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Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance – Make Your Marketing More Effective

And that is part of what I wanted to talk about today, is not just why is Target Market worth your time, but how you can use the information from a Target Market worksheet or activity and apply it to your marketing in a very practical way.

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Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors. Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hi there, my name is Michelle Grasek. I am really excited to be here with you today to talk about some core concepts in marketing if we haven’t met before. I am the host of the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast and I’m a practicing acupuncturist. In upstate New York, and I’ve been teaching marketing in our industry for about nine years.

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And today we’re going to talk about how to apply the concepts of target market to make your marketing more effective. Before we dive in, I’d like to take a moment to thank the American Acupuncture Council for the opportunity to be here with you today, talking about marketing. I really believe that Effective, excellent marketing is a really important way that we can reach more patients and have a much bigger impact in our communities.

So let’s dive into this topic. Let’s go to the slides.

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So the reason that I wanted to start with a discussion of target market there are several reasons. The first is that whenever I teach marketing, I like to do it in a very linear fashion, right? Each piece for really effective and holistic marketing. builds on the piece before it, right? And so Target Market and a concept called Ideal Patient Avatar, which we’ll talk about in a moment, are the first steps in really good marketing.

Okay. So I wanted to start at the beginning with this core concept. And I also wanted to talk about Target Market because I understand It’s a very unsexy topic that really doesn’t get a lot of love. Most of my marketing students and marketing clients let me know that they feel like target market is a purely theoretical exercise and they’ll do a target market worksheet, but then they have no idea how to actually apply it when they go to put together their marketing.

We’ll talk about some target market basics. So we’re all on the same page. We’ll discuss why it’s so important and why you should spend some time on it, even if it seems like a kind of dry theoretical exercise. And then I will share pretty quickly. Basically my number one practical tip for actually being able to use what you discover in a target market exercise in your marketing to make your marketing so much more effective.

So let’s cover some definitions. You might already be familiar with this, but again, just to make sure we’re all on the same page, target market, of course, is a Big picture description of a population of people that you would really love to treat, right? These are the people you want to become your patients and Target Market is generally very broad.

It’s typically a lot of demographic information age, sometimes gender, location, etc. And we’ll talk about some of the details of that later on. But the most important thing is Target Market is it’s a very broad description of a group of people. Whereas Ideal Patient Avatar, which sometimes I’ll refer to it as IPA just to save some words, is a very detailed description, like nitty gritty details of a single person who fits into any The bigger picture of your target market, right?

It’s one person who is within your target market population. And this could be a real person, it could be imagined or some combination of both, but this is again, just a very detailed description of this person. Okay? So just, So that we have both of those concepts in mind. So let’s talk about why target market matters, even though it can feel just like a dry exercise that’s theoretical, right?

Like, why is it not just theoretical? When you do it right, target market should really determine the direction of all of your marketing, right? Once you’ve identified the people that you’re speaking to, then you know what images to use. What messages to share with them, what tone of voice to use, sometimes even what vocabulary is going to resonate with them.

And so it’s really helping you make all of your marketing decisions. So in that way, it should certainly make your marketing easier, right? If you are sitting in front of your computer screen and you don’t know what to type for an Instagram post, knowing your target market is certainly going to help with that as well as many other types of marketing.

And. Target market also makes your marketing so much more efficient and effective because you are going to be speaking directly to the people who you want to be your patients in a way that gets them to sit up and take notice because you understand them and their needs. And so that will make people take action at a higher rate.

And so as a result, Your marketing should be more effective overall, and it’s more efficient because that means you have to spend less time doing marketing because the marketing that you’ve already created is working harder for you. And Target Market also helps you create really beautiful, authentic marketing because once really once you know your ideal patient avatar, you can get into the head of your ideal patient. Then you understand their goals and their values, the outcomes that they would like from treatment, and you can really speak to them on this deeper level in your marketing. And help them understand, what can you do for them that’s going to bring them towards their goals?

And that is going to really, oops, sorry about that. That’s really going to connect with them deeply. Okay? And that connection, again, is what makes people sit up and take notice and makes them take action. much more quickly than responding to a broader, more vague message, okay? And when I say take action, I’m almost always talking about either clicking your Schedule Now button, or calling your office, or setting up a free consult.

Whatever it is that’s the first step in working with you. And there’s this concept in marketing where we always say if you’re speaking to everyone, you’re not really speaking to anyone. So what does this mean? It’s just referring to the idea that if you have a really broad, vague marketing message, something that’s very watered down, then it’s not catching the attention of any particular person or group of people.

And As a result, people might not know if what you’re saying actually applies to them. So a big example could be saying that, having marketing about pain management. Now there’s nothing wrong with that, right? But it’s very vague. We know that there’s so many different.

Conditions, and symptoms, and specialties within pain management. And what’s more effective, for example, is if you talked, we’ll say, you’re creating an Instagram post. If you discussed carpal tunnel, or knee pain, or runner’s shin splints, right? Then you’re getting much more specific, and the person who has runner’s shin splints is going to sit up and say, Wow, I had no idea that acupuncture could help with that.

