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, my name’s Michelle Gellis, and I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for giving me this opportunity to speak to you today about microneedling for hair loss. Go to the first slide.
Click here for the best Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance
A little bit about me. I am an acupuncture physician. I am the author of this book called Treating the Face. It is a comprehensive guide. Wait this way and back a little bit. Okay. It is a hardcover 500 page full color book with over 350 images in it, on treating the face and. There’s an entire chapter in this book on micro needling, so you might wanna check that out.
And I teach cosmetic and facial acupuncture classes internationally, and I am currently on faculty at Yoan University in Los Angeles, California. So what is microneedling? Microneedling creates micro channels in the skin, and these micro channels will trigger cellular repair and regeneration. It helps to stimulate collagen and elastin and growth factors in the skin, improves the blood flow to the skin, and therefore nutrient delivery.
It enhances the absorption of any topical products that are put on the skin. And. Therefore it is used for skin rejuvenation, for things like wrinkles, scars, pigmentation issues, and what we’re gonna talk about today, hair growth. This is what a micro natal pen looks like. This particular one is made by AccuLift and you can see the website on the slide there, acif skincare.com.
And these have a dial here, and this determines. How deep the little needles on this cartridge will go into the skin. And this little window here it determines the speed, how fast those needles are going in and out of the skin. And this is what the needle cartridges look like. These are the 16 pin or 16 needle cartridges that would be used for microneedling the scalp.
And I did wanna talk to you a little bit today about hair loss, different types of hair loss. There are a lot of different reasons why we lose our hair. And this quick 10 minute lecture I’m giving you today is part a much longer one hour CEU lecture that I give. Which goes into all of this in much more depth.
So this is an overview, but some of the more common types of hair loss are androgenetic. Alopecia, which is commonly referred to as male pattern or female pattern baldness or hair loss. Intelligent effluvium, which is typically from stress or illness if your hair falls out. Alopecia areata, which is an autoimmune disease, scarring up.
Alopecia, which is an irrevocable follicle loss. There are other hair shaft abnormalities. Enogen Effluvium, which is a rapid hair loss resulting from some sort of a medical treatment like radiation or chemo. Tinia capita, which is ringworm in the scalp. And hypo psychosis, which is just naturally sparse hair or reduced hair growth.
Now micro noodling is good for some of these and not for others, but I just wanted for to purposes of today. I just wanted to give you an overview on some of the different types of hair loss within the TCM framework, hair loss. Can mean reduced follicles, whereas hair thinning is the reduced shaft, the caliber of the hair shaft, and we have several patterns that we look for.
So chi and blood deficiency, damp heat, liver, kidney deficiency. These are all different patterns that can show up with hair loss, just microneedling. I’m sorry for hair loss that microneedling can be effective for. So you want to address the root with body points and then do some local scalp therapy with the microneedling.
So you do your acupuncture body points, and then you would do the microneedling locally and. Blood heat generating wind pattern might show up as itching, headache, red tongue, and the treatment. Would be to clear the heat, extinguish the wind chi and blood deficiency frequently, or post illness or postpartum.
And your patient may have fatigue, palor, weak pulse, thin hair. And the treatment would be to tonify the cheek, nourish the blood for damp heat. This is often diet related. They might have a greasy scalp, loose roots, itching, red tongue, so you wanna clear the heat, resolve the dampness. And for a liver and kidney deficiency, this can happen in middle aged individuals.
They might have dull or graying hair, so microneedling can actually help the hair to not be as gray as well. They might have sore back knees, dizziness. Red tongue thin coat. Thin rapid pulse. So you wanna nourish the liver and the kidney. And of course, within Chinese medicine, mental and emotional factors can play a role in hair loss.
So stress, grief and worry can cause hair loss. So how does microneedling support the hair growth? Microneedling, as I said, stimulates the collagen production. Also, when you create these little micro injuries, it triggers cytokine and regenerative cycling in the skin. And this can help with the hair regrowth.
It enhances blood circulation. It, as I mentioned, improves the absorption. And trans epidermal delivery, how any topicals that you would put on your scalp, whether it’s a medical topical, like something like Minoxidil or some sort of a peptide or a growth serum, it can thicken the existing hair. And enhance the overall scalp health, making a more more, better, more fertile place for the hair to grow.
And it can activate some if the person has a hair follicle, it can activate the dormant follicles promoting new growth. It also releases growth factors and in my longer lecture, I get into what all of these different growth factors are, and these can help with all of the above concerns. So within Chinese medicine, the way we think of it is microneedling promotes qi blood.
