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7 Techniques To Tonify Your Practice In Slow Times

 

 

Click here to download the transcript.

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 folks, Jeffrey Grossman here again, to bring you a, another live broadcast from the AAC. Thank you for this opportunity yet again, to share some practice and marketing insights with you. For those of you that don’t know me. My name is Jeffrey Grossman and I’m the founder and owner of Acupuncture MediaWorks, Accu downloads, and Accu perfect websites.

And we’ve been helping acupuncturist grow their practice, attract more patients and keep patients in care. 2002. So we’ve been in the business of helping practitioners build their business for quite a while now. I am here to share with you some ideas on how you can grow your practice, how you can stay on top of mind awareness with your patients and how you can also become more successful at what it is that you do.

In the business and marketing end of building your practice. Because when we were in acupuncture school, we weren’t really given all the tools that we need to build a successful and sustainable business. We didn’t know what to say and when to say certain things and how to give a report of findings.

And how to use social media and why social media is important and you know how to get people back in care when they fall out of care. We’ve developed a lot of programs for that. And also through the AAC, we’ve been talking about different various types. Throughout the year on the different avenues at which how you can do all those things, which are attract, retain, and reactivate your patients.

People out there are looking for you. They want your help. They need your help, but they probably don’t even know that you exist. They are looking to feel healthy. They’re looking to feel balanced. They’re looking to feel less stressed. They’re looking to feel that their immune system is robust and strong and you might.

Have the skill and the technology to make that all happen for them, but they might not know you’re there. They might know that there might be an acupuncturist in town, but they know nothing about you. There’s nothing essentially that has built. No and trust factor, right? There’s a journey that you need to walk your patients down and through.

Every single time they come on board and that’s called the patient’s journey. And we’re not going to dive deep into that today. But the beginning part of that is getting people to know you, right? Getting them to really understand who you are and what it is that you do. And that you’re actually there for them.

Get them to like you get them to understand. At how you can actually help them with their particular problems and then get them to trust you, which then gets them into your clinic and onto your treatment tables. And then from there, it’s keeping them in care, keeping yourself in top of mind, awareness with them and having them follow through with their treatment plans.

So I want to help you change that. I want to help. People understand that you do exist and I want to help you get more people on their table. And that’s what these talks are all about. To help you be seen to help you be heard and to ultimately help you bring people into your practice. So you could make more money and help more people.

And if at the end of today’s talk, or anytime you see this talk, you are looking for more help or you need some guidance or you just need to. Bit of inspiration. Please feel free to reach out to me. You can reach out to me by putting a comment below the video, or you can reach me at Jeffrey, J E F R E Y at acupunctureMediaworks.com.

Okay. So today I want to talk about seven techniques. To quantify your practice in slow times, I’m going to talk about some in-house marketing ideas. I’m going to talk about some events that you can create in your practice that have transformed my practice. When I, when it was going downhill, totally turned it around for me.

And also how to tap into getting more word of mouth referrals. Before I go on, I want to ask you this simple question. It’s rhetorical, because I’m not able to answer your questions at the moment, but what business are you actually. Okay. So some of you might be like I’m in the business of helping people get I’m an acupuncturist.

I put needles in people. I help them alleviate these problems and so on. But plain and simple, you are in the business of marketing acupuncture care. And you must actively find and attract the right people. And have your marketing consistently turning and moving and having multiple marketing poles in the water.

So you could bring those people in your practice because you could be the greatest acupuncturist in the world. You have the most amazing needling technique in the world, but if you don’t have patients coming in on a regular basis, then. How are you going to be able to use your techniques and your protocols?

So the important thing to really understand is that you are in the business of letting people know that acupuncture is awesome. And the business of marketing your practice, right? You are not only an amazing healer, but you’re also an entrepreneur and a business person. Okay. You’ve got to wear all those hats in order to make this happen.

Marketing takes time, and that’s another important I want to get across to you. Even though you do an event or you put an ad out or you do social media marketing that it’s not going to reap the benefits immediately. Okay. That you’ve got up plant the seeds and you’ve gotta be in it for the long haul.

Okay. So if you do host a class or if you do an online training, just be aware that if there isn’t. Conversion that happens immediately or within a day or two, that it doesn’t mean that what you did was wrong or what you did was bad or what you didn’t work. It’s just that you’ve got to plant the seeds over time.

And the more that you are planting seeds, the more that you are cultivating awareness about you, your practice and how you can help you. Okay. And as an acupuncturist, so you, you owe it to your patients to be a great marketer, right? Because if you can’t keep your practice open, your patients are going to be forced to seek help elsewhere, and probably even go to a non acupuncturist.

So maybe try someone who does dry needling or some other technique that might not be acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine overall. So in that respect, If you are an acupuncturist, which I assume you are, if you’re watching this, you owe it to your patients to be a great marketer, so you can stay in business so that you can be there for your patients when they need you.

Okay. So a couple of things I just want to get across before we jump into the seven techniques to tone your practice in slow time, the first. They don’t want to talk with you about is to one of, one of the great tools that I’ve used in my practice is to put on a patient appreciation day. So for those of you that aren’t sure what a patient appreciation day, it’s an event that you can hold at your clinic.

Two or three months, and it’s an opportunity to connect with your patients, an opportunity to celebrate you and your practice and your patients, the way to give things. And it’s a time to have fun and to step out from behind the treatment table. So you can be present with your patients and meet their family and remove yourself from the.

Doctor acupuncturist position to, Hey, I’m just an average person. Okay. And I’ve got a life, I’ve got a family. Here’s my daughter is my wife. Here’s our dog. And so on. So people can really relate to you. So you’ve gotta be relatable in that way. And patient appreciation days are one way to make that happen.

And it’s basically your hosts. A party at your clinic and you can connect up with other local restaurants and other businesses to support you during these events. One thing that I would consider doing in the year coming in as part of your marketing calendar is. Set up at least one or two patient appreciation days throughout the year.

So you can celebrate you your practice and your patients. And the next thing that I want to talk with you about the tech, the second technique is hosting an acupuncture happy hour event. Okay. And this is by far the number one thing that allowed me to. Transform the influx of patient of new patients coming in.

So I was able to bring in, I think, 17 new patients from one event alone by hosting an acupuncture happy hour event. So what is an acupuncture happy hour vet? It’s basically a patient attraction system that allows you to qualify new prospects. And get them into your clinic, literally to try acupuncture, right?

And you’re doing two points 0.0 of the ear and Shen men of the year, which as an acupuncturist, do you know that if you do those points for most patients, they are going through. Field transformed. And for those of you that are of my age range, remember Calgon take me away. That basically is somebody in a bath tub who is completely relaxed and on cloud nine.

So for those of you acupuncture when you host a happy hour event, the goal of that is to help reduce. And anxiety and who doesn’t need that these days. And one of the beautiful things about hosting a happy hour event is it overcomes some of the main objections that occur with it, with acupuncture, which do the needles hurt technically not because you’re just doing two points in the ear, super thin tiny needles, pretty painless.

When you do those points. Does it work, or acupuncture doesn’t work, that’s a big objection. And if people will leave there and they’re shifted and they’re relaxed and their anxiety has been reduced, it works. So to alleviate that placebo effect and what you know, and whether or not it’s going to help them.

And that’s a conversation that you will have with them afterwards. Okay. So the happy hour event, it’s nondiagnostic, you’re not making any diagnosis. It’s, you’re just actually just doing 0.0 shed. Man. What I do is I set aside times on Tuesday mornings and Thursday afternoons where it’s like a walk-in clinic like community acupuncture style and people come in and they sit down, they fill out a form and that form is specific to.

Clinic information and their name, their phone number, their contact information. And it also asks you a couple of series of important questions. And these important are these questions of this form are important, which are, have you received occupants yes or no. Good for you to know whether or not they received it.

So you can ask them what, what their experience was, check off any of the following symptoms and signs that you had in the past year. Back pain, allergies, knee pain, stress, neck pain, fatigue. And how these problems have affected their lives, right? It affects their home life, their work life, their activities, their family, their sleep, et cetera, because this form that they fill out before they get into the treatment chair.

We’ll help you Tran transition from the that the acupuncture happy hour event to to, to a conversion process, which gets them to a first time paying patient coming in for a comprehensive evaluation. So this form that they fill out after. Receive their stress reduction treatment. You’ll sit down with them and you’ll be like, so Jeffrey, I noticed here that you checked off that you have allergies and you’ve got cold hands and feet and you’ve got headaches.

What are you doing to treat those? So you hear what they’re doing or what they’re not doing for that. And then you just communicate to them that. A special or you’ve got a comprehensive evaluation or whatever your offer is to get them from that low cost or free happy hour event into the first time paying patient.

If you’re interested in this form, I have no problem giving it to you guys. Sending you a PDF of it. It’s been great. You could send me an email at Jeffrey, J E F R E Y at acupuncture. Media works.com and say, give me the form and I’ll give you a league to access is not a problem. And this is the one thing I’ll also include a couple of links to some other videos that I’ve done about this particular topic.

Acupuncture happy hour technique is the second way to help tone of fire practice. The other thing is to get social. Okay. Number three is to get social. So you should be getting social on Facebook and Twitter and potentially Instagram, and really make those part of your everyday life. I know some of you are cringing and moaning and groaning right now about the idea of using social media in your practice.

In today’s day and age is something that we really need not necessarily to bring in new patients, but to build relationships with your audience, to make people feel more comfortable before they actually come and visit you. And it also allows you to showcase your authority in who you are. And it starts building that.

And trust factor, which is super important for you to to really bridge that gap from, people who just kicking tires and don’t even know you. And they’re just trying to try you out to people who really want to try your care and who really know what you have to offer them. And the fifth thing, the fourth thing that is really important to do the fourth technique to 25 year practice in slow times is to make sure that you stay in Toma.

Okay. And Toma is top of mind awareness. Okay. And it’s important because you’ve got to, once you spend the time and the energy to get a patient on board. Okay. So you’ve got to. Keep yourself in top of mind awareness with research or new updates about how you treat a particular condition or reports or things that you find that you want to share with your patients so that you would be less likely to fall.

Off of their vision, their peripheral. So that you, that they’ll be less likely to fall out of care. So the goal is to get a patient in and then treat them for a few times, but then don’t lose that. Don’t let them just drift away and become part of your patient inactive file because.

I’m sure many of you have more inactive patients and active patients, but one of the ways to stem that slow drip of inactive patients is to make sure you’re staying in top of mind awareness. You do this with newsletters, you do this research, you do this with industry news. Social media with just picking up the phone and connecting with your patients.

So there are many ways for you to stay in Toma with your patients. And it’s one of those important things to be doing every week so that you don’t have to go back out there and be like Sisyphus, where you’re pushing up the new patient, rock up the hill, you get some new patients and then they fall out of care and it falls down the hill and you push the new patient, rock up the hill and it falls out of Karen sell up.

You don’t want to keep repeating that. The definition of insanity. Okay. The fifth way technique to tonify your practice. And so times is to create a new patient referral program. Okay. So one of the things I encourage my my coaching clients to do is to actually have a. Have an in-house patient referral event.

And they’re like, what, like an event around that’s going to make me sound desperate, but it’s not true in my experience when I’ve hosted patient referral events in the clinic, patients were excited. We literally had a giant. Whiteboard with a thermometer drawn on there and the thermometer wasn’t, we’re like our goal is to get 30 new patients this week is we write it on top.