That’s what I need, right? So it’s resonating with them deeply. Whereas if you just say you write a post about pain management, they might not connect that to their specific symptom or experience. Okay? So if you’re speaking to everyone, you’re not really speaking to anyone because your message

And I have a friend who is a marketing copywriter, excuse me, in Australia, and she always phrases it like this. She’d rather be someone’s piña colada than everyone’s cup of tea. And she’s assuming that everyone likes tea. I think, I guess they drink a lot of tea in Australia. But the idea here is that it’s better to attract a specific person, right?

Cause not everybody likes piña coladas. It’s a specific group of people. Then to just blast out a broad message that doesn’t really make anyone pay attention. And again, the result of all of this is that it helps the people that you really love to treat, the ones who have the symptoms and conditions that you’re passionate about, it makes them feel seen and heard and understood.

And this creates that connection and builds trust. And a huge part of what we’re doing with our marketing is trying to get our audience to trust us enough to Let us put needles in them, and to make a financial investment in acupuncture. Okay, so this trust is really what makes people more likely to take that action, right?

Make an appointment, give your office a call. So all of this is how Target Market and your ideal patient avatar come together to make your marketing more effective and more efficient. So that is really why it is worth your time and your energy. Okay. And so typically first, when you are doing these exercises, you would define your target market.

It’s very broad. And then you would decide on an ideal patient who would be your avatar. Okay. And you would typically give them a name and your goal is to make them real to you. Okay, so some concepts that I’m sure everyone is pretty familiar with. Target market is mostly demographic information, right?

You’re describing a population of people. And I would add to this, at the bottom, I would add symptoms or condition as well. Okay. Because that kind of helps make this exercise less sometimes students tell me defining their target market feels very kind of cold. They’re just listing this demographic information.

Try to think about what do all these people have in common? It’s probably the symptoms and conditions that you’re passionate about treating, right? So make sure you put that on there. And then get into the nitty gritty and define your Ideal patient avatar. So this is the most perfect patient you can imagine for your practice.

They are they listen to your advice. Maybe they’re curious about Chinese medicine. They feel better when you give them a treatment. They come back for their wellness visits. They’re willing to invest in their health. They’re willing to make the financial investment in you, as well as to make the personal investment in themself to follow your instructions so they can actually feel better.

Whatever it is that is the perfect patient for you you’re imagining and describing that person. Okay? So if 40 patients for you would be full time in your week, imagine 40 of this person, that’s who you’re trying to describe. And of course this person could be real or imagined. I find that most of my Marketing students come up with some combination of a real patient who has these extra imagined characteristics that really make them perfect.

So you’re getting into the nitty gritty and making this person feel real to you and if you look up Ideal Patient Avatar or sometimes it’s called an ICA, an Ideal Client Avatar. If you look up those workbooks online, they’re going to ask you very specific things like, What does this person like to read?

How do they spend their disposable income? Do they have pets? What are their pets names? What charities do they donate to? What do they do in their free time? Et cetera, et cetera. Go really quite detailed. And the reason that we’re doing this is because you want to give this person life inside your mind, right?

Your ideal patient avatar is the person that you are speaking directly to in all of your marketing. Okay? So whenever you sit down to For example, write a paragraph for your website, or write an Instagram post, or put together a reel, whatever it might be. You are holding an image of this ideal patient avatar in your mind, and you are answering their questions in the way that you would answer them in real life.

You are thinking about, what are the questions that this person would have? What are the Doubts and barriers that prevent them from making an appointment and how could I address them to specifically motivate this person to make an appointment and sometimes when I discuss this with my marketing clients their question is Won’t that only attract a very narrow segment of the population or just this one person?

And the answer is, the beauty of this whole exercise is no. What happens is you end up attracting anyone who shares the values, the goals and the outcomes that they want from treatment as your ideal patient avatar, right? Anyone who has the same symptoms or condition and really resonates with the the ideals of your avatar is going to hear that in your marketing.

Okay. So I hope this is making sense. You are. Thinking about your marketing in terms of answering questions and writing text, creating marketing that resonates with this ideal patient, this single person, but it’s actually going to resonate broadly with anyone who has anything in common with your avatar.

Okay. And so that really makes your marketing effective. I can’t I can’t Emphasize that enough that is really what shifts your marketing from being like good or really pretty good to being Excellent. To being very effective. That’s what shifts it from from, it makes it that you have to do less marketing overall, which is what we talked about in the beginning, right?

So the marketing that you’ve created in the past continues working hard for you. because it has this specificity, right? Because you are really connecting with your target audience connecting with their values, with the outcomes that they want from treatment, et cetera. Okay. And so the most important practical tip that I want to share with you today is how do you use your Ideal patient avatar that you just spent all this time creating and making real in your mind.

So what do you do with that information? Because often I’ll tell people like, oh, use, imagine your IPA and use that to write your website. And people are like, that’s great. I don’t know how to do that in real life. What does that mean? So I have an exercise with you and it’s It sounds silly.

I promise it is effective. It works so well. So the exercise is simple. Make sure that you’ve named your ideal patient avatar. I find that is helpful for most people. So let’s say that your avatar’s name is Sam. You and let’s say you are writing the Frequently Asked Questions page on your website, and you’re struggling with some writer’s block, you don’t know what to say so what you’re going to do is you are going to imagine in your mind this fully fleshed out ideal patient avatar, Sam, as if they were sitting in front of you.

Try to really sink into not only like yourself and you’re listening to Sam, right? If they’re sitting across from you, but put yourself in that person’s shoes and think about what are the questions that Sam would ask you based on, the symptoms and conditions that, Sam has, and their, again, their values their goals for their life, their the outcomes from treatment that they would like.