And collagen renewal and stimulating the scalp works with microcirculation for the follicle vitality.
So again, activating stem cells, enhancing the microcirculation and creating collagen production can help to thicken the hair and enhance the overall scalp health. The equipment that you need is a professional microneedling pen. Especially if you’re working in your office, you don’t want to get a commercially available pen.
You want to get a professional microneedle pen because the speed. Will be calibrated properly. The pen itself should have anti backflow technology. The needle should come in single use cartridges and then serums that are appropriate for hair growth. Things that. Contain growth factors or peptides.
Botanicals, and you will prep the scalp with witch hazel or alcohol to cleanse it. You’re going to need gloves. You’re going to section the hair. And you could put topical anesthetic on and then put on a disposable, like a shower cap for 15 minutes. You can even use blue light if you have a blue light device.
So you want, the basic treatment flow is you meet with your patient. You’re going to prescreen them for any contraindications and go through a treatment plan. Typically, you’re going to see them once every two weeks or so, and. You’re going to cleanse the skin, apply numbing cream. Then that has to come off and you would section the hair, whatever hair is there, and you’re going to apply serum.
You’re gonna set the depth on the pen, depending on where in the scalp. And other factors, it’s either gonna be 0.25 to 1.0 millimeter, and then you’ll either do a linear or a stamping motion. You could use red light afterwards to help to increase the blood flow, and then you would set up aftercare with the patient, tell them what needs to be done, and then you could see them again in two to four weeks.
Typically improvement is seen within eight to 12 weeks. And that usually looks like enhanced density and reduced shedding. And you want to make sure that. You are following clean needle techniques. You’re going to use gloves. Your hands are gonna be clean. You would have a clean field set up. You definitely want to use single use cartridges, and they’re put into the sharps afterwards and you want to record the.
Of the needle, how many passes you did, if you used an LED light, how much time and what the response was. And then of course, document with before and after photos. So here are a couple of before and after photos from patients over about 12 weeks. And as you can see the density. Was quite significant density change in this patient’s hair.
And the first one was taken. If you’re wondering why the hair color was different this was taken. In the beginning of the autumn after the summer, and then this was taken 12 weeks later and after some haircuts, all of the blonde had grown out after a few months. And this is another before and after, again, significant changes in this bald area.
So if you want to learn more on my website, facial acupuncture classes.com, you can get a copy of my ebook on microneedling. And I also offer several different classes on microneedling for anti-aging acne. Hair loss. And I also teach live hands-on classes around the country and around the world.
But the online classes do have live they have demos and they’re all approved for continuing education. So you can visit facial acupuncture classes.com. And if you wanna learn more about the products, go to Alife Skincare. Com.
Click here for the best Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance
So today we’re gonna look at some manual techniques that supplement your acupuncture treatment for shoulder injuries, particularly for something like supraspinatus tendinopathy that would be particularly indicated for that, but really a wide range of shoulder injuries.
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, welcome to another American Acupuncture Council webinar. My name is Brian Lau. I’m an instructor with the Sports Medicine Acupuncture Certification Program. I also have a YouTube channel and movement based program called Jing J Movement Training, where we look at channel send you relationships to movements.
Click here for the best Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance?
So today we’re gonna look at some manual techniques that supplement your acupuncture treatment for shoulder injuries, particularly for something like supraspinatus tendinopathy that would be particularly indicated for that, but really a wide range of shoulder injuries. We’re gonna look at some manual techniques that can supplement your acupuncture treatment.
So let’s look at a bone model real quick. Get a an idea of what we’re looking at. Oops, we’re Alan, we’re starting with maybe we should start over.
So let’s look at a bone model first and we’ll get an idea of what our goals are for the treatment. Then we’ll look at some anatomy slides and then we can look at the actual manual techniques. So I have a scapula, so this is looking at it from the front. This is the right scapula. So we’d be looking through the rib cage.
On the front surface, on the ventral surface of the right scapula spine of the scapula’s on the back. So there’s the back view, but we’re looking at the front view. Here’s the coracoid process for reference. I’m gonna put the ERUs in here. So many times with shoulder injuries, especially with patients, as they start getting older, we have a situation where the head of the humerus rides up in the joint and usually a little bit forward.
So it doesn’t get seeded, it doesn’t set in the joint really well, and it rises up. The big problem with that is, as you can see, is when that humerus rises up, the humerus, especially the greater tubercle, tends to bump into the acromion and pinch anything that’s coming underneath there, like the supraspinatus tendon.
