by the National
Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (NCCAOM); or
(3) a course in anatomy, physiology,
pathology or business management taken at a post secondary institution of
higher learning.
Approved Provider is defined as
follows:
(7) Approved provider. -- One that has been granted the
designation of "Approved Provider for Continuing Education" by the
National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork (NCBTMB).
The provider shall have this designation when the course begins and shall
maintain this designation continuously until the course is completed. The Board
does not recognize any retroactive designation of provider approval. Except as
herein stated, the provider shall follow all regulations set forth by its
accrediting agency. The Board may also recognize a verifiable continuing
education provider outside the United States or its territories that is a
post-secondary institution of higher learning approved by the educational
regulation authority of that foreign country.
To
change this rule, the Board must write a new rule and follow a lengthy process
defined by law, including a formal public input hearing and comment period
during which we can make objections, or suggestions. This process takes a
minimum of 90 days, usually longer. Please review these pages on the BMBT
website:
Regulatory
Overview: http://www.bmbt.org/pages/Overview.html
The
Rule Making Process (Scroll down): http://www.bmbt.org/pages/Rule_Making.html