Based on that, what would Sam ask me about acupuncture? What would be the barriers that are preventing Sam from getting acupuncture? What might be their doubts or their worries? And then how would I answer Sam in a way that is compelling specifically to them to help them understand how acupuncture can be effective?

is worth their time and their energy, right? Like why should Sam specifically get acupuncture for XYZ condition? Okay. And when you do this exercise, as goofy as it sounds, what’s going to happen is you are going to write marketing copy that is incredibly compelling just for Sam, right? But it’s going to resonate with Sam.

Anyone who shares SAM’s values and goals, and it’s gonna speak really deeply to them, okay? And again, that’s what gets them to take action. Okay, so I only wanted to share this one tip with you today because honestly, the whole exercise of Target Market and Ideal Patient Avatar and putting it into practice with this tip, it is a little bit of a project.

And so I think it’s best to spend time focusing just on this for now and you’ll get a ton of value out of your Target Market exercises with just this one exercise.

Thank you so much for being here with me today. You are always welcome to send me questions about your marketing. My email is michelle at michelleGrasek. com and if you’d like you can check out my website. I have some free PDA classes as well as lots of free worksheets on marketing. My website is michelleGrasek.

com and you can also check out my podcast, which is Acupuncture Marketing School. So thank you again to the American Acupuncture Council for the opportunity to be here with you. Have a great day.

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Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance – Do You Have To Pay Them Back?

what happens when an insurance company sends you a letter that says, we paid you money, but oops, we shouldn’t have, and we want it back.

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Well, Hello there, friends. Welcome in to another show. This is one that I think is going to be important to you and to many, simply because it’s going As you’re aware, I do the network where I help day to day offices with issues, but we do seminars. And one of the big questions I often get, and I’ve gotten a lot this year, in fact, in the last month, is what happens when an insurance company sends you a letter that says, we paid you money, but oops, we shouldn’t have, and we want it back.

Do we have to pay that back? What’s the protocol here? Can they force it? Can they take payment from a future one? Let’s talk about the laws when it relates to that. When an insurance company makes a payment. And then later decides it’s a payment they shouldn’t have made and now is requesting you to pay it back.

Let’s go to the slides. Let’s take a look at what the laws tell us about this. Cause that’s what’s really important is to understand where’s the responsibility. Think of this, you bill an insurance, you verify it and they pay you. And then later they say, oops, we shouldn’t have paid you. The first place we might look is what did the statute of limitations say as far as how they can recoup it?

My goodness, we have a statute of limitations with many insurances that can be as little as 90 days. Often it could be a year and some may be a little longer, but generally a year or less. So if there’s a statute of limitations for them to Make a payment to us, us sending a bill. Is there a statute of limitations for them to force it back?

Let’s take a look at some of the states here. I won’t say I have every state, but this will at least give you an idea. Under federal law, they can do for one year for any reason, just for whatever. And that’s under Fed, so they can force that. But the states are a little bit different.

Look at these first states, Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Delaware, they have no statute of limitation. So then what happens in those states? What that will happen is it defaults to the federal statute. I’m going to say it’s going to be. A year. However, look at states like Georgia, 90 days. South Carolina and Texas, 180.

Arizona, California, one year. Notice it only says 12 months. 12 months and one year, a little bit different. I know that seems a little weird, but nonetheless falls in that. What this boils down to, though, is they have a time limit that if they don’t send the request within this time, They can’t force the refund.

So by example, in Georgia, if they send it to you and it’s a year later, you can tell them, go fly a kite because statute of limitation is too old. Much if you send a claim, you’ve all done this. You send a claim a little bit late from the statute, what does the insurance say? Oh, we’re not going to pay.

Kind of like catching an airplane. If you don’t make it by the time it leaves the gate, you’re not getting on. So don’t be afraid to first push back when it comes to just simply statute of limitations. But I want to take it a step further. Because at some point, who’s the responsibility for it? Think of all the work we do to verify insurance.

They say it’s going to be covered. They pay it. And they come back later and say it’s not covered. Let’s take a look at a letter like this. This is under a federal plan. And I think it’s interesting to how this is written. Notice it says here, Dear Billing Department, they’re sending this to us. And it says, in regards to the request for repayment of a claim, the request made to you was voluntary.

Now I want everyone to notice that statement. Now, not often do they say that, but in this case, they’re clearly stating it’s voluntary. So it’s a voluntary overpayment request because you are in Network Provider, you do not have to pay back any overpayment if the overpayment was discovered after 365 days.

Again, this is under the federal plan. So it’s one year. So notice they’re saying, oops, we made this payment and we shouldn’t have, but since it’s over one year, we’re asking nicely, would you go ahead and refund it? My answer? No. Why would I refund it when there’s no requirement? In fact, what they’re saying is We made a mistake.

It’s our mistake, but we want you to pay us back and you chase after your patient to get the money. And I’m gonna say, no, you’re the insurance company. You made a mistake on paying it. You go after your insured. That responsibility is yours, not ours. And again, notice how they put it voluntary because There’s case law that goes with this.

And here’s a letter that goes over the protocols of when an insurance company pays something wrong and they later want to recoup. And now what I want to do here is emphasize really where the case law is. And it goes into this. It says, I would like to bring your attention to these cases. Federated Mutual Insurance Company versus Good Samaritan.

