Author, educator, advocate, and master practitioner Diana L. Thompson has drawn on her over 30 years' experience to create Hands Heal Electronic Health Records.
Author, educator, advocate, and master practitioner Diana L. Thompson has drawn on her over 30 years' experience to create Hands Heal Electronic Health Records.
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Diana loved massage from a young age, when in high school she used to give massages to friends. In college, a work-study job led to giving massages to the athletes.
After massage healed her from two terrible car accidents, her devotion to the profession was set. She went to massage school in 1983 and two years later opened Lakeside Massage in Seattle. In 1988 she began teaching clinical manual therapy.
A highlight of her early career was attending the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta as a practitioner for Team USA.
This 5th Edition of Hands Heal offers practitioner students comprehensive coverage of communication, assessment, and electronic and paper documentation skills, from taking client histories and setting functional goals to documenting treatment outcomes. Reflecting the latest changes in the curriculum and the profession, the book is more ELAP compliant, includes changes to ICD-10 and CPT codes, and updates to HIPAA regulations.
The new edition incorporates the effect of the Affordable Care Act on manual therapists and offers increased emphasis on communication with doctors and other healthcare providers. Integrated electronic charting (EHR) coverage, new case studies and new case study types, and compelling new online videos help students master course concepts and prepare for practice.
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Diana knew the manual therapy profession would have to adopt accepted medical practices in order to be seen as health care. Toward that goal, she wrote Hands Heal: Communication, Documentation and Insurance Billing for Massage Therapists in 1993.
The book was a foundation for practitioner throughout the country and is still being used today.
In 2016, she edited with Marissa Brooks Integrative Pain Management: Massage, Movement, and Mindfulness Based Approaches, partially in response to the epidemic of chronic pain and opioid addiction.
The next frontier in Diana's goal to further the manual therapy profession was service and advocacy.
She served as president of the Massage Therapy Foundation from 2006 to 2010, leading efforts to shape research to match massage as practiced and launching the first manual therapy research journal.
She worked as a research consultant for Group Health Research Institute for 15 years, selecting and training practitioner in back and neck pain study protocols. She wrote the Somatic Research column for several years for Massage & Bodywork magazine, making sense of research and applying it to clinical practice.
She received numerous awards, including Humanitarian of the Year and Massage Therapist of the Year.
As technology began to evolve, Diana saw there was a need for an electronic health record that would help put practitioners on the same level as other health care professionals.
She created a system that's rooted in evidence-informed health care. It allows practitioners to capture robust measurements and create reports that follow established health care protocols.
As the only system with a separate program designed for schools, Hands Heal EHR also helps create future practitioners who understand and follow best practices for therapeutic manual therapy.
Hands Heal EHR is the culmination of Diana's career, one that's been devoted to advancing the profession she loves so much.
Distinguished Service Award
2013
Humanitarian of the Year
Award 2013
National Distinguished Service Award - 2009 & 2013
Massage Therapist of the Year 2013
Outstanding Contributions to the Profession
AMTA (2009)
President's Award
AMTA (2006)
Meritorious Award
AMTA-WA (2006)