We have a thermometer drawn and then we have like hash marks for every new patient line that goes up to 30. And then every time a new patient comes. Color it in, we fill it in, we call her in it and and and everyone in the clinic gets excited. Even the patients cause they see the thermometer turning redder and redder in the sense more patients are coming in.

So the first thing to do when you do that is to really think about who your. Patient is right. Who is your ideal patient? And you probably can think of a few patients right now who are on your books or in your clinic, or maybe even on your treatment tables at this moment that are your ideal patient.

Okay. You want to communicate with them first? Do you want to tell, say something like, Hey Jeffrey, you wanna let you know that we are. We are opening up for new patients right now, and we are starting a we’re hosting a month long referral event. Our goal is to get 30 new patients this month.

And we’d like to know if you are able to help us. And they most likely be like, sure. Yeah, no problem. Do you need me to do? And then you would give them a gift certificate or a call to action card or something that would, that they would then hand out to their. Or family members or coworkers to come in to see you for whatever your whatever your call to action is to get them in happy hour event or low cost evaluation.

So on. So that’s important to make sure you recognize those who are most likely to refer to you. Okay. And the sixth thing to be doing in the clinic is the host of healthcare class. Okay. So hosting healthcare classes, these days could be done through zoom. And I know you could host classes on so many different types of topics you can tell.

Seasonal changes, right? How to stay healthy in the winter, how to support your kidneys, how to use these particular points for helping move key or help alleviate headaches and help alleviate pain. You could talk about Qigong or Tai Chi or breathing techniques or Oregon sounds or. Mantras or moodra or point location is right.

So there’s no lack of things that you could teach on and host a health care class. That can be done through zoom that could be done through. In-house live, but that positions you as an authority that keeps you in top of mind awareness that gives you the opportunity to share this messaging on social media, to get people, to talk about you, to bring in new people, to get more referrals to come in for this particular event or to share it through.

Okay. And the final thing is to make sure that you have a an a patient reactivation program, because inevitably patients are going to fall out of care. Inevitable that people will fall out of care for a number of reasons. They’ll just forget about you they’ll they’ll think that they’re better and that they don’t need your help anymore.

Maybe their hours changed, it, lot of times in my experience, I’ve assumed that they fallen out of care because it was my fault, oh, I did something wrong or I’m not getting the results, but it, after asking a lot of patients over the years Determined that it really wasn’t me.

It was just some circumstances. And there’s their lives that got them to have to, change their timing that I fell out of care because I wasn’t staying in top of mind awareness with them. So a patient reactivation program is very simple. Identify what your call to action is, what you’re going to use to get people into the clinic.

When you reach out to them and divide your clients into three categories, a, B, and C, the patients are the ones that you love. 100% right now, the patients that you can think of that you love love. And then the C patients are the ones that you’re like when you see them in your schedule, you’re like, oh man, okay, I can do this.

I can make this happen today. In the B patients are a common one between. Start with the eight patients who have fallen out of care and reach out to them with a phone call and then reach out to them with an email and then reach out to them with a letter and the phone call the email and the letter can be the same conversation in different formats sent out to them.

And basically, just follow up with. Simply, just checking in with them. And again, for those of you that are interested, I’ve got some patient reactivation letters that I’ve made available for you. If you want the survey and the the for acupuncture happy hour and the patient reactivation strips and.

Feel free to reach out to me. Jeffrey, J E F R E y@acupuncturemediaworks.com. I’ll be more than happy to send those over to you, but in any case, thank you so much for joining us here today. You guys are beautiful. You’re awesome. Have happy, safe, and healthy holidays. Next. We’re going to Tsao-Lin Moy, going to be here, sharing some insights and some wisdom as she always does.

So again, thank you AAC for inviting me back here. You guys changing the world. One person, one needle at a time. You are awesome. Stay beautiful. And I would talk with you guys soon.

 

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Boosting Immunity to Prevent Colds and Flus

 

 

Click here to download the transcript.

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 and welcome to another edition of, To The Point I showed very generously produced by the American Acupuncture Council, um, Virginia Duran of luminousbeauty.com. And I’m your host today, and we are speaking about boosting immunity to prevent colds and flus. So let’s get to it.

I just want to start with a little, um, reminder about the perspective that Chinese medicine has on boosting immunity, right. Um, because it is a little different and, uh, it, it adds another dimension of your understanding and your treatment strategy. So we have what something’s called [inaudible] it is that she, that is at the surface of the body. So it involves the skin in some cases, but also it comes out it’s your electromagnet or part of your electromagnetic field. So it’s protecting you physically as well as energetically. And, uh, you’ve probably all experienced that, you know, where you’re so run down that you can’t even really be around people that you feel like almost, you don’t have your skin on that’s severely depleted way cheap. So we want to keep that up for, for both reasons. And, um, of course there are different aspects to immunity, then more than what we’re going to talk about today in different categories of viruses.

But our focus today is for upper respiratory Lucent colds, and it’s, uh, you know, a timely subject in the Northern hemisphere. So there’s two main strategies. One is to boost your wig witchy, uh, you know, which is, you know, augmenting the immune system and also written the body of phlegm in advance of getting sick, because there’s a, um, it tests have shown that some people who have that, uh, symptom where they can’t breathe when they get a really bad upper respiratory condition, uh, there’s phlegm blocking the airways, usually old sticky Flint. So I’m going to talk about some formulas for both of those, um, as well as lifestyle tips, supplements, and, uh, points. So here we go, some lifestyle tips, you know, uh, I think that the two, the things that you can actively do are doing [inaudible] to generate your way and doing something like pranayama yoga breathing also has that effect of really building up the way she, um, of course, vigorous exercise is going to be very helpful acupuncture shown to have immune regulating effects, and you want to limit your exposure to EMS as much as possible because they’re going to affect things.

Uh, also you want to get adequate sunshine. Don’t worry so much about, you know, damaging the skin with a little sunshine. Really. We need that vitamin D. So, uh, in the winter, you could try to on a sunny day, get out and get maybe 15, 20 minutes of sunshine your face, if it’s possible, roll up your sleeves on your arms to get a little bit, um, but it’s absorbed through the skin. Um, of course getting adequate rest and good quality sleep. So you might want to think about turning off your devices and anything, uh, where you’re taking in blue, white, because it’s very stimulating and you’ll have a harder time falling asleep, or having a deep restful sleep. When you go immediately from being on your computer all night to, you know, trying to go to sleep, um, stress management, we know stress affects the immune system, right?

So many ways to do that. That’s the, you know, uh, we won’t get into that here, but I’m sure you all know ways to do that. Good nutrition. We’re going to talk about a few things specific for this, um, idea of boosting immunity with food. Uh, you want to have sufficient hydration. You think about when you, everything works better and you, your bells work better as well to eliminate things. Um, also sometimes when you get dehydrated, you start to get a sore throat, even if you’re not really sick, but it can create a little bit of heat and inflammation in the body. If you’re dehydrated and you want to avoid drafts, especially in the back of the neck, right. And, you know, for some dietary considerations, um, I really think it’s important to be dairy free or as much as possible. Um, and if you are going to have dairy stick to goat’s milk, rather than cows mark, because human mother’s milk has a very low levels of KC.

And that kissing is what they, you know, what Elmer’s glue is made of that white sticky phlegmy stuff, right? That you produce in the body when you eat a lot of dairy and cow’s milk has 200 times more cases than human mother’s milk. Goats milk only has about 20 times more cases than human mothers. Not so try to get used with, there are goat products that don’t taste as goatee. Uh, you know, you’ll, you can, you can make that adaptation if, if, uh, you really want to do this because in Chinese medicine, we’re very aware of the importance of phlegm, how much it’s a factor in creating some diseases and tumors and things like that. And disease is created along a continuum. That’s our understanding. That’s one of the great gifts of Chinese medicine. And so if you are always having dairy and you have a little drip and you have, you know, sinus things constantly and, or, you know, little residual phlegm in your lungs from something, uh, it it’s it’s has the potential of turning into more things, you know, more serious things.

Uh, so there’s a lot of immune boosting and antiviral medicinal mushrooms, my talking mushroom, you know, which is foraged in the fall. Wonderful. If you, especially, if you can get it, um, local versus the store bought things, um, that, you know, aren’t grown in nature, um, blue oyster mushrooms, also very immune boosting and nature provide these remedies that at that time of year, um, you know, she talking mushrooms, uh, you know, are especially used with herpes because it generates stomach yen. It helps with, um, uh, a stomach in deficiency, heat type of herpes. So we’re not actually going to get into those kinds of viruses, but it still has immune boosting effects. So it’s nice to put into your food more often, especially in soups, because you’ll get more out of it than more benefit out of it than just saw Tamia, probably. So I’m including a homemade chicken soup for those that aren’t vegetarian, but even if you already, you can adopt it without the, the chicken part of it, um, really good to have in your freezer at all times, because you never know when you might need it.

And when you do need it, you’re probably not feeling well enough to go out and buy the ingredients or stand up and make it for a couple of hours. So, um, I always make, you know, big pot and freeze a whole bunch of it to have now not how is another thing that is immune boosting and have some properties I want to discuss, uh, you know, it’s a fermented Japanese soybean product, but it is a specific kind of soybean. And it’s, it’s a very traditional Japanese dish. It’s often served for breakfast. Uh, it’s not so popular here. You know, the taste, it’s not that strong of a taste, but there’s a texture to it. That is a little strange that people, um, can be, uh, I have an aversion to, but, you know, just close your eyes at that’s the case. It’s so good. It’s like a natural blood thinner, which, uh, you know, as we get older, we might need we’re, you know, it’s, it’s good for all the blood stagnation we’re seeing now from people with a certain virus or, um, you know, they they’ve been jabbed.

So I would start slowly with it though, if you see that you or your patient have sublingual stagnation, distended veins under the tongue, and, you know, just start with a half a teaspoon daily, if there’s a lot and go, go on for a couple of weeks, that way then work up to a teaspoon. Then you could go up to even more. Uh, but you don’t, you want to dissolve things slowly, not, um, you know, not too quickly now for the benefits of natto, as I said, it’s immune boosting, and that’s why we’re putting it in here. Um, but also, uh, you know, it has this unique probiotic and called bacillus Tillis, and the strain was tested in an elderly population and it was compared to people taking a placebo. And the outcome was that 55% like less likelihood to suffer from respiratory infections in the nacho group. It’s rich in vitamins minerals and protein high in vitamin C zinc, selenium, copper, and iron, all important in immune function.

It has K2 and K one, which has really benefited from that K two is, is kind of amazing because it helps the calcium from depositing in the arteries, right? And there was a study that showed 50, 70%, 57% lower risk of dying from heart disease when eating foods with K2. So this is a little bit, uh, unusual. And then the K one is a natural blood thinner, and that’s going to help them prevent and dissolve blood clots. And Stacey’s very important these days. Um, so there’s probiotics and fiber in it that can also be helpful with promote preventing weight gain and optimizing, optimizing weight loss and women. You have your weight manage, uh, you know, your immune system’s going to function better.