This dates all the way back to 1974, by the way. So none of this is new. Where the court held that an insurance company could not recover the mistaken overpayment. And determine that the insurance company is in the best position to know what policy limits are and must bear the responsibility of their own mistake.

So let’s say, by example, you bill an insurance. They say they have 20 visits for acupuncture. Great. You bill all 20. And then they come back and say, Oops, we made a mistake. It turns out the patient only has 10. They told you it’s 20 and they paid for it. Now they want to come back? No, that’s their mistake.

This is what it’s highlighting. And that goes on here for the City of Hope. Notice this dates back to 1992. It says, Where the court held that in the absence of fraud. A health care provider is not legally obligated to refund payments it receives from an insurer if the insurance subsequently determines the payments were paid in error.

Now again, this is not something you did wrong. You billed it and they just said, oops, there was no coverage. Maybe the person ran out of visits. Maybe the person had limited coverage. Whatever the case may be. Whose responsibility is that? The insurance carrier. So I’m going to suggest do not be afraid to push back and say, based on these two case laws, we shouldn’t refund because it’s your responsibility.

However, what if you’re in network? Here’s where things get tricky. Generally, when you’re in network with a plan, your contract has language in there that says, even if we make a mistake, you have to repay it. That would be true based on the contract, unless The statute of limitations is greater. So notice the federal plan.

Even that one knew after statute of limitations they can’t force it. So the first place to look if you’re in network is to see whether or not it fits the statute of limitations. If it does not, then going to push back on it. But if it does, they’re probably going to force it. You may try sending the letter that I just had here and see what they may respond, but generally they’re going to say no.

In fact, this is what you might find. What if they deduct payment? From a payment? That’s a future payment. Under the contract, they can do that. Now, what if you say, but Sam, they deducted it and it was from another patient? It’s not a HIPAA violation because they’re not sharing information.

They’re just saying, hey, we paid you a hundred dollars before and we shouldn’t have, and we’re going to take the hundred we’re paying you in the future. Again, based on contract. But what if you’re out of network? Do you have to accept that if you’re out of network? If they’ve already deducted the payment.

Obviously, you’re aware of possession is 90 percent of the law. Now it becomes us to push back. I will tell you, I had an office, this is a few years ago now, that an insurance had recouped 6, 000. They pushed back, took to court, they won. They won not only the amount, but some damages, as well as attorney’s fees.

The only problem is it has to be worth it, because what if you’re talking 100? Is it going to be worth you to file what it takes to go against an insurance company? Probably not, but don’t be afraid, and I’m going to suggest always push back, Statute of limitations, number one. Number two, the case law. The insurance company’s in the best position.

Is it our responsibility when we’ve already done everything to make sure that the policy was covered? And what’s the best way to know a verification? Bill and they pay. And if they’ve paid it, And they later come back and say, it’s our mistake. Generally it’s theirs. Do not be afraid to push back on that.

Here’s something to point out. This is an Aetna insurance. And take a look at, this is an important one. It says, our records indicate the overpayment as noted on the enclosed document is not eligible to offset. So you’re either out of network or it’s past statute of limitations. So they’re saying we can’t offset it.

We can’t take it from money. Therefore we must request that you issue a check or money order payable to us for the above amount. So we’re saying will you please be nice? My answer is, no, thank you. Do not be afraid to push back. They’re obviously looking to see if you’re afraid. Many times you get these letters and IDOT offices just flat out ignore it.

Unless they can force it, what are they going to do, take you to court for it? No, they’re just hoping you don’t know the case law. They’re going to take it in the short. So always be available to push back. Don’t be afraid. In fact, get your patient involved. Ultimately, their policy is one that they assumed it was correct when it was paid.

How do they come back later and say no? Don’t be afraid to push back. As always, the American Acupuncture Council Network is there for this type of question and many more. This is what we deal with on a day to day basis. Take a look at our site or come to a seminar. I’d love to see you in the future.

Otherwise, please take care. Wishing you best, my friends.

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Acupuncture Business Insurance Quote

How important is an acupuncture business insurance quote? Like requesting a quote for any other valuable product or service, it is instrumental to finding the best insurance provider.

Here’s how it can help in making an informed decision:

Comprehensive comparison among prospects. Acupuncture insurance providers often include more detailed information in their quotations to supplement what is readily available on their websites. This detailed information is crucial for making informed decisions; it provides coverage options and other pertinent details. You gain more understanding of each policy by reviewing these quotes, allowing you to compare different providers effectively and select the best one for your needs.

Transparent pricing. As an acupuncture business owner, you want to engage with an insurer who values transparency, particularly in pricing. Requesting an acupuncturist business insurance quote that underscores “no hidden costs” ensures you know the price upfront, which helps narrow your choices.

Budget planning. Knowing the prices through quotes makes it easier to create your budget plan. Acupuncture insurance comes in various packages and prices. Requesting quotes from multiple providers helps you figure out the numbers, bolstering your decision-making process.

Customization options. Every business is unique, and acupuncture insurance providers understand that. You can request to customize your quotes based on your unique business needs. With insurance tailored to your needs, the protection for your business and professional reputation is worth every penny spent on the coverage.

