VA Community Care Massage

If you are being seen for your medical care inside of the VA then you can ask your primary care physician for a referral to massage.

Another requirement to get this referral is to first utilize what the VA has to offer “in house”. That means you must do physical therapy on the same area of pain you are requesting massage for. If you did PT for Low back, but are requesting massage services for a shoulder, they will have you do PT also for shoulder before you are able to receive massage. However, if you did PT for low back already and are requesting massage services for low back, then you would be able to get this referral.

After your PCP or primary care physician puts in the referral request, it will then go to VA Community Care which is the department that handles any care or service you want to receive outside of the VA. Community Care will then decide if the referral is approved or denied.

After your referral is approved, you will have to call VA Community Care and have them send your approval to my business. You can reach community care by calling 414-384-2000 extension 45252 They will ask you for my business name. You can also give them my fax number which saves them time finding me 262-364-2029 We send everything via fax to secure all your personal health information or PHI. My business name: Kinetic Repose Massage and address: 4406 S. 68th St Suite 102 Greenfield, WI and my Phone 920-757-3608 and my name 🙂 Shannon Klipstein, LMT

After I receive your referral paperwork by fax, then I will schedule your first appointment date. I then send that date back to the VA which becomes the start date to determine when your approval expires. (click the next one to understand what I mean by it expires)

In your approval paperwork packet I receive from the VA they will assign people different types of approvals.

12 sessions in 90 days (Often if you have never used this service)(weekly massage)

12 sessions in 180 days (twice a month massage)

12 sessions in 360 days (Once a month massage)

It is important for me to both keep track of how many sessions you’ve used, but also keep an eye on the expiration date of that time frame. When you reach the end of that approval, I will then submit a request for services if more massage sessions are warranted. When submitting a new request, community care will decide again if it’s approved or denied and if they will issue more sessions. In some cases, they may want you to try physical therapy again, pm&r (pain management and rehab clinic), or other modalities. It depends on the veteran, and everyone is different.

You are only allowed to request one outside service at a time between massage, chiropractic and acupuncture. If you are receiving any of those other services, they may deny your request to receive massage therapy. You may have to wait until the other request expires before submitting a request for massage.

Previously veterans were able to request more services before the expiration date, however they have been following a standardized episodes of care and will no longer accept requests that are outside of what the approval paperwork states. So, if your approved for 12 sessions in 360 days but come in for your massages weekly, then send a request for more sessions… they will likely deny the request. They want you to follow the time frame and session number they put in the approval. VA Community Care have become very structured with this. What used to fly, is no longer flying by them.

I do submit notes from our massage sessions to the VA after each massage. These notes will go into your medical records. This is one advantage of seeing a fellow veteran for a massage therapist, as I know how things work inside the VA as a patient and veteran just like you do. You can trust that I will only validate you and stay on track only to what we are working on. It is my duty to protect you, and I want to see you succeed in your health-related goals.