So just to remind you for anyone that doesn’t know, generally herbs are taken on an empty stomach and supplements are adjusted with food. There’s some exceptions, but as a general rule, this Chinese herbal formula for immune boosting is fantastic. It’s called Jade windscreen, or you ping fond song. And excuse me, if my accent is not perfect, but you can see what I’m talking about there by reading the slide, um, it boosts immunity and specifically for colds and flus. So I take this one, I’m going to be around crowds of people sometimes when I’m feeling run down or I’m going to be treating patients. Um, and when you’re at more higher risk situations like a, you know, air travel and, um, it’s unbelievable how effective it is. And in fact, in 2005, there was a study published with 3,160 people that were at risk hospital workers. And during the SARS of one epidemic, then in 2003, nobody that took the pink phone sign, contracting the virus.

It’s very, very, very, very, very, very helpful. Um, now Jade windscreen, or you can find song also Astro C, which is a, um, a modified formula. This just, I think just has a little bit tiny bit of zinc and vitamin C added. Uh, but you could use any of them, but these should not be taken with auto-immune conditions. So if you have your patient have that, then you might have to find an alternative because it has a struggle, isn’t it? And that’s one of the herbs that shouldn’t be taken with auto-immune. Um, but it is a great herb. It’s also called milk vetch in English, common name or wonky. And the studies show that astragalus is a powerful immune regulator by enhancing the production of T helper and regulatory B cells. It also acts to reduce inflammation by regulating the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines. So we don’t want any cytokine storms.

Uh, so you want to have your body in a, what you would take. If you have one, that’s a different story, but this is to make you less likely to. So there’s a couple of links there where you can see research on it, if you’re interested. Okay. Now this is a, a really time tested, great phlegm, resolving herbal formula for Chen, Tom, Tom, meaning tea, or could say urchin PR, meaning pill or one. And when we say resolving phlegm, we mean getting it out of the body, but not purging it all out through your nose and not suppressing it and letting it dry up and congeal further as something, you know, some of the over the counter things for, uh, de congestions and to histamines, um, it helps your body to thin the phlegm and process it. Now it’s more for wet type Flum, but it can help when there’s some dry as well.

Some old fun, it’s a very benign it’s like citrus peel and ginger Pinella it’s neutral in nature, neither warming or cooling. So if you actually were sick, you would have to take some, you know, herbs with anti-microbial or antiviral effect. And, um, you know, maybe something that was warming or cooling. Um, so you want to have the phlegm out of the lungs in advance, cause your body does tend to produce phlegm when it gets sick in excess. And that way you’ll be, um, you know, avoiding that because that, that’s what kind of puts people on ventilators. And some people, you know, often they don’t survive the ventilator. So prevention is the best cure. All right. Now some supplements for boosting the immune system would be zinc. And we are hearing a lot about zinc. There’s a, um, holistic doctor of, you know, probably 40, 50 years named Dr.

Dietrich Klinghardt. And he talks about with his, any trans practitioners, um, all over the world. Very interesting guy. He said that he was giving his patients think supplementation and testing before and after, and it wasn’t changing their zinc levels. And then he learned, you have to give it with an eye on a four. So course atten is a wonderful Ayana for, um, when they say that hydroxy chloroquine works it’s because it acts as an eye on the Ford to get the zinc into the cell wall for the zinc to eradicate the virus. But for those of us that like to approach things, naturally, they may not want to take, um, a medication for it. They may want to take something natural, like course attend. Um, now with the course of maybe 500 milligrams, one to two times daily, and the zinc for prevention, like 15 to 30 milligrams a day, uh, and you can probably double that if somebody was sick, D three, it’s like liquid sunshine in the bottle. So it helps immunity. It also helps to lift your mood. Um, you know, there’s people who get depression, uh, seasonal affect disorder from a vitamin D deficiency. Also, of course, a multivitamin and mineral formula would be useful.

And, uh, if you’re going to have vitamin C, it should, if you can get it in a liposomal form, it’s much more bioavailable that way. And it can be used for the prevention and the treatment, um, of these things, especially with wind heat, vitamin C is classified as cold in nature. I’ve seen someone in the field talking otherwise, but I think most people agree it’s cold in nature. And, um, that is, uh, how I learned about it, uh, from Jeffrey Ewen. Now, colostrum is a wonderful immune boosting thing is the component in mother’s milk that transfers immunity to the infant. And so if you were not breastfed, this is a great thing for you to supplement with, to boost your immune system. It can be taken with, or without food, but, you know, without food, you’re probably going to get a little bit more effect, but it’s easy on the stomach.

You don’t have to worry about taking it on an empty stomach without anything. Um, and it’s okay for vegetarians. Um, there are also some good tasting colostrum lozenges, if you or your children prefer it that way. Now this last thing like the Soma glutathione, this is to open up the detoxification pathways so that they’re clear and functioning so that you will handle whatever you come across. Um, you could also use N a C capital N a C it’s stands for N acetol C-spine is a precursor to glutathione. It has an affinity to the lungs and then helps with like proteins.

Okay. Now I made up this medicinal chicken soup recipe because some of the people ask me because not only does this soup tastes really good, but you’re really getting a medicinal effect from it, which you don’t get with most store-bought, uh, chicken stew, uh, products. So in a multi gallon pot, I don’t know what size, but you know, whether it’s like a five gallon or something, we’re talking something big, something that you do corn on the cob with or something. Um, and you use the whole chicken. And I think organic’s important, um, including the skin, because that’s the part that’s actually, you know, it’s the chicken’s representation of way G so that’s, what’s gonna, um, actually convey more immune boosting effects. And the bones, uh, are very deeply tonifying, you know, even more of a DJing level. And if there are organs included in the chicken you’d buy, you could add them because, you know, they always have, uh, different properties, um, and well for about two hours or more, and depending on how big and, and, uh, your, you know, how powerful your stove is, but, you know, when it’s fully cooked, then, um, we’re going to add these other things.

But while the chicken is cooking, you want to start cutting up your ingredients to be added because, um, it could take a while to do all these things. And, uh, so after the chicken is cooked, I let it cool. Then remove it, remove the meat from the bones, which you can use or not, and you can, reboil the bones and the skin, and et cetera, to make more broth and, you know, have that frozen for when you need it. Um, so I strained the chicken broth and then add the following in a large pot. And I would, well, these for 10, 20 minutes, um, could be longer. But, um, I do these before I add the shorter cooking vegetables later. So three to four heads of garlic, yes. Heads not close. And, you know, it has antibiotic properties. It’s warming in nature tastes great. Um, a bunch of scallions GYNs are especially warming in nature, so good for very early stage flus and colds.

Um, and you know, if you’re, if your body tends to get more wind cold than when heat, or, you know, you’re in a cold climate, your body runs a little cold having, uh, you know, these alliums than garlic and scallions evenly will be helpful. So leaks are a little bit neutral to warming and they have a little bit more tonifying effects. So they’re good in general, recovering from debilitating illness or just, uh, you know, a general tonic two to three onions, good for the sinuses in particular, and having a large piece of ginger, you know, it could be the size of the small hand before you cut it up. Um, depending on, you know, again, how much you’re doing, but you want them to do this little effects of the ginger, and of course, it’s going to make you great. Uh, so with the ginger, you want to remove the peel and cut into, I do medium sized chunks. Not only is a little quicker, but it’s kind of nice to get a little chunk in your soup when you have it. Uh, so we know that ginger is quite warming in nature and it’s, uh, typically, you know, used for warming the digestion great for vegetarians and vegans. Um, but it also helps warm the lungs a little bit fresh tumeric group, because it’s so highly anti-inflammatory, but, you know, just bare mine tumor, it can stay in your clothes and it can stain your skin temporarily.

So I like to add cilantro leaves, not just for the taste, but, um, I’ll do some of the beginning and then some as a garnish, but also they are, um, medicinal and that they help the body detox heavy metals. So, you know, the, the less toxic you are, the better your immune system’s to be, but that that’s not necessary to add that, but it’s nice. Uh, I should talk you mushrooms. We talked about before being antiviral, my talking immune boosting and, you know, using fresh and locally for if possible, because the, the store-bought ones that are, you know, prepackaged. And so things are not nearly as medicinal as the real thing. So having your check-in meat is optional in the soup, but if you are vegan, you know, if you could do the chicken or, or regiment, if you could do the chicken broth as a medicinal thing, I, you know, I know some people won’t, but at least use these other ingredients for their medicinal effect and then adding towards the end.

Cause I don’t want to over cook. I might put in asparagus, you know, it has a great diuretic effect. Uh, some, some cooking green could be, you know, kale, green chard, if you had red chart is going to affect the color, um, or colors. But the last amount of kale is a really nice texture and it, it’s not too strong of a, um, cruciferous tastes in the soup. So I chop that up into medium sizes and then optionally, you could add something like green beans, uh, which are great for blood sugar, um, and doing medium-sized pieces. Um, I probably do them a little bigger than small pieces because you don’t want them to over cook. And if generally I try to do it without starch, I do it without, you know, regular potatoes, but sometimes I’ll put some sweet potatoes in to give it a little more body and a little bit of sweetness, but it’s not always necessary.

You could also use a delicate squash as a nice addition, and that’s not too starchy. So you can garnish with rush cilantro leaves and serve hot immediately before the volatile oils of the ginger evaporate. It’s really nice and then allow it to cool and freeze it. Um, and as I said, you can make a, uh, not, oh, I didn’t mention, you can make a non-conforming version of this skipping, the scallions, ginger and garlic, uh, to have, so then if you’ve got wind heat, it would be inappropriate thing. So just be sure to, you know, indicate on the containers in the freezer, which version it is.

And I wanted to get into some points for boosting the immune system. Um, certainly you may know some others, uh, I’m not going to take the time to mention the location since you can see that in that, you know, in the PowerPoints. Um, but I just wanted to quickly mention, you know, how these can be applied for boosting the immune system. So large intestine for, we all know that now there’s different locations for it. So you find it however you find it. Um, but it’s a classic point for immunity. Um, it helps remove heat. It regulates large intestine, whether there’s constipation or diarrhea, uh, it can be used. It can be needle or pressed on the opposite side where you can do both sides. You know, most people in acupuncture school learn about, you know, pressing it or kneeling on the opposite side of like a, a stuffed up sinus. Um, it’ll even if you do it the same side, it’ll, it’ll eventually clear it, but they have found in cadavers where the meridians are still alive for a few days after people pass that the large intestine Meridian and about 80% of people, probably right-handed people. Um, I’m just guessing making that assumption. The large intestine Meridian goes up one side and ends at the opposite. [inaudible]

now large lung seven is, um, also a great immune booster. We talk about it resolving the exterior dispelling when, and it’s, um, it’s just, you know, it has such a powerful effect on the head and the neck. So very, very beneficial stomach, 36 does everything, but your laundry, right, uh, strengthens the whole body, including the immune system tones, the muscles it’s digestion helps with fatigue. Um, just a good general immune point, large intestine 11 is, uh, you know, benefits immune system, but especially for clearing heat. Now this triple intestine point is a special Japanese immune point that I learned from Kiko Matsumoto. And, um, it’s also really, really good. Like most of her things are really exceptionally useful. Kidney 16 is another thing used, especially in Japanese acupuncture. So you’re palpating around the navel to find two positions on each, you know, a position on each side that, um, is perhaps sensitive. Um, you can feel if there’s something that you’re is, it feels a little tight or if something is a little bit, um, yielding and, and deficient, um, but this is very strong and deep infer, deep immune boosting. You don’t always need it for a cold and flu.