Peace of mind. As the acupuncture business is part of a high-risk industry—where you never know when a client might file a malpractice complaint—comprehensive insurance coverage provides peace of mind, knowing that your business and professional name are protected.

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If you are looking for a reputable insurance provider for your acupuncture business, look no further than the American Acupuncture Council. Call us today at (800) 838-0383 for more inquiries.

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Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance – Using Touch and Moxa to Change the Pulses

As that’s pulse diagnosis. Now, with my system, it’s very important that we feel a flow in the pulse. So when we have our fingers on the patient’s pulses, both left and right, we want to be able to feel a flow of sine waves.

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Hi, this is Dr. Martha Lucas, and I am here to talk to you a little bit about pulse diagnosis today. I want to thank the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity to talk to you to speak with you because if you know me at all or have watched any of my presentations here, you know that I think the most important skill that we have in Chinese medicine is the correct diagnosis.

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And for me, As that’s pulse diagnosis. Now, with my system, it’s very important that we feel a flow in the pulse. So when we have our fingers on the patient’s pulses, both left and right, we want to be able to feel a flow of sine waves. So for example, here, we would want to be able to see a flow of sine waves.

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Going from this way, and then on the left side, we want it to go this way. And as a sine wave is up and down, right? Yang rising to the peak, and then the yin down. And between these, so between our left and right pulses, we will see the sine waves connect in what looks like the infinity symbol.

These connect this way. around and over and up. So we get the infinity symbol from these wrists. Infinity coming over like this. Sine wave. That’s how we know that all of the organ systems are connected. connected and flowing with each other because good health is the flow of energy, the flow of yin and yang from organ system to organ system.

Now, if you’re not paying attention to the flow, let’s say you never heard of that before, things, yin and yang do the tai chi symbol, they flow with each other, but you’ve never thought about that in the pulses. Do what? You take what you think is slippery away, or you take what you think is wiry away, and then you say, Oh, good.

It doesn’t feel wiry anymore. That’s not really a sufficient goal for treatment. Sure, the acupuncture needles did something. They, theoretically, what they did, if it doesn’t feel wiry anymore, was, They opened up the channel to more energy flow, which is always a good thing. Or if you feel like you felt slippery and that went away.

Then again it opened up the channels for flow. I always pick on slippery and wiry because the name of my book is Pulse Diagnosis. One of my books, pulse Diagnosis Beyond Slippery and Wiry, because I feel like in a lot of schools, especially the school I went to. We all knew how to feel slippery and wiry, but there’s so much more than that, and so many depths of pulses than superficial, middle, deep.

We can feel the depth of even pre birth emotional issues in the pulses, so we know that We can feel the person’s whole life from the very beginning to up to the end when yin and yang start to separate, which looks like this, right? The yin is going, the organ systems are getting empty. They can’t hold the energy anymore.

And so that allows the yang to just rise up uncontrollably. So the pulses literally start to separate like this. And it’s interesting that students sometimes in my. Intern courses will bring, I always tell them, bring in their toughest cases. Oftentimes it’s somebody who’s a little bit older, maybe they’ve got some cancer going on, and they’ll say, feel how this person’s 84 years old and feel how strong their pulses are.

And I will point out to them that isn’t a good thing. That’s not a healthy, strong pulse. It’s yin and yang starting to separate like that so that the yang is hitting your fingertips very hard because it doesn’t have any control. Core down there. So there are many beautiful things to learn about the pulses.

These are what has kept me interested in Chinese medicine for 25 years. In fact, I recently took a little trip to the town where my mentor lived and took it. It’s now a barber shop, but I took a picture of the little building and I’m going to write a little newsletter about how that What is now a barbershop was really my beginning in Chinese medicine with my pulse diagnosis mentor Jim Ramholz more than 25 years ago and how that has just kept pulse has kept Chinese medicine alive for me.

So I wanted to tell you a little bit today also about a recent situation where I Balance the pulses, but I did not use acupuncture because, I like to tell people Chinese medicine is a complete system of medicine, right? Acupuncture is just one of the therapies that we use. It’s probably the most well known therapy, the most very much.

well studied in terms of research studies therapy, but it’s not the only therapy we can use when someone comes in and we need to give them some treatment. And you all know Gua Sha, Tui Na, all that, but with this particular case, I used a combination of just touching the person while I had my hand on certain points.

on either the left or the right wrist, depending on what I was trying to change. And some moxa. So just stick moxa. I didn’t use a moxa bong. In this case, I wanted to be able to move the moxa around to different places with my hand on the pulse. And so I use stick moxa. So this person someone I’ve treated for a long time.

She initially came to me many years ago, probably. 20 years ago because she wanted to get pregnant, she ended up adopting a child, but that child is now in college. So I know it was a long time ago and she’s gluten intolerant. So she was, she, I’ll never forget, told me that if she goes to a restaurant and a piece of wheat has touched the plate on which she ate, she would have some sort of a gluten intolerant reaction.

So in her case The diagnosis of gluten intolerance and her experience with it was intermingled with fear, right? And fear we see in a scattered kidney pulse. The kidneys look, I draw them like little dots on the piece of paper, which means there’s no form to it. It’s just, little pieces of energy that are just scattered in and among the kidney position.

