Allina and American Massage Therapy Association researching hospital massage benefits

[Massage Magazine, April 27, 2011] The American Massage Therapy Association (AMTA) announces a new collaboration with the Penny George Institute for Health and Healing at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The collaboration focuses on research analyses of the effectiveness of therapeutic massage in care provided to inpatients in the hospital from July 2005 through December 2009.

The approach will be an in-depth analysis of more than 13,000 patients who received integrative therapies compared with 2,400 patients who did not. Since therapeutic massage is the most common integrative therapy provided at Abbott Northwestern, the results of the study will provide the first comprehensive evidence on the effectiveness of therapeutic massage therapy in a "real-world" inpatient setting.