Um, and kidney 27, you know, is another great one for, uh, immune boosting deep. I mean, boosting now Sandra five, triple and triple heater, five, five, triple warmer, five, however you referred to it. Um, this helps resistance to colds and flus and can be used for heat conditions and Ren 17, right? It’s really great for so many emotional things, anxiety, anguish, depression, and we know that depression really affects the immune system. Uh, in, in fact, when you have a strong emotional reaction, like you get angry at someone or you get quite depressed, um, it really brings your immune system down and you’re prone to, especially with and getting a cold or flu in about 48 hours time. Uh, so, uh, want to keep our hearts open and that’s going to help boost our immune system also regulates the finest. So, uh, if you want to reach me for anything, you can contact me through my website, luminous beauty.com and there’s links for Facebook and Instagram. And, um, I wanted to, again, thank the American Acupuncture Council for producing the show. And next week we have Sam Collins. Uh, so, uh, until then have a good week stay calm because your immune system by.

 

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New Year, New Fees?

 

 

Click here to download the transcript.

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 everyone. This is Sam Collins, your coding and billing expert for acupuncture, the American Acupuncture Council. And of course for you giving you another episode with, to the point from the American Acupuncture Council and malpractice carrier on keeping you up to date, what’s changing. What’s new as the coding and billing expert always want to make.

You’re on top of everything that’s going on and what the changes are going to be for next year. So let’s get started with understanding fees. So let’s go to the slides, what I want to make sure there’s a good understanding of is how do I determine fees? And so you’re going to see what I have here, the RVU update, which stands for relative value units and how that affects your fee schedule, what changes you can make at the beginning of the.

And how your fees are going to be paid. Well, let’s talk about what are our fees. When you hear this term, you see our, or usual customary and reasonable, what does that mean? Well, it’s the amount that’s paid for medical services based on your geographic area. In other words, what is usually in customarily pay kind of like houses, what’s the usual and customary for your neighborhood.

It’s based on what the houses sell for. So in that sense, that’s usually the fee that’s charged for a doctor for a service and falls within the rains that others charge within the area. It is a service deemed necessary to their current condition. But what is the usual fee? Now keep in mind that usual fee has some variances.

Are you on the upper end or Lauren? I hope that we’re somewhere in the middle because here’s my concern. Let’s say you’re charging $50 for a service. That someone, including insurance companies are willing to pay $75 for if you’re only billing it at 50, of course, what are they going to pay you 50, even though they would pay at 75.

So I want to give you some tools that help you to establish a better way of understanding your fee. What let’s understand, what is the model we deal with? There’s a course in the insurance model. And that’s the reasonable customer feed that insurance has say are the acceptable range. And of course there’s a lot of variation to that.

And of course, as you can expect, if you belong to an insurance, like say you joined blue cross or blue shield or Ash, that’s going to be a set fee, which is probably not usual and customary, but the trade-off is I joined. And hopefully you get more patients, but you take far less money, not something we’re really that tickled with and less volume can be there.

So I look at it more from the patient value. What is the service worth that a patient is willing to pay for? And this is where we have to provide the value of the service. So someone’s willing to pay. And I think this is the model that acupuncture really thrives in the American physical therapy association has indicated that they find that as soon as people have a $30.

They start losing about a third of their patients. Do you know that’s not true for acupuncturists? So I’m always a little nervous that we sometimes undercharged for what we’re doing, because we’re afraid of that amount being something that’s going to scare the patient off, but what you have to think of, what’s the value and want you to think of as an acupuncturist, think of the value for a moment.

How many of you have been to a medical. And when you went in, you’re in pain and when you left, you felt better. And I’m not saying this as a negative in a way against medical doctors, but that’s not the way they treat. Think of how many times you have a patient come in. Maybe they have a headache or back pain, and they’re not even sure acupuncture is going to work.

But then after the visit, they’re like, oh my God, I can’t believe I’m not in pain. I’m 50% better than. There’s a lot of value there. So I want us to start to think of the value of the service and how we establish rates and using something called the relative value units. The relative value unit is a value determined actually by the federal government on the cost of each medical service.

Every CPT code has a relative value. Now what this relative value does, it allows you to compare the value of one service to another. So by example, if there’s a service that has a value of one. And another service that has a value of two. That would mean that service that’s a value of two would be twice the cost.

And so one of the things I want to do with this is take the RV use to help us begin, to establish a reasonable fee for the services we provide. The development of this started way back in the eighties and Harvard, and it continues to be updated every year by CMS. In fact, it is updated already for 2022, and I’ll give you a preview of that coming up.

So here’s what I’d like. You all to do. Take a moment. And tell me, what is your fee for these four codes now, obviously you don’t have to tell me, but I’d like you to think or write them down. What do I charge for the first set of manual acupuncture? What’s my fee for the second set or additional set. How about a mid-level new patient exam?

What do you charge for that? And then what do you charge for massage? What I’m trying to point out is if I can tell you the value of any one of these servers. Based on the relative value. I can tell you what the value is for another. In fact, that’s how insurance companies decide to pay for certain services is based on the relative value of each.

So let’s take a look at what is relative value. You’re going to see here a whole page of relative values. And I put all the common codes. If you’ve been to a seminar with me, you’ve seen this, but this is the update for 2020. What you’ll see immediately is that there’s been an increase. If you notice that I put the arrow around it, you’ll notice the relative value for now.

4 9, 7, 8 1 0 is 1.16. Whereas last year was 1.06. That’s about a 10% increase. So if someone says to you, Hey, acupuncturists are having an increase in fees. Actually that’s true. And it’s based on the relative values have been increased relative value though, just compare one service to the other. So the easiest way to think of this is if you look at the relative value of 9, 7, 8, 1 0, you notice as a value of 1.16, and then the value of 9, 7, 8 1 0 is 0.87.

Now, when you look at that, you’ll go, what does that mean, Sam? Well, I’ll make it real simple this way. What if you charge and again, this may be a little high. What if you. $116 for your first set. What would be the price of the second set? $87. That’s the idea. So if you can tell me what you charge for one code, and if that code is accepted and paid by a payer, I can tell you what they’re going to pay for everything else.

Now, the good news is you don’t really have to look at that many codes. I know this list is a little. But I want you to think of what services are you billing on a regular basis? That’s all we need to look at. Don’t worry about all of them. So how would I do this? You’re going to see her on the right. I did some calculations.

Now don’t be put off by the math part of this. It’s not complicated. All you have to do is tell me, what do you charge for 9 7, 8 1 0. So now I want you all to think of that. I asked you a moment ago. What do you charge for 9, 7, 8. You’ll notice I put a charge of 65. Now you might say, well, Sam, how’d you come up with 65.

I’m just saying that’s a typical fee for a lot of acupuncturist for the first set. So let’s just say 65 was your fear is your fee to figure out the fee for every other service you don’t guess and go, well, I guess I’ll charge $10 less. Here’s what we do. We take our. And we divide it by the services relative value.

So you’ll notice that I take 65 divided by 1.16, and it gives me 56 0 3. Now 5,603 is actually not the price of something. It’s the conversion. I then take that number and take any other codes relative value. Multiply to tell me the fee of that service. So by example, you’ll notice here 9, 7, 8 1 1 has a value of 0.8, seven.

So I’d take 56 0 3 times 0.87. It gives me 48 75. So that means if my price for a 9 8 9 7 8 1 0 is 65. What should be my price for a 9 7 8 1 1? Well, I would round up to 49, but I think you get my point that way you make sure you’re not cheating yourself. And I’ve seen a lot of providers do this. They’ll build a first set of 60.

And the second set of 50, 65. Now, of course, that’s your option. You can do that, but he won’t be my concern. What if the insurance company pays you in full for the second set? What does that tell you? You’ve done with the primary code you’re billing way below. So I can do this backwards as well. If they allow 65 for the one, one, I do the same calculation the other way, and I do it the same for every service.

So think of it in simplest terms, the difference between the first set and the second set is about 30%. So if your first sets a hundred seconds, that would be 70 or in this case 65 to 48, 75 or 49. Well, the same applies with any of their code. Like you might say, well, what do I charge? Or what should I charge for an exam?

Well, you notice the relative value for 9, 9, 2 0 3 is 3.2. So I take 56 0 3 times 3.29, and it gives me 180 4 33. Now the reality here is if you look at 1.16 to 3.29, it’s not quite three times the amount, but you can see it’s pretty close. So really what you want to think of is that the price of. Exam should be three times the price of your acupuncture service based on the relative value of the service.

Now, how these relative values work, they determined that the amount of work that’s involved with each service, and that includes not only the work involved with the service, but the type of provider, what your malpractice costs are and so forth. So again, 180 4, based on a $65 price or about three times the amount would be pretty reasonable.

Well, what about other services? Have you ever built, you know, let’s say. How would I figure out my price for massage? Well, massage value now is 0.8, eight. So I’d take 56 0 3 times 0.88, and gives me 49 30. What I want to make sure is that my prices for my services match each other. I’ve seen offices, bill out some pretty large amounts for one code at a very low amount for the other code.

And my question is why are you doing. What was the purpose? Now, if you can say to me, well, Sam, I did that because I just don’t want to charge my patients as much. And you have a good reason, I’ll say, okay, because maybe that fits your neighborhood, but if you’re doing it because you don’t know, like by example, what if you charge 50, 65 for the first set and you charge only $30 for massage?

Well, you. But if someone’s willing to pay 65 for a first set based on relative value the exam, or excuse me, the price for massage would be about 50. So start to really go through these coasts and start to see that. And here’s the beauty. It increased for acupuncture. So, I’m not sure you’ve heard this or not yet, but the prices for acupuncture related to rates associated with Medicare rates, or anyone will go up next year.

Now let’s not get too excited. The rate increase is about six to 7%, but that’s well above cost of living. So, yay. Finally, we’ve got an increase. Do you know? No other profession got an increase. If you go through all the fees, actually chiropractors, medical doctors, physical therapists, all got about a three to 4% return.

Acupuncture got a 6% increase. And I think mostly because the relative values are becoming more apparent. So you’ll notice the relative value for 2021 was quite a bit less now, 1 0 6 to 1.16, you think? Well that’s 10%. Oh, no. Because remember that’s again, already up at that level. So again, probably about six or 7% to give an example of what I’d like you to do though.

Now, if you’ve been to a seminar with me, you’ve seen this RVU sheet and if you’ve never been come to a seminar or join our network, so you can get this type of information, but here’s what I’d like you to do. You don’t need to do every code, but start coming up with a competent, reasonable fee schedule.

Cause I don’t want you to. But I certainly don’t want you to undercharge. And what I find for most offices, frankly, you bill about five or six services regularly. And I would say the average acupuncturist has three to four of those that have the wrong value, which means 50% or more of the code you bill are undervalued, which means you’re just losing 50% of your income.

So what I’d like you to do is go through, do this for your ENM codes and not every code you don’t bill, all of them, acupuncture codes, probably heat like infrared or other ones. Bodyworker massage, pretty typical as well. And maybe a little bit of exercise. Now you might say, well, Hey Sam, I do some other services.

Fine. Do those as well, but realize you’re not going to do a bunch of these. And what I would like you to do with this is begin to break down the cost. So here’s an example, and this is just for California, Southern California, specifically for Los Angeles and orange county. Now this is something we do for our network members in seminar attendees every year is we give you the updated.