So in this case, we had a few things to deal with, but for example, this patient never traveled because she was so afraid of gluten. We, I, she ended up being able to travel. She got I think a scuba diving certificate. So she was able to travel and do that. And her life, she still. She doesn’t eat anything with gluten in it, but you can tell that her life was more robust.

She had less fear, et cetera, et cetera. Of course, adopting a child added a good deal of joy to her life. So I would see her on and off after that. But she recently came in just, she looked, she almost looked like a ragdoll. Her spirit was, Not really even there. I thought she looked a little gray.

She was very thin. She’d lost 15 pounds very quickly. She was just basically an emotional wreck, which is why her spirit looked so dull and just almost not there. She looked, she might have, you might say, like an empty vessel. She had a number of emotional. Her daughter went away to college, but that was about a year and a half ago.

She claimed that it all went well, but she had gotten a divorce prior to that. There was divorce, there was the daughter going away to college, which again, she claimed she was totally well adjusted to, but I have my misgivings about that. But she had most recently had a very Separating interaction with her parents and her sister, and her parents are aging and need some care, and so there was the burden of the guilt of feeling like, oh, I’m going to need to take care of my parents.

And now I’ve broken up with the more or less. Plus, she also had a relationship breakup. And because of all this emotional burden, and, she was not able to eat. So that was where the weight loss came in. Everything she ate, even the things she knew were quote unquote safe to eat, she couldn’t eat, lots of vomiting, and panic attacks.

The day she came to see me was in the afternoon. She told me she’d had five panic attacks that day. So I thought, alright, just looking at her, I, and I’m a good and gentle needler. And she is one of my less is more needle patients. I’m sure we all have some of those where you’re, you take the pulses and you study the, I study the pulses to think, what are the four to six needles I can use with this person that’s actually going to change the pulses back to normal and back to balance.

So she’s one of those. But I just said to myself that day, I’m not going to do any needles. So I said, look, let’s get you up on the table and see what’s happening. One of the things that was happening was that her heart was completely blocked. So the liver came up toward the heart, but there was just a big block there.

No movement in the heart pulse at all, which made sense to me because she had just separated herself from some people. It didn’t really go well. She had a breakup, et cetera, et cetera. So the heart doesn’t want to, feel any of that kind of energy. Remember, all of the organ systems are set up to protect the spirit.

So the I, so I had my hand, that’s the left side, right? The left pulses. So I had one hand there, my pulse taking hand. And all I did was put my right hand over her heart. I didn’t put it on any acupuncture points. I just thought, I’m just going to put my hand here as a comforting, comforting.

Motion and lo and behold, it was just unbelievable, the heart pulse opened up. So I thought, alright, so the heart is feeling, it needs to be open, right? How are, how is this energy going to get over to these kidneys, like I told you in the figure 8, if this isn’t open, if the heart isn’t open, the heart’s small intestine position.

I was very thrilled about that. So I just kept that position for a few minutes, just, letting her calm down, letting her breathe, letting her spirit be open, feeling the liver calm down, feeling it get much more smooth, then the kidneys can come in, right? Because the kidneys want to protect themselves against getting stolen away by perverse liver energy.

So I thought, all right, once I get that open, I went over to her. took her right pulses, right side, because of course, she’s got that gluten intolerance, digestive issues. And so in this particular case, her spleen and stomach pulse was empty. So it went down like this. It was, I draw it like a down arrow. So from childhood, she had issues around nurturing.

And and that ended up as gluten intolerance. So in this case, I kept my pulse taking hand on that, those fingers on that pulse and put my hand just on her abdomen. So I spread it out between REN8 and REN12 because I wanted to get as much of her abdomen as I could. And I let that fill up.

I let that particular, the earth pulse, the spleen stomach pulse start to fill up a little bit. So she had some energy to live, right? That’s our nurturing part of our pulses, the earth. So we needed to build that up so she had some energy for actual living. So I got that going, spent a few minutes with my hand right there and then I went back to the left side, tested out, made sure that the kidney, liver, heart positions were still open and flowing.

So I knew I could get some cross pulse flow going. And then I decided I was going to use some Moxa because I thought let’s get some heat back into the system, rebuild the digestion. I think that’s one of the things Moxa is really good for. And I love doing it over REN8, of course, because then we’re really building up the, her basic core, which I think had been damaged by all of this emotional stuff.

So I did Moxa. There for a few minutes again, constantly checking the pulses to see how they were changing. Then I went down to Kidney 1, excuse me, I did it on Kidney 1. And and just generally around the kidney, Kidney 1, Kidney 2, Kidney 3. Again, I wanted to build that energy up, getting it going.

Forced up through the system because remember in the pulses, the kidneys fund everything. In the, in pulse diagnosis, we know that the kidneys Sorry, the kidneys fund everything. So all the energy to all of the other organ systems is coming from the kidneys. So I knew I needed to get those built back up.

So the getting the heart built up, getting the earth rebuilt is going to start from the kidneys. So I worked on the kidneys. I went back up to the abdomen again, did more moxa around. Ren8, Ren12 to rebuild that up. And then I finished the whole treatment by once again putting my hand on her heart area to get the kidneys and the heart flowing together.

And, oh my goodness, after the treatment, she looked So much brighter. Her spirit was alive again. Of course, she felt better. She felt calm. I was a little nervous about the panic attack part. For one thing, I didn’t want to put needles in, leave her in a room when the patient had just told me that she was possibly gonna have a panic attack.

