Heal, Recover, and Unwind: Understanding Who Should Make Up Your Healthcare Roster

Jennifer Hope | Director, Marketing, ARTA

When you hear the term “health-care team,” who do you think about? Probably your family doctor, your pharmacist, and the nurses that assist you in hospitals or clinics. But your team has room for a lot more players than that. ARTA’s health benefits coverage includes access to thirteen paramedical practitioners who, in tandem with your main lineup, can assist you in achieving your health goals.

Of these practitioners, the most popular by far (when it comes to claims made by ARTA members) are services provided by registered massage therapists, physiotherapists, and chiropractors. Used on their own or together, these therapies can play a meaningful role in supporting your overall health.

Massage Therapy

Massage therapy can be used for a variety of reasons — chronic pain management, injury recovery, or to loosen up tight muscles. The effect is to help you move more comfortably, improve circulation, and encourage the body’s natural healing process.

Some Massage Techniques

Swedish Massage — a full-body treatment that focuses on relaxation, improves circulation, and relieves muscle tension by using flowing motions, kneading friction, tapping, and gentle stretching.

Cupping — cupping uses suction to pull on your skin to increase blood flow to the affected areas.

Hot Stone Massage — a deep tissue massage that uses smooth, water-heated stones to promote muscle relaxation and relieve tension in the body.

Chiropractic Care

Chiropractic care focuses on the spine and nervous system and treats the bones, soft tissues, and joints you use for everyday movement. The spine is a focus for chiropractors as it plays a key role in mobility. Chiropractic adjustments are a natural approach to helping patients alleviate pain and gain mobility. Going to see a chiropractor may provide you some relief from chronic pain.

Chiropractor Techniques

Diversified Technique — restores spinal alignment, repairs joint dysfunction, and ensures proper movement and mobility. Using hands-on thrusts with extreme precision, practitioners can restore spinal alignment and increase a patient’s range of motion, which may be affected by misaligned joints or bones.

Spinal Mobilization (Manipulation) — a manual therapy that can relieve pressure on joints, reduce inflammation, and improve nerve function. This technique uses gentle thrusting and stretching.

Physiotherapy

Physiotherapy is centred on restoring strength, function, and movement following an injury, surgery, or an illness. This type of therapy can help to reduce pain by improving mobility and supports proper movement patterns to improve daily life. Your physiotherapist can provide personalized guidance and education, which empowers patients to take a role in their recovery.

If patients commit to their treatment plan, physiotherapy can be very effective.

Some Physiotherapy Techniques

Manual Therapy — a combination of kneading and muscle manipulation used to flush out scar tissue from the source of pain and stimulate the healing process.

Electrotherapy — using mild and gentle electric pulses, this technique can be used to cut down on inflammation and improve the range of motion in muscles. Electrotherapy is proven to be to be effective when combined with manual therapy.

Dry Needling — also known as intramuscular stimulation (IMS), is used to treat musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction. This method involves inserting thin sterile needles into specific trigger points within muscles to release tension.

Paramedical services are an excellent way to manage pain, recover from an injury, or simply de-stress. ARTA Benefit Plans let you choose how to organize your roster of paramedical professionals and match them to your unique goals. If you participate in an ARTA Benefit Plan, please see the accompanying chart for your annual maximums and per-visit maximums.

ARTA Benefit Plan members can make use of a combined annual maximum for paramedical coverage, meaning you can allocate all your coverage to providers that make sense for your health goals.

Jennifer is ARTA’s Director of Marketing. She holds a management degree from the University of Lethbridge with a major in marketing and has a Group Benefits Associate (GBA) designation, giving her a particular insight into the world of health benefit plans.