For Medicare, which of course means the VA. And you’ll notice there’s been an increase notice 9, 7, 8 1 0 last year was $40 and 7 cents. Now it’s 42 67. Now, is that enough to go? Oh my God, we’ve got a lot more money. No, but a 6% increase if you’re generating a hundred thousand dollars a year. Just on acupuncture codes.

That should be an additional 6,000. So you can see here a nice little jump. Now, remember these are just for the California rates. Every state, every county has their own rates. And again, if you’re a network member with me, or if you’re coming to an upcoming seminar, you will have access to all these. So, you know, the rates that way, you’re making sure that you’re getting paid the right amounts, because my concern is, if you build below these rates, what are they.

That rate. So you want to start to understand what is the value of my service, but let’s go beyond that a little bit. Here’s what I’d really like. You all to do, take a moment to create a spreadsheet, like what you’re seeing here. And you’ll notice what I’ve done is I just put some common codes for acupuncture from exams, through acupuncture, massage.

What I do with one column is put the RV use and then maybe the next column might be what’s your time of service discount. Maybe that’s your price for cash, you know, maybe. You know, five or 10% below what you normally bill, but then you have your regular rate, just regular. What I, bill insurance then of course, what I’d like you to do is go through from payers that have paid you in the last six months or a year and put down those amounts.

What does Aetna pay? Blue cross blue shield. Cigna. I guarantee you all have that. One of the things I do with network members is to go through this and say, Hey, look, let’s start creating a competent sheet. The realization. You don’t bill as many codes as you think. So you don’t have to do a lot, but go through that way.

But what if it isn’t a patient comes to you and they ask you because of course the next year we have the no surprise billing. Okay. What does my plan pay? Well, you can go to your chart and go, oh, your plan is going to pay XYZ dollars. And this is going to be your balance. What it also does though. It’s a chance for you to look to go, which of these are good or bad because as your practice begins to go into next year, what is your plan?

To really begin to maximize your office. One of the plans I would do is let’s do a survey of what is the better paying plans that we may deal with and how much are they paying now? By example, Medicare work comp are all standard fees. Most states have standard fees for that. So you can already put that in and at the very least I’d want you doing that.

So here’s an example with RV use. You can do a lot to determine your care. So by example, if you’re in the state of. The work comp rate in Texas, what they do is take this value 61 17 and they multiplied by any RVU. So by example, I can tell you exactly what the fee is for work comp in Texas for 9 7, 8 1 6.

Remember, it’s 1.16. So it’s 16% above this, or roughly close to about 67, maybe $68. Or how about if you’re in the state of Utah? What they do is use a conversion, but two different ones. If it’s an ENM code, they convert with a 56 conversion or 52 for other codes. So realize that the Medicare conversion is roughly $37 plus or minus depending on your county.

So that would be a starting point. And I’ll give an example. What if you’re admitted? If you’re in Michigan, what they do is they just simply take whatever the Medicare rates are and double them when it comes to personal injury. Now, one thing to be concerned with here is if you just double your rates on personal injury, that’s good because personal injury will pay you.

But what if you charge your other patients less? Remember you can have two different fees. So you’ve got to make a decision, even though I can charge double for personal injury. If you’re charging maybe only 1.5, that’s what you’re going to charge for them. What my suggestion is. Probably be at least 1.25 to 1.5 above Medicare rates.

Notice by example, the Medicare rates in for work comp in Michigan, they just take a conversion of 47 66. So this is where using RV use will help you. But take a look at this one. If you have a patient that’s with Boeing and particularly Boeing uses, and they’re employed with Boeing they’re blue cross blue shield, they sent a directive out this year.

What they pay is 175% of. So what if you got 90% of your patients with this plan and you’re billing a hundred percent of Medicare, you’re losing 75% of your money. Now keep in mind, maybe you don’t want to charge 175% because you still have a lot of patients that can’t afford that. So it’s going to balance somewhere, but my concern is, am I setting my fees off of my best insurance or best richest patients?

Or am I sending it off of my port? So I want to be somewhere in the middle there, but what I want more than anything is a competent fee schedule. If someone says, how did you determine your fees? You’re going to say, I use relative values to determine the value of my service. Tell me what an insurance will pay for one code, and I’ll tell you what they’ll pay for any other code, because relative values goes across the board.

As you can see here, by example in California, we’re comp is 1.2. And so simple way of looking Pennsylvania, 113% Florida, 200% for work comp. So lots of changes here that allows you to start to use this as a way to competently set up a fee schedule. And I’m going to suggest it’s the new year. Let’s start looking towards that.

Obviously, if you’re dealing with a VA patient, you’re going to get an automatic raise, but what if you don’t raise your rates? So what if you bill at last year’s rates, what are they going to pay you for next year? So you’ve got to make sure to bill the higher rate or bill your normal rate to make sure you’re getting the maximum amount out of it.

So here’s something I want to make sure everyone’s aware of. Do you know when we posted this, if you’re a member with us, you received an email on this Medicare fees. The deductible acupuncture fees increased six to 7%. Really good notice we posted this a month ago or thereabout. If you’ve not already go to the American acupuncture council network, Facebook.

And take a look at our Facebook page or in our site, just click on the new section. We update you there all types of things. The American acupuncture council wants to be your resource. We want to make sure that your claims get paid, because if you’re not getting. You don’t need our services. So frankly, we’re symbiotic.

We have to do a good job of helping you to make sure you have claims. We also offer a service. We call the network, take a look at our site, come to a seminar, be informed about information that’s coming out for you. Cause if you’re not informed about. You’re probably left behind. Take a look. We’ve got lots of live, meaning in-person seminars, upcoming, but also virtual.

So just pick the date that fits best for you because we have a vested interest in you. We want you to do well. That’s what we always give you this information. So I’m going to say thank you very much. Next week’s hosts are going to be Dr. Jeffrey Grossman. I wish you all a very good new year in a Merry Christmas, but also let’s plan and have a good prosperous 2022 see you next time.

 

Some Instances Where Insurance For Acupuncture Businesses Is Helpful


Are you new to the industry and curious about whether or not insurance for acupuncture businesses is helpful? In this post, we will discuss some specific cases that prove buying one is a must.

A patient files a case, claiming malpractice.

A couple of months into the acupuncture treatment completion, a patient of yours suddenly claims that your procedure is not working. On the contrary, he signifies that it makes the condition worse. Of course, this is highly debatable. Such a scenario leaves you with a few options to address the concern. One, convince the client to stay and show the areas that improved. Two, refuse to refund. Three, grant the refund.

If negotiations fail to settle scenarios like mentioned above, and your client chooses to abandon the treatment and files a case in court for malpractice instead, insurance for acupuncture businesses (liability insurance) comes into play. It will help ensure that you and your business will be okay during the entire duration of a legal battle, having your financial needs covered.

The equipment in your clinic needs repair or replacement.

Equipment is not damage-proof. It will succumb to natural wear and tear. With daily use, it will eventually break down, and repair or replacement is imminent. Plus, damage from a natural calamity can potentially make its lifespan even shorter. For instance, an acupuncture table can cost from USD 300 to USD 2,400 to replace. That is quite a price tag. The good news is, acupuncture insurance can cover that. A small business property insurance will pay for the replacement or repair, saving your bank account from bleeding out.

A patient accidentally slips and stumbles upon entering your clinic, obtaining injuries.

Such an unfortunate case can be a result of negligence on the part of the patient. However, the chances that the patient will pursue a legal complaint are still high. That is because the incident happens inside your facility. Like other similar cases, you are technically responsible for paying for the medical fees. But with acupuncture insurance, you should be okay, knowing that your business and your professional reputation are covered.

Online looking for the best insurance for acupuncture businesses? Contact American Acupuncture Council today at (800) 838-0383.

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The How and Why of Physical Examination for Acupuncturists

 

 

So in general, I think the physical examination is essential to all of us, no matter what style of acupuncture we practice, especially if you’re treating any kind of pain or injuries.

Click here to download the transcript.

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. Good afternoon. My name is Poney Chiang from neuro-meridian.net. I’m joining you today from Toronto Canada. Uh, welcome to this week’s show for the American Acupuncture Council. Uh, my guest for today is Jamie Chavez. Jaime Chavez has been a licensed acupuncturist in California since 2002, and he received his master’s in traditional Chinese medicine and 5, 4, 5 branches and has participated in internships in Beijing, China. He specialized in the treatment of a work-related injuries. He is currently the head acupuncturist in a prominent bay area. Workers’ compensation connects and works alongside medical doctors, physiotherapists and orthopedic surgeons. Jamie is passionate about the art of physical examination and integrates multidisciplinary approach in the assessment treatment of MSK pathologies. Jamie has been an instructor in several bay area acupuncture schools at both the master’s and doctoral level. It was during this time that he discovered his passion for teaching.

Jamie has had the honor of introducing acupuncture to medical residents who periodically shouted him for clinical rounds. He has been a guest lecture for Stanford physician assistant program, and it has been actively teaching physical examination skills to acupuncturist in hospital settings. Jamie continues to find joy in spreading the word about the effectiveness of acupuncture. Also, you may, in case you haven’t know, um, you don’t know, and you should, you, Jamie is also the admin and founder of the Dow, uh, Facebook group, which is discussion acupuncture, orthopedics. So it having waiting to interview, uh, Jamie for a long time. Now he’s a busy guy, our schedules just never coincided. So I’m very, very, very excited to finally be able to make that happen. And, um, and very much looking forward to this, uh, this interview. Thank you so much for joining us. Jamie,

Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure. Yeah.

So you are, um, the, um, the very passionate about physical examination and, uh, I know, you know, a lot of people don’t do that. And so for those of us that probably need a bit of, um, motivation or, um, what is it that you can tell us in terms of what makes physical examination so important to clinical practice?

So in general, I think the physical examination is essential to all of us, no matter what style of acupuncture we practice, especially if you’re treating any kind of pain or injuries. Um, it’s a way of holding yourself accountable so that you can prove or disprove your own thinking about what you are, you know, thinking is going wrong with patient. So someone comes in with the chief complaint and you gather the data and you think something’s going on, but you have to hold yourself accountable. You have to keep yourself in check and try to, um, eliminate your own bias and, uh, basically try to get better at gaining clinical experience because we’re all researchers in the clinic. And so this is our way to do research. So we want to find things that are reproducible, repeatable, and physical examinations, that bridge, you know, for me.

That’s great. Um, I have heard you talk about, um, uh, I’ve heard that you really enjoy teaching through acronyms and mnemonics and, uh, you know, it was just, we learned by association. So it’s good to have something to kind of associate things with, um, when it comes to, um, physical examinations, is there any, uh, not mnemonics that you think would be helpful for us to, to become more comprehensive in our, um, uh, intakes or in our assessments?

Yes, there’s a ton of them out there. I mean, I’ve, I’ve gathered and tried all these different ones over the years. Um, but none of them really, uh, crossed over and applied directly to an acupuncturist. So, you know, there was, there was missing pieces or the order was not right. So I came up with a mnemonic, um, a horse, uh, H O R S E. And I’ve been sticking with that one ever since. And, um, I can explain a little bit about what each of those letters means. Um, the H is the history of the patient. So that’s, you know, their past history, which is the things they fill out on the initial intake form, but then there’s the present history, which is, you know, regarding their chief complaint, what brought the patient into the clinic to be seen today, let’s get all the data regarding that specific topic.

