Identify a target market — which physicians refer for massage

Now that you have selected a CRM and have it ready for use, it is time to start gathering a list of prospects so that you can have some fun filling up the database. But before you gather a list of prospects, you will need to identify your target market to make sure that you are filling up your CRM with the right contacts.

A “target market” is a particular sector of an industry or larger market to whom you will market your services. In other words, which specialty of medicine will you direct your attention toward? To identify your target market among physicians, ask yourself this question: “Who is seeing my future patients today?” Spend some time answering that before going on.

In my business, I focus solely on patients with insurance coverage for injuries. There are two types of injury claims that reimburse for massage therapy treatments in my area:

Worker’s Compensation
Personal Injury Protection (mostly motor vehicle accidents but also no-fault slip and falls in places of business)

A few cities and states are lucky enough to have massage therapy covered by health insurance. But for the rest of us, if we want to have our patients pay via insurance, then we will need to focus on these two types of insurance claims.

Thus, my own target market consists of doctors that see patients with these two types of claims. Your target market may differ depending on who you want to see and what your focus is. Some of you may even decide to work outside of the insurance system, which will open up your possible target markets much wider.

For now, let us look at which doctors see the above two types of claims, since many of you will be focusing on similar target markets.

2026 update

Confirm your state's rules before you build the list

Work comp and personal injury protection are still the two doors this chapter describes, but what sits behind them is set state by state and has moved since 2014. Whether massage therapy is a covered service, who is allowed to refer for it, what documentation the payer requires, and what the fee schedule pays have all been rewritten in some states in the years since. PIP itself is not sold in every state, and where it is, the limits vary widely.

So treat the coverage picture in this chapter as the author’s market at the time of writing rather than as a description of yours. Before you spend a month building a prospect list around a claim type, verify what your state currently covers, what it requires from the referring provider, and what it currently pays. Your state licensing board, its workers’ compensation agency, and its insurance regulator publish the rules; a state massage association or a billing service that already works your state is the faster route to a straight answer.

The targeting logic is unaffected — you are still asking who is seeing your future patients today. Which claim type puts those patients in front of you is the part to check locally.

Editorial note added in 2026. The surrounding chapter is the original text.

Occupational Medicine Doctors

Occupational Medicine (OM) doctors specialize in occupational health and workers compensation injuries. Within the field of occupational medicine, there are a few different specialties. It is good to know about these specialties so that you can recognize which ones are worth spending your time on. Two of them are, one of them is not.

Type 1

The first type is one that takes patients with new and existing work-related injuries. These doctors are often referred to as the “attending physician” throughout the course of a claim. They are usually (but not always) the only one that can request therapies for the patient. Unfortunately there is no specific name for this type of doctor that identifies them separately from the other types of occupational doctors, which we will get to in a moment. They do not generally take patients for anything else besides work-related injuries. These OM doctors sometimes see 20 or more injured patients per day, all of whom are looking for pain relief. These doctors will need your service.

Type 2

The second type of OM doctor performs a mix of services which includes, as above, taking patients with injury claims. But these doctors also perform health screenings for employment and certifications, so they split their time between seeing patients with open claims and ordering labs and other tests to generate reports for employers. You should add these doctors to your prospects list, however you should note that one of your first goals will be to find out how much of their time is actually spent seeing patients with claims. You might find that these places are not worth much time or effort because they simply do not see many injury patients and spend most of their time with health screenings.

Type 3

The third type of OM doctor is the one that specializes in performing independent medical evaluations (IMEs) on behalf of the insurance company. That might sound like a contradiction to you. How can they be independent if they perform the evaluations on behalf of the insurance company, via a referral from the insurance company, and paid for by the insurance company? Well, they cannot. And they do not. There is nothing independent about these evaluations. It is for this reason that you can cross every one of these doctors off of your list. They are essentially paid to make an argument to stop treatment or, at very least, to limit the liability of the insurance company. I have been told they pocket a cool $2,500 to $5,000, and up, per patient that they see. I cannot personally verify that amount, but I would not doubt it. These doctors will never refer to you because they do nothing besides IMEs. Unless you are looking for a real downer to a positive day, just avoid IME doctors.

Internal Medicine Doctors

Another key source of referrals for massage therapists are doctors who specialize in Internal Medicine (IM). IM doctors vary greatly in terms of the size of their office, what kind of patients they see, and even in how they treat the same injury. IM doctors are a broad category of doctors that massage therapists can and should target.

IM doctors sometimes have a Family Practice or General Practice. These offices should be included in your focus. An office that specializes in a specific area of medicine will often have an IM doctor on staff (for example, a nephrology clinic might have four doctors and one or more might be listed as IM). These doctors can most likely be left out unless they have a separate office that they work at outside of the specialized clinic, or the specialized clinic is relevant to your focus (like, for my target market, orthopedic offices or sports medicine clinics).

Physiatrists and Physical Medicine Doctors

Physiatrists, sometimes called physical medicine and rehabilitation doctors, specialize in rehab for musculoskeletal disorders. These doctors, like OM doctors, often see many work comp patients. They can be MDs or DOs and are often already utilizing massage therapy as a treatment for their patients. Add all of these doctors to your list.

Let us look now at creating that list.