I felt really good about that treatment. And the reason I wanted to share that story was because it goes to show we don’t always have to do acupuncture. The pulses will respond to other kinds of energy. So use all of your skills. If you’re thinking, Oh, today we don’t want to do any I don’t want to do any needles today.

Always take the pulses. Make notes about what the pulses are doing, draw a pulse picture, and then you will have that to compare with at the end of whatever it is, the treatment that you give. In one of my internships, we just did, I did gua sha and some spinal work on a man that one of the students brought in, who came in super crooked and a lot of pain.

He could barely walk. And at that time, again, I felt like, all right, let’s take his pulses because it’s a pulse diagnosis internship. But we just worked on his body using physical medicine from Chinese medicine, instead of using acupuncture needles. And again, we saw a great change in not only his physicality and pain and ability to walk, but in his pulses.

So I just want to encourage you that no matter what. Whatever therapy you use, your pulse diagnosis is your way to get down to what is the cause of going on with the person and how is your treatment working or not. Because remember, if the pulse doesn’t change, then you need to change your treatment plan because the pulses will always respond when you are on the right track.

with your treatment plan. So that’s just one story that I thought just really struck me as let’s use all of our skills. We don’t have to just use that one therapy acupuncture, but we always have pulse diagnosis as our best. basic line of treatment. It tells us what’s going on with the person and their body gives us that feedback of what worked, what didn’t work.

And then we just keep going until we get those nice sine wave, very smooth, balanced, yang and yin connecting each other. So if it’s Martha, again, this is Martha Lucas. If you would like more information about my courses or my post diagnosis internships, you can go to my website, lucasteachings. com. My private practice site is acupuncturewoman.

com and you can email me with questions at drmlucas at acupuncturewoman. com. I am always happy to help someone become the best doctor Chinese medicine practitioner that you can become. And so once again, I want to thank the American Acupuncture Council for letting me talk with you about pulse diagnosis and good luck in your practice.

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Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance – The Greatest Misconceptions About Facial Acupuncture

I get asked frequently is, what are some of the misconceptions that people have about facial and cosmetic acupuncture.

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Hi, my name’s Michelle Gellis. I am an acupuncture physician. And I teach facial and cosmetic acupuncture classes internationally and have done so for about 20 years now. One of the questions that I get asked frequently is, what are some of the misconceptions that people have about facial and cosmetic acupuncture.

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And the reason why there are so many misconceptions about facial acupuncture is people really don’t understand that it is not just for cosmetic purposes. So today I am going to discuss some of the greatest misconceptions about Facial acupuncture. And I’m going to start out by telling you what is facial acupuncture.

Facial acupuncture can be for used for cosmetic purposes, things like sagging, fine lines, wrinkles. Dyschromia, other signs of aging or dark spots, red spots, things of that nature. And it can also be used for neuromuscular facial conditions such as Bell’s Palsy, Trigeminal Neuralgia, TMJ, Stroke, MS.

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ptosis, myasthenia gravis, and many other conditions that affect the face. So the ways in which facial acupuncture can bring all of this together is by treating the different layers of the face, including the skin and the muscles, the fat, the fascia, even the bones. of the face can be treated with facial acupuncture, facial cupping, facial gua sha, microneedling, red light therapy.

You can use submuscular needling, facial motor points, and even red light therapy. So all of these tools and treatments come together and fall under the big umbrella of facial acupuncture. One of the questions that I frequently get asked is, How long does a treatment take? If you’re going for cosmetic acupuncture, don’t the treatments take a long time?

And the truth of the matter is, the way that I teach and practice facial and cosmetic acupuncture is the needles can go in for in 10 to 15 minutes and then your patient can rest on the table for 30 or 15 to 30 minutes and during that time you can go and see another patient and then you would come back into the room, take the needles out, do your cupping and gua sha and if you were going to incorporate red light therapy, you could do that while the needles were on.

And microneedling is typically not done at the same time that you’re doing facial acupuncture, but that is a separate treatment and microneedling only takes 20 minutes for a full treatment. So the treatments really do not take that long. And because Insurance does not cover cosmetic acupuncture. Your patients will be paying you in cash.

You won’t be putting it through insurance. And you’re going to be charging more for a cosmetic treatment than you would for a medical treatment. If you were just doing a standard acupuncture treatment. So what might a typical facial acupuncture customer or client look like? People also have a misconception that your clients are going to be Perhaps older, perhaps they will be in a certain socio economic bracket in order to afford this out of pocket treatment.

In 20 years of practice, my patients have ranged in age from people in their late teens who came to me for acne through patients who were elderly and were looking for maybe not just cosmetic, but perhaps some sort of neuromuscular facial. Conditions like trigeminal neuralgia are very common in the elderly, as well as ptosis, which is where one eyelid is lower than the other.

Because as we get older, the eyelids get weaker. And by using facial acupuncture, you can help people to avoid eyelid surgery by using facial motor points and submuscular needling to help and some scalp acupuncture to help to lift the lids so that your patient does not have to have a surgical treatment.

Facial acupuncture is also A great alternative to things like Botox and filler. And individuals who normally would be going every three months for some sort of neurotoxin or filler in their face could be coming to you for regular cosmetic or neuroacupuncture treatments to help to rebalance the face and to increase collagen and increase the movement of the muscles in the face.