And then, uh, the, oh, is the, uh, observation. So what do you see from the patient? And that’s now we’re getting into the physical exam skills. So what do you see when you look at the patient? And that usually begins the moment you lays up, you know, they eyes on them when they’re in the waiting room, when you walk them back to the treatment room and then, you know, there’s other, you know, key pieces that you’re going to look for, depending on what they’re coming in to be treated for. But observations really important. I’m very passionate about observation because it’s so fast and you can see so much if you know what you’re looking at. And a lot of times we see things, we just don’t know how to interpret it. So that’s something I’ve been really passionate about over the last couple of years and just really diving deep into it, just diagnosing by looking, um, the are for horses, range of motion, which is essential.

It’s one of the most important things that anybody can start using right away, because it’s so fast and you get so much data from the patient. There’s different types of range of motion. So there’s active range of motion. There’s passive range of motion. There’s resisted range of motion, resisted range of motion could be like your manual muscle tests, right? It’s all in that frame. You know, passive range of motion could be your muscle length tests. You know, there’s many different ways to look at that. And then the S is the special tests. Um, so that’s the orthopedic tests. Some people call those provocative tests because you’re trying to basically tease out where the problem’s coming from. And then the E is explored by palpation. You know, hands-on diagnosing by touching. So each of those, you know, contributes to the horse acronym, and that is the order of operation for me.

So we talked to the patient first, and then when it comes to physical exam, we look at them, we have them go through a movement assessment and that could be active, passive, or resisted, or all of them at the same time, you know, check each one individually and you would want to do it in that order. So active range of motion is first because you want to see how willing the patient is to even move right away. You’re already, you know, gauging where they’re at when you want to do other tests down the road, and then you would do passive next. And then you would do resisted last because resistive could be provocative. It could cause pain in a patient. You always save painful tests for last, because if you cause your patient discomfort, you know, they may say, okay, I don’t want to do this anymore.

Right? Like, let’s stop the exam here. So you’d, and if they’re, if you provoke their pain, you know, it also skews your results for everything else you check, because now that, you know, they feel a little discomfort. Now, everything you check is you don’t know how valid it is. And then for us, you know, we’re acupuncturist. So what are we going to do before we stick a needle? Now we’re going to palpate. So why not do that last? Um, and that in itself, how patient is provocative, it causes pain and patients. So definitely we want to save that towards the end and then go right into our needle. Hm.

Okay. I like that. It’s like from the, from the, uh, assessment, the palpation diagnostics, and it goes transition smoothly into the actual needling component. So it’s, it’s very seamless. Um, I’ve heard of, you mentioned something called the ABCs before. Is that also a type of, uh, assessment or is that something different?

That’s another acronym. So like, you’re mentioning, I love, I love mnemonics and acronyms. Right? Um, what, what you see a lot of, and, you know, I, you know, with social media and things, you kind of get a sense for how well people are able to extract data from their patient. Um, but the ancient horse is the history. And I have an entire course just on how to do, you know, a history. You know, we could talk about that all day, but to keep it really simple, there’s key components that you have to get from your patient when they come in. And there’s tons of acronyms for this. But the one that sticks with me the most is just knowing your alphabet. Cause who doesn’t know their alphabet. Right. That’s like the basics. So it’s, but this part of the alphabet is old. P Q R S T.

If you can remember OPQ Q R S T, you can get all the data very quickly from your patient. So for example, like if you like pony, if you’re on my patient and let’s say you shoulder pain, I would ask you the O, which is, you know, when did this happen? The onset, the O is for onset. When did this happen? And how often do you feel this complaint? Is it 24 hours a day? Or does it come and go if it comes and goes, how long does it hang around before you know, those kinds of things? So that’s the O the P is palliative and provocative palliative means, you know, uh, soothing to the pallet. So something that makes you feel better. So pony, what makes your shoulder feel better? What makes it feel worse? The other part of the P is provocative. Like these are essential questions, because if you tell me it feels worse at night when you’re sleeping, I already know there’s something wrong with your sleeping position.

That needs to be correct. You know, those kinds of things. Can you tell me he feels good, then obviously you’re going to feel good when you leave. When I use infrared heat, moxa, hot pack, you know, we already know what it’s going to help. Um, so the next thing is the quality and the quantity. So, um, you know, the quality of your pain tells us a lot. Is it sharp, dull, achy, burning, throbbing, et cetera. You know, the nature of pain gives us some clues. And then we can go to the quantity, which is like zero to 10. How is your pain right now in this moment that you’re talking to me, you know? And then how is it at its worst in the last 24 hours? How is it at its best then the last 24 hours? So that’s how we could use that pain scale a little more accurately.

And then the RSM LPQ. So O P Q R the R is radiate. Does it radiate anywhere? Is your, is your discomfort localized or does it go to a different area of your body? And this is important not to lead the patient. So if someone comes in with sciatica, I don’t say, does the, does the pain radiate from your back down to the bottom of your foot? Like you wouldn’t ask, you wouldn’t lead the patient, you gotta leave the questions open. Like, does your pink go anywhere else? If so, where and how often, you know, and then T is time, is your symptoms worse during a certain time of the day, morning, afternoon, or night? If you say you keep waking up in pain, I know something’s going on with your sleeping position, or maybe you have some arthritic changes, you know, and they get better as you warm up.

So it already gives you a lot of clues, but what you see as a lot of people don’t gather that data when they present case studies and things, and in the subjective information is key. Like you already have a clue, like a very good clue of what the problem is before you ever laid hands on the patient. If you do that old PQRST. And now when you get into the rest, the physical exam, you’re again, just trying to prove or disprove your hypothesis. So if I tell you, Hey, pony, I think you have a rotator cuff tear, and this is the reason why you have these symptoms, but then you have these data points and, you know, it’s like proving a case to yourself, holding yourself accountable versus like, well, I just heard that pain there means you could have this, you know, like, or I, when I press here at Hertz, like that’s not enough data we need to, we need to be more, um, we need to, to raise the bar on our level of a practice, you know?

That’s great. Yeah. Um, I definitely think that if you, if one does a very good history, um, oftentimes, you know, with some, with enough clinical experience, you already have you already kind of starting to find out in New York, you almost, you’re just doing one or two orthopedic tests to confirm, you know? Um, so, uh, a good history taking can actually, in a way, it seems like time-consuming, people might not want to do it, but it’s actually the opposite. I think that if you did a good history taking, you end up having to hone in faster and you’re going to be, uh, maybe it’d be more, more efficient in your practice. Actually. It’s not, it’s actually the, counter-intuitive not the other way around. Um, um, like for example, um, uh, I like the accountability discussion, you know? Um, because here’s the thing, obviously, as a practitioner, we, we, we always, we sometimes deal with practitioner at patients that are more difficult to say, oh, the pain is still there.

The pain is still there. Yeah. But it’s like 10% of what it used to be. Right. So, you know, it’s, you can’t make a yes or no. You have to, you know, many ways the quantitative or qualify it. Right. It does not refer. So this is how, you know, as meditation is working, but also sometimes the patient needs help knowing that too, because to them it’s like yes or no. Right. And yeah, and now the weird thing is that, um, the opposite can happen. Sometimes they can not be getting better, but they have so much trust in you. They say, say they are better, you know, that happens too. So, so these tests go both ways. It actually helps you, you know, if is actually better than not even though the patient might say it’s better, but it actually may not be. Right. So that’s

A good point.

Yeah. I know. So like,

They don’t want to hurt your feelings. They want to say, oh yeah, you’re doing a good job, you know,

But, uh, but you know, some sometimes, you know, I mean, of course there’s the, the, this, the report is the placebo effect. You know, the attention being heard, you know, uh, you know, maybe we just, I keep putting in needles, we help them to sleep in their, you know, their stress level is better. So indirectly things have gone better, but right. But you know, maybe the range of motion didn’t get better, that sort of things. But, you know, it is, if you didn’t take the time to do these assessments, then you’d be, you know, you’re not really truly helping the patient. Right. So I, I, I’m such a big fan of, um, of, um, these, um, more objective measures and does, so I hope I have a chance to, uh, to take one of your classes in near future.

Thank you. Yeah. Likewise. Yeah. There’s, I mean, the, the objective things is amazing. Cause it’s really the whole story. Like if you just, if you don’t go, if you don’t do that, you’re missing half the story. It’s like going to the movies and walking out halfway through, you’d never even found out what the ending was. You know, like by doing these things, like you said, you hold yourself accountable, you can see the, you know, the full presentation and something that I’ve been really like, just kind of blown away is that the more you do this, you start to understand your patient, the person in front of you better, you understand how they hurt themselves. And then you, you know, as you treat them and they start to get better, you’re able to have a better picture on Tet, you know, how to teach them how to prevent themselves from getting hurt.

Again, you know, it’s like the back pain I’ve been seeing so much ridiculous at the, in the last few months, I think from all the people working at home, sitting too much and things, but it’s always like, you know, their sleeping position, their sitting position or their standing position, how they stoop and twist and things. And then if you can identify the activities for them and show them how to move a little better, it’s like, wow, these patients that have had pain for 11 months over a year, nothing’s helping them after a couple of visits, all of a sudden they just shift, you know, it’s like, wow, okay. Those are the patients that are listening to your advice, you know, and then, you know, your acupuncture treatment and or whatever treatment you’re doing is going to hold better. It’s going to have a better, uh, um, lasting effect because they don’t just go home and immediately do the thing that w was causing their injury to begin with.

You know, so those are, it’s just, it’s so it’s so vital. And before I forget too, one of the things that I think is really important as clinical experience. So I know we always talk about, you know, okay. People like to talk about how many patients they’ve seen, but I look at it as like, how many pushups can you do? You can probably do a hundred really lousy pushups, but could you do like 10 really good ones? And I think that’s the same with treating patients. Can you treat 10 patients really good? And if you can, I think your clinical experience is going to be so much more profound than treating a hundred or a thousand patients very quickly without getting all that data, getting that feedback and seeing what your, you know, your input, what your needles are actually doing. So the more you go deeper, you know, you get a richer, more fulfilling experience that, you know, it’s going to help other people more down the road, you know,

[inaudible], you know, I actually, I find, um, um, you know, a lot of times the patients that come to our practice, um, have gone through the conventional healthcare system, which is not known for spending time with their patients. Right. So how do you know you remember how many times patients say to you? Oh, you know, you, they, they say that, oh, you know, more than my neurologist or, you know, more than my surgeon. It’s not that we know more than them. It’s just that we actually take the time to ask questions and do the assessments. So, but, but for whatever it’s worth that time, that the demonstration of your knowledge and doing the testing, listen carefully, it’s actually building rapport and confidence. So they’re already ready to be needled and treat it right by you. Right. You know, that’s a, that’s a big part of, um, the efficacy. I think that, you know, yeah. Like, you know, you explain what’s going on. Why is the referring for example, right. And this is why I’m going to show you here, even though you, your, your pain is there, but I’m going to need a, you hear that, that you lay out in race, a logical progression, and th they put them put some at and comfortable with you. Right. And I think that goes a long way to, you know, that rapport building is huge.

Yeah. I think that’s it.

Yeah. And, and I think that’s one, um, value of a good history or assessment taking that is, you know, it’s not just a, you know, a left brain diagnostic thing is actually can become a right brain emotional and relationship building kind of thing.

Absolutely. I had a, um, a patient yesterday and she was telling me that she went to another acupuncturist and she had a bad treatment. And then I saw I’m naturally gathering data all the time. So I said, well, what defines a bad treatment to you? You know, I want to know, cause I don’t want to repeat those mistakes. And so, you know, basically she went in for back pain, the patient, the practitioner said, so what’s going on? You have back pain. Okay. Let’s have you lay on your stomach needles in needles out after she gets off the table. Okay. Have a nice day. Never once anything else. And I don’t, I don’t want to, I’m not saying that that’s bad. I mean, I’ve treated, been shaded by amazing practitioners that that can do that. But what I’m saying for us, you know, for the majority of people, you know, taking the time to actually figure out what’s going on with the person and letting them know that you, you know, what you’re doing is profound versus the shotgun approach where I just do protocols or recipes for every person.

And then you depend on that. So when it works great, you’re the hero. You feel so good about the experience, but when it doesn’t work, you have no idea what to do next, you know? And then it goes back to what you’re saying, like, you know, that, that rapport, but what I see as it comes down to trust, like your patients need to trust you. And if you know what you’re talking about, and you can explain it to the patient on their level, you can see that trust right away. I mean, I had a new patient yesterday. I didn’t even put needles in yet and he’s already trying to refer me people. I haven’t even treated him yet. It’s because he had four different complaints and we were able to like, okay, here’s, what’s at this. And he’s like, Hey, you know, you know where my problem’s coming from. He’s like, you know, can I send people to you? And I haven’t even treated him yet, you know? But the trust, the trust is already there.

So the take home message is that do good assessment through good history and it’ll lead to more referrals,

More trust. And not only tomorrow,

That’s talk about common mistakes that we make in our, in our, um, clinical examination, history, taking process. Uh, you know, as an instructor, you, um, must see this a lot. Can you help give us some ideas of what are some things that we can do better? Where some common examination mistakes. I thought you mentioned, for example, don’t say, does your pain start from here? Refer there. I don’t don’t coach them. That’s one. Right? Anything else that you can, you can let us know? Yeah.

Yeah. For sure. There’s a ton, obviously, you know, I’m making mistakes all the time and learn from them. But I say the number one mistake is to assume anything. Um, so if you start assuming things, you know, you don’t leave room for air and there, and as you, you know, get experience in this profession, you become very aware that nothing is always right. So you always see people say, oh, that treatment works like a charm. That treatment works every time that no, it doesn’t, you know, like there’s no, there’s no perfect of anything. So I wouldn’t jump on the thing and say, you have a rotator cuff tear based, you know, I’m certain of this for me. I like to say, well, these things suggest the possibility that this might be going on, but I could be wrong. And, but we’re going to treat it like that.

And we’re going to keep reassessing as we go. And if what we’re doing is working great, let’s keep doing it. If it’s not working, we’re probably missing something. Leave the door open for mistakes, because you’re going to make mistakes every single day. And if you’re at this level where you don’t make mistakes and you, you feel like everything works like a charm, um, you have to check yourself, you have to hold yourself accountable and get back to this understanding that, you know, there is no two people that are exactly the same. And you could be very wrong about this person in front of you. I mean, I had a person with supposedly a rotator cuff tear who had cancer in his shoulder. And it took, it took the doctors a while to figure out that there was a tumor in there, you know, but if I, I learned a valuable lesson from that experience, because if I was in private practice, he was getting better with acupuncture.

He was a swimming teacher and he was getting his range of motion, was getting better. He was getting stronger, less pain. He was doing good. Unfortunately, there was cancer in there and I did not, there was no way I would have known it. I would have thought that, Hey, okay, you’re doing good discharge you. So, I mean, never, never assume anything in this business. Um, so that’s a big mistake. I think another big mistake is to, uh, jump on a bandwagon. So you learn a couple of assessments tools, and you think that’s all there is you need to continue to go deeper. You know, it’s not one thing, you know, if you do manual muscle testing, for example, that’s a great tool, but that’s not your entire picture of that horse acronym. That’s a one little sliver and you need to incorporate as many of those pieces as you can, to develop an educational guests that support your hypothesis.

So if you only have one little sliver of information and you go, okay, you, your problem is this because you know, this muscle is weak or whatever you are missing, the bigger picture, you know? So I would say, you know, keep learning like never, never, you know, get satisfied. You got to go deep. And if you want to try to get better at something, what I found helpful for me is just pick a body part. So like, for example, I keep saying shoulder, cause it’s on my mind. But you know, if you go to the say, I want to learn shoulders, you can learn shoulders really easily. I mean, the technology is in your hand, the anatomy is in your, in your phone, just take some notes, right. But then what you need to do is just, you know, fill in the blanks of that horse.

So what kind of questions should I ask someone who has a shoulder problem? There are some specific questions that can help guide your, if you’ve got pain at nighttime, that’s a very common symptom of rotator cuff tears. When, you know, wakes you up from your sleep. It doesn’t mean you have a rotator cuff tear if you wake up from sleep. But it’s just one more data point or one more clue. You know, if you, you know, what do you see when you look at a patient who has a rotator cuff issue, what is their range of motion going to be like actively passively resisted? And then what special tests can help differentiate two competing diagnosis? So maybe there’s like, I think it’s this or this. Well, there’s going to be some tests that can be used that differentiate that. And then when it comes to palpation, that’s our, that’s our expertise.

But just know what’s underneath your finger. You got to get in there and know how to differentiate. If I pop a [inaudible] with the arm, you know, resting on some, like my hands on my belly and I press on July 15, I’m touching the supraspinatus tendon. But if my hand is out to the side on the table with my Palm to the ceiling and our press, I 15, I’m more likely pressing the biceps tendon now. So it’s just like little subtle things like that. Can, you know, they’re so basic, but when you apply them, it seems like it’s advanced, but it’s really not. Um, so those, those are some common things off the top of my head, but there are a lot of things that we do wrong and there’s still a lot of things that I do wrong, but I think maybe the, the worst thing you could do is stop learning, you know, keep being motivated because we’re helping people.

And we’re in this profession that is bridging this gap between surgery and everybody else that’s not helping these patients like we are on the frontline and acupuncture is that effective. It blows my mind every day, but we have to have a way to test how effective it is to get that experience that I was talking about that helps us to be better. And then share that information freely, freely with your colleagues. So everybody’s better. I think that is one of the best things we can do as a profession. And I hope we can get there.

Certainly I think if, um, we all up our own game by becoming better at doing assessments, it would transform the prestige and the, you know, the, uh, the reputation of our, our profession for sure. Right? Like, uh, the it’s, um, now I will run out of time, but I, I, I have to pick your brain. Okay. Um, I want you, can you share like a clinical Pearl with us? I always like to do this, something that you pay, perhaps you really good at treating, you know, you’re talking about shoulders today, anything about shoulders or something like that, that, uh, you know, some, some assessment or diagnostic advice you can give us so that we can maybe try it out, or maybe it’s something that we’re not, not thinking in that way and give us a different thinking cap to help us look at the body or assess, um, the patient, any advice for our fellow listeners and viewers today.

Sure. Um, my lead-in will be that, you know, there are, there is this like, you know, movement where people are saying, you know, special tests, orthopedic tests are not good. Those people unfortunately have not done the research. And it’s much easier to say it’s not good then to dive deep and learn it because it takes a long time to really understand all these things. And I know because I’ve been going through it. But one thing that I’ve been doing in the last year is digging in and picking apart all the research and starting to pick out, you know, tests that have been proven time after time to be effective and how effective those tests are like, uh, you know, changing your post-test probability of someone having a problem. So no orthopedic tests are not bad. Yes, they’re great. But you have to understand how to utilize them.

So a really simple clinical Pearl for shoulders is if somebody tries to raise their arm over their head, but they can’t. And they ended up shrugging their shoulder into their ear. Based on the research, they are 15% more likely to, if they, if they can do this without shrinking their shoulder, they’re 15% less likely I should say, to not have a rotator cuff problem. So people who can raise their arm easily and freely, you know, that’s, they could still have a rotator cuff issue because people are asymptomatic and so forth. But when you see somebody shrug their shoulder into their ear to try to raise their arm, what that tells you right away, is there something wrong with their shoulder? It doesn’t tell you what it is, but it’s what they’ve narrowed it down to. It’s either the rotator cuff it’s frozen shoulder, or they have arthritis in the joint so that there is a sh there’s a high probability that somebody has a shoulder issue.

If they put their shoulder in their ear to try to raise their arm over their head and they can raise it all the way. And then as a side note, let’s say, you’re that person that can raise your arm easily, but you can’t bring it down very easily. Like you have to bend your elbow to, to shorten the moment arm so that it’s not as heavy. You end up bending the arm or you support it to bring it down. That starts showing you like, okay, this person is more likely to have a rotator cuff issue. And that sign alone changes the post-test probability by 15%. So what does that mean? Wow, that’s a lot of information, but what they’ve shown is the number one risk factor for rotator cuff injuries is age. And if you’re 60 years old, you’re 25% more likely to have a rotator cuff tear.

If you come in saying my shoulder hurts. So 25% of those people have rotator cuff tears. If that person has a hard time lowering their arm, now you add to that 25%, an extra 15, and you go, oh, this person is 40% likely to have a rotator cuff tear going on. Just with that information alone. I didn’t even ask them any questions and they do it at intake. I didn’t do the other tests. Just those two pieces of information alone. He’s 40% more likely to have a rotator cuff tear. He’s 60 years old and he can’t lower his arm without bending his elbow and supporting it. So these tests, when you use them like that, they can give you some good clues to support your hypothesis.

Thank you so much. I would love that because a lot of times people look at things like under, you know, on the way up or, or, uh, doing the activation part, but they don’t look at the entire process. There’s another 50% of it is when they put themselves back into neutral position. And that, that part you mentioned where they with shortening their arm. Like if you just turn around to do your charting, you would miss that complete, right? Yeah. That’s exactly right. Yeah. So I really, I really, really watched the entire process. You know, I really read a lot, so I thank you very much. I’d love, I learned so much from you in this short amount of time that we have for today. Where can the rest of us go? If we want to find out more information about your courses, do you have any contact information, you know, website, social media, uh, work. When you go to, if you want to study more with you in the future,

Um, you can check out the Facebook group discussions on acupuncture, orthopedics, uh, Dao, D a O is the acronym to make it easy to remember. Cause I love that. There you go. So, and then I have my website it’s www.orthopedic-acupuncture.org, orthopedic-acupuncture.org.

Thank you so much, Jamie. It’s been a pleasure. It’s been an honor to finally meet you virtually face-to-face. Thank you very much. They are that. Yeah. Thank you for most of our fellow viewers. And don’t forget to join us next week, where we’re going to have my fellow host, Virginia Doran. Uh, gimme another excellent show.

 

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The Top 5 Reasons You Need A Social Media Strategy

 

 

I’m here on behalf of the AAC to provide you with some amazing content and information to help you grow your practice.

Click here to download the transcript.