It can help with things like fascial adhesions, and even repositioning the fat on the face that tends to move as we get older. The fat on the face moves down from our cheeks down. And facial acupuncture is not just limited to the face, it can be beneficial for the neck, for the chest, and one of the things that we don’t think about by treating the back of the neck, it helps to affect the face.

the front of the neck. As society has evolved over the past 20 years, I’ve noticed more and more patients coming younger with neck wrinkles across their neck from looking down at their phone all day. We can use our medicine needles, cupping, gua sha, working on the back of the neck and on the front of the neck to help to affect the appearance of the neck itself.

What can your patients expect when they come to see you? Are they going to look five years younger, 10 years younger, 20 years younger? Does it actually work? Is it actually effective? And The answer is yes, and depending on a variety of factors, including your patient’s age, their lifestyle, their diet.

Are they drinking enough water? How much sleep do they get? What is their nutrition like? Plus, their underlying TCM diagnosis. Are they blood deficient, indeficient, chi deficient? All of these things are going to play into how quickly they see results and What sort of results they are going to see throughout treatment.

A typical course of cosmetic acupuncture treatments is about three months with your patients coming once a week. And again, if your patient is older or just genetically, they’re predisposed to more sagging and wrinkles. If they live someplace where it’s very sunny and they’re out in the sun all the time, maybe they play tennis or golf or bike or garden and they’re out in the sun and they live in a place in the country.

where the UV rays are stronger, then it may take a little longer for them to see the results that they want. But, um, these things are not all set in stone. I’ve been surprised sometimes by older patients who’ve had amazing results. especially with things like lifting their lids or really affecting the appearance of their neck with just a few treatments.

So in addition to the cosmetic and the neuromuscular types of benefits that your patients can see. There are also things like dealing with acne for your younger patients or your maybe your menopausal patients who are having adult acne. It can also help with hair loss. The same way that we might use a seven star hammer on the scalp, we can use microneedling, dermarolling, and even some acupuncture to help with hair loss, both in on the eyebrows.

And on the head hair, beard hair, and also with acne, skin discolorations like dark spots, red spots, melasma, rosacea, different acne scars. Things that affect the skin, in conjunction with doing our TCM diagnosis, you can effectively help with redness on the face and other skin conditions that your patients might have had to have taken medication for.

ChiroSecure, we can help just with redness. Needle treatments. All of my cosmetic and neuromuscular treatments always include full TCM diagnosis and a full body treatment, which can also be very beneficial when you’re talking about treating the face. If you’re doing a full body treatment and you’re affecting the the different organ systems, not only are you going to affect the health of the different organs that show up on the face, for example, if the kidneys are deficient, they might have dark circles under their eyes.

If they are Large intestine isn’t working well, then they can have a lot of congestion in their skin, or if their lungs aren’t working well, then they can have large pores or oily skin. If the stomach has a lot of heat, they can have that. Acne on the face. So by treating the underlying conditions and the organ systems, you can affect the skin.

And also, for example, treating the spleen can help to lift things up if things are sagging down. Treating the kidneys can help with premature aging. And by treating the These different things, not only are you affecting the skin and the coloration of the skin, the texture of the skin, and the The skin’s ability to snap back and look youthful, but you were also affecting the person’s emotional health.

All of the acupuncture points on the face relate to different organs and when you are treating, for example, stomach four, you are helping the person not only on a physical level to be able to smile more fully, but you are also affecting their ability to process joy. And we do Stomach 9 in every treatment to help people feel more welcome.

And if the person’s face is functioning better, then they are going to feel better. And if they feel better, they are going to look better. There was actually a study done. They took patients and they injected Botox into their forehead and they weren’t able to express anger. And by not being able to express anger, all of that the emotion was still there, but it was being pushed down.

So instead of the emotion being able to be expressed, it was being repressed, and you can imagine what that does to your liver. So when you are doing facial acupuncture on someone, you aren’t just affecting their appearance, you’re affecting their emotional health and their physical health at the same time.

There are different pricing structures. That you can use for different things that you might do in your treatment room to treat the face. For example, facial cupping and gua sha can be done in as little as a half an hour. And so you might have one pricing structure for that. Microneedling is, as I mentioned, a very effective treatment for superficial skin level issues and microneedling treatments in the U.

S. right now. Acupuncturists are charging anywhere from 350 to 600 for a half an hour microneedling treatment. It is important to get trained. You don’t want to attempt to practice facial acupuncture without proper training. There are contraindications, things like high blood pressure, migraines, pregnancy and other things that are contraindications and precautions when you are treating the face.

And the American Acupuncture Council has special release form for practitioners who are practicing facial acupuncture. And there is a list of people who do training specifically in facial and cosmetic acupuncture. That is something that I can’t underemphasize or overemphasize how important it is for proper training.

And to practice before you get out there and practice on your patients. Practice on someone who perhaps a colleague or a family member who you have permission to treat because it is a unique skill set. And using precision needling techniques can really work nothing short of miracles on someone’s face.

I hope I have helped to dispel some of the myths that you might have heard or thought about facial and cosmetic acupuncture. And if you are interested in learning more, you can go to my website, facialacupunctureclasses. com And I have free webinars and blog posts and a lot of information about facial and cosmetic acupuncture.

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Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance – Best of Billing and Coding for Acupuncture

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