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 and thank you for this opportunity to share some practice and marketing insights with you. For those of you that don’t know me, my name is Jeffrey Grossman, and I’m here on behalf of the AAC to provide you with some amazing content and information to help you grow your practice. I’m the founder and owner of acupuncturemedia works, Accudownloads and acupressure websites. And I started my practice in 98 and I had a lot of trials and tribulations and a lot of struggles. And I noticed that I had a problem in not knowing how to market my practice and how to properly communicate with my patients. And all I wanted to do was to treat people and I didn’t want to market or do any of that. Um, so the struggle was real. The struggle is real, and it took me down a path to start my companies, but that’s a longer story, best reserved for another time.

But what I want to do today is to share with you some insights and information about how to incorporate social media into your practice. But before I do that, I want to encourage and inspire you with the fact that you are an incredible resource. You’re natural healers. You know how to get people to feel balanced and healthy. We know how to, um, help people with safe, natural methods. And we change lives every single day and people need your help. They want your help. They need your services, but many people don’t even know that you exist. So I want to help change that. I want to help get you more people on your table. And that’s what these talks with the AAC are all about is to help you be seen, be heard and to ultimately bring people into your practice so that you can make more money and ultimately help more people.

So you are never alone. I want to remind you that, okay, I’m here for you. And at the end of today’s talk, or you feel like you need help getting set up or becoming focused, or if you just need a little motivation to move forward, please reach out. There are a lot of opportunities that, um, I can help you with in supporting your practice and you aren’t alone. I’ve been through this, I’ve worked with other practitioners who have been through this. So, um, use this talk as a resource, use me as a resource and just one or two simple changes, um, and aha moments from today’s talk can make all the difference for you. Okay? So let’s go ahead and get started. I want to talk with you about the top five reasons. You need a social media strategy and how to get started. Now, social media is an online marketing tool that allows you to communicate directly with your audience.

And there has never been a time in history when it’s this easy to connect with your patients. And today, every practice owner knows that it’s essential to have a strong social media presence and engage with your market online, excuse me, but few actually know how to do it effectively and get results. But the key difference between those who succeed and those who fail is simply planning. Okay? So practitioners that use social media successfully do so because they have a solid strategy in place and they take the time to plan this strategy with a big picture view, and then implement it in a systematic way. So your practice can absolutely benefit as well. And the time it takes to develop this strategy more than pays off, once you implement it and start getting closer to your practice goals. So today I would like to talk with you about five reasons, why you need a social media strategy and what you need to do to get started now first is that you have to maximize the effectiveness of your social media presence that allows you to attract the right kind of patient to your practice.

You then have to focus your energy and your time creating this strategy. So you can continue helping more people with your acupuncture treatments, right? So if you want to bring them in, you have to get in front of them consistently. All right? And then you have to know what type of content converts these prospects into paying patients. So you can make sure that your strategies actually working and that you’re reaching more of your marketing goals. And it’s important to find the, uh, the motivation to implement and post content every day. And I’ll show you how to make it a lot easier. And it’s going to be easier than you might think. And finally, you need to know what tools are important to measure your social media success. So you don’t waste your time and money on something. That’s not giving you a positive return. Okay?

Sound good. So many practitioners make the mistake of thinking that social media works like this. You log in, you check out your feed, you post some stuff, you interact with your commenters and you watch your grades gradually rise. Nice. Right? Sounds fair. But not quite. It doesn’t exactly work this way and it can, but it won’t be as effective as it can be. And here’s why if you don’t have a strategy and a plan, you won’t get any results from your social media activities. You may grow some followers by simply being there, interacting with them, but that won’t get you closer to achieving your practice goals. All your activities, including posting on Facebook or Twitter should help you get closer to your goals or it’s a waste of time. So developing a strategy first and foremost helps you link these activities with your goals. For example, if you’re using these platforms to nurture leads by sending them to your free report or your free evaluation, and just getting them to join your list, you’d post different content in a different way than you would, if your goal was to get them on your schedule directly, right?

So goals like raising brand awareness awareness, or building a base of loyal paying patients, motivating your prospects to schedule with you or stimulating more referrals or building your credibility for offers that you pitch all require you to do different things on social media. They all have different outcomes and need a different strategy and plan to get there. The first step is to identify your goals and what part of your activity will play into them. This is a key foundation of your strategy. Action steps would be to one, identify your current practice goals. Are you looking for referrals? Are you looking to double your new patients or simply increase your followers to identify what part of your social media activity plays into achieving these goals? Okay, so let’s move on to the next step. You are focused. If you develop a social media strategy, it streamlined your activities.

So you know, just what to do and you can focus on where you get the best results without the proper focus. You’re taking shots in the dark and hoping that people take the action that you want them to take. So with a strategy in place, your actions will lead them down a path to take a specific action that you want them to. For example, you may post a video and discover that it gets four times as much engagement as your text content. So this means that you need to work on your video into more video into your content mix and sharing a new video each week. So the time that you spend producing your videos will pay you back more than the text content. So one important part of any social media strategy is automation. Automation means letting a software program or app handle certain tasks and aspects of your activities.

They include things like social listening, chatbots, content, curation engagement, and also growing followers. So using software and apps to do these tasks, you, um, saves you time, saves you money, and it can really keep you focused on what you like doing. So an example of a program that you can use, like is like a scheduling software, uh, for your social media, like buffer or Hootsuite. So these are programs that can, you can post on a schedule, you set it up in advance, so you don’t have to do it manually. And it’s great sign time-saver and it it’s a task that you don’t need to do yourself each and every time. But there’s something that you need to consider with this, which is authenticity. So being authentic is the key to good social media marketing. So there are some tasks that you just can’t automate. You have to be there personally interacting with your audience.

So when you get crystal clear on your strategy, you’ve got a real plan for separating what you can and can’t be automated and using for the best results, action steps, number one, create a schedule and content strategy. So that each day, you know, what needs to be done when you sit down and log in, number two, look at social media automation tools such as buffer or promo Republic or hoot suite, and consider which ones might work best to suit your strategies. Okay. So now it’s time for reason, number three, creating content that converts ultimately will, uh, will determine your success with social media. And it’s this content that you, that needs to be engaging in. Interesting. It has to address the pressing questions and the pain points of your audience so that they will want to, like, it they’ll want to comment on it and they’ll want to share it.

So it should frame you as a helpful expert, who has a great deal of value to offer. And part of strategic planning will give you control over the content that you post. So you can decide on topics and formats and content type and create a mix and schedule so that you’re offering a variety of different types of media. And once you start posting, you’ll get feedback instantly to see which content works best. And then you can refine for even better results. And once you start, you need to maintain consistency and maintain a regular posting and marketing schedule. One way to do this is by using a service like tack you downloads, where you can find done for you, blog posts and graphics and newsletters and marketing tools at your fingertips. And it’s a great service to help support you in your strategy. If you don’t know what type of content already that you want to put forth.

Um, so what you’ll need to do is research and create a profile, uh, that will include the interests and of all of your patients, right? So that is part of engaging with your clients is to know what they want. Okay. And to know what type who your ideal patient is. And I teach this in my practice management class, and one of the exercises to map out who your ideal patient is, your avatar, who they are, what they read, what they eat, et cetera. And this becomes your intimate and, um, ideal prospect finder. So you could speak directly to them. And as part of this research, you’ll analyze your competitors and influencers and see what type of content performs best on, on their platforms. And you’ll choose some to follow and you’ll gain insights, following them to help you create your own unique content. So the result is that your content will have further reach, and we’ll be more laser focused when you have your ideal prospect in mind, as opposed to just trying to market to everybody.

You’re focused on who it is that you want to market and communicate to action steps, one identify topics, and the type of format and the content types that you want to share, and then create a posting calendar to get you started. Then this will, uh, you’ll refine this. Once you start implementing it, number two, create an outline of your ideal patient avatar and number three, perform a SWOT analysis on your competition. So you know, where, where they’re falling short, where you could step in. Okay. So this next reason is critical. And one of the best things about having a solid social media content plan is that you have somewhere to go, right? So it’s easy to get into a slump with social media where you’re not sure what to do each day, and you don’t see the results and your motivation starts to lag. But when you have a good strategy in place, you’ll know how to plan for each day.

And your to-do list of important tasks is ready to go. And this takes the work out of interacting with your audience. So you can just have fun and enjoy it. And it won’t feel like work at all, but just hanging out with your people at, you know, and that you love that you want to support in your community. And when you’re enjoying what you’re doing, this will translate to better content and more authenticity, which your audience will enjoy as well. So the best way to create daily task lists is to start big and work your way smaller and smaller. Start with the practice goals that you identify and how social media fits into each of those practice goals. And with that, and your content schedule, you can see the milestones that you have to reach into achieve in each day is a step towards each of those milestones.

You may also want to break up tasks and prioritize them. For example, first priority might be posting new content. Next priority might be replying to comments and re following people who started following you. So with leftover time, you might scroll your feed, looking for content ideas, or content to share, or spend time researching your audience. Excuse me, action steps. One, create a weekly plan for each day of social media activity and finish up each session with a list of things to do for next session to get you started. All right, so now I’ve covered most of the essential reasons why you need a social media strategy in order to get results. And the last thing we’re going to look at is how to measure the results of your strategy. So the question is, how do you know if you’re actually making progress toward your practice goals?

Right? Many practitioners don’t even have practice goals nor do they even know how their progress is moving forward. One of the most important advantages of social media strategies that you can set out a plan for monitoring the results of your actions using objective data, and you do this by setting key performance indicators that you can check regularly. For example, if you want to grow your followers, you can check how many times you’ve got new followers. You can set a goal for new followers each week. If you’re looking for more referrals, what will you do to track that? Okay, so this data will tell you whether your strategy is working and if it’s not working what you need to do to shift it and what you need to do in order to improve it, performance metrics can be tracked using analytic tools or a simple in-house spreadsheet.

And there’s programs that monitor these metrics for you, um, and, and set up and create a report for you, uh, that you could download and take a look at. So, um, your strategy also includes documenting your efforts in this’ll help you refine it and make your marketing for your social media more effective. So you can learn from your success. You can learn from your mistakes. You can learn from what worked and what didn’t work, so you can take, make your strategy better and more refined moving forward into the future. And an important factor in social media success is monitoring the improvement and the metrics of the documentation to help you do this action steps, take your practice goal and decide which metrics would help you determine whether you’re reaching it or not choose the metrics and put them into a timeframe or a spreadsheet. So you can measure and see the results regularly.

And look at these metrics, the tools, and choose which ones to use, start with a free ones or popular ones, and easy to use programs and upgrade with them as you needed. Okay. So I hope you that received some insights today. And if you’re ready to start implementing more practical steps to help you develop a comprehensive, manageable and motivating social media strategy, that delivers results reach out to me. I have a program that I’m launching over the next few weeks. So these are tips are just the starting point for you to help you focus, to get motivated for that. So if you’d like to learn more, um, I’d love to have you reach out to me. My email address is Jeffrey, J E F F R E y@acupuncturemediaworks.com and, uh, just shoot me an email. Let me know that you’re interested in learning more about social media marketing and how to implement strategies into your act, do acupuncture practice. So thank you again so much for the AAC for allowing me to come here yet again, to share some insights and marketing with you and next week, join us when Poney Chiang comes on board and share some insights and some inspirations with you. Take care, stay beautiful. Talk to you soon. Bye. Bye