So it tends to ride up and a little bit forward. We’re gonna do several techniques on some of the rotator cuff muscles to help mobilize the head of the humerus back into the joint. And create a situation that allows for better healing. So that’s gonna be our goals. We’ll look at that on the the techniques, but let’s look at a little bit more anatomy first.
So we’ll go to the slides.
So this netter image we have from above. We have the rotator cuff muscles. So the trap trapezius, upper trapezius has taken off. We have a couple other images. We’re looking again at the back surface the posterior surface of the scapula and shoulder girdle, and then we’re looking at the anterior surface.
Pretty much what we just saw a second ago. We’re looking at the anterior surface of the shoulder girdle and the rotator cuff musculature. Let’s start with the upper portion. So we have the supraspinatus, and the supraspinous fossa. SI 12 would be going right into the belly of that muscle into a motor entry point of that muscle for reference.
That muscle then continues lateral. We would have LI 16 getting close to the myo tendonous junction. The supraspinatus is going underneath the acromion to attach to the greater tubercle right there. So this is a common area where it’d get impinged in shoulder impingement syndrome. We can start getting a tendonitis or tendinopathy.
Of that supraspinatus tendon very easily because of instability there can’t really see the in infraspinatus and Terry’s minor super well from this perspective, but we can see ’em wrapping around and going to the greater tubercle also. And then from the front we have the subscapularis on the subscapular fossa going to the lesser tubercle.
So from the back surface there’s a better view. We still have supraspinatus, but a better view of the infraspinatus. Looking at the fiber direction, going up and out. Terry’s minor, we’re not gonna look as much as at Terry’s minor in these techniques, but it’ll cover it somewhat. And then subscapularis from the front also going up and out in its fiber direction.
So just a image with some points in, for some reference, we have SI 12 in the supraspinatus. We have SI 13 in the superspinatus. I 16. All of these are very protected. As long as your measurement’s good, very protect is protected by the subscapular fossa, that needle can go straight down and it’s gonna be protected by bone as long as I’m not way forward and diving the needle down through the trapezius higher, farther forward than the supraspinous fossa that could cause a pneumothorax with deep needling there.
If I’m measured correctly and I’m, relatively close to the spine of the scapula, very safe points. Sometimes people even thread from Ally 16 underneath the acromion towards Ally 15. So it’s an interesting aspect is that we have ally channel points more at the tendon aspect. We have si 12, si 13 much more related to the belly of the muscle.
You can go back and review and recall that the Ally channel intersects. The small intestine channel at SI 12, and you can see that there is quite a relationship there. From the back we have SI 11, 10 and nine, wrapping around the Terrys minor. So you can see the SI channel really relates quite a bit to the the rotator cuff musculature.
And then from a, from the front, we have heart one, an opposing muscle group in the sense that it does similar. Activity that it stabilizes the head of the humerus, but it does internal rotation versus these si channel muscles which do external rotation. So the heart Sinu channel has a slight different capacity in its in its actions, but there’s heart one would go deep into that.
Subscapularis, we can see it almost better from this top image where we would be going through the axilla. The arm wouldn’t be going through the anterior deltoids like this. So the arm would be up, it’d be going into the axilla parallel with the rib cage deep needling into heart. One would access the subscapularis a good technique to really learn in class if you’ve never done it because there is a pneumothorax thorax risk if it’s not done properly.
But we’ll look at a manual technique, which is great practice for this needling technique. And it’s actually a very effective technique in and of its own. So one last image. So this is gonna be our basic goal is we’re gonna. Sink down into the supraspinous fossa for the supraspinatus, and we’re going to slowly spread posterior to anterior.
We’ll do several passes covering the length of the muscle. My goal is gonna be to reduce tension, in the supraspinatus, but particularly that sinking down. I wanna notice that muscle attaches to the greater tubercle. So I want to do the technique in such a way that’s gonna drop descend the head of the humerus.
Same thing with the infraspinatus. I’m gonna sink in and slowly spread cross fiber through the infraspinatus muscle and using that muscle as a lever. I wanna pull down the head of the humerus. So we’re gonna be using the myofascia to move the humerus down so the slow spreading over infraspinatus, slow spreading over supraspinatus.
We’ll have that goal. Descending the head of the humerus. We can almost think about these as ification techniques because these muscles tend to get inhibited and they don’t properly seat the head of the humerus into the joint, into the glenoid cavity. And then the final technique we’ll look at will be face up, will be coming deep in the heart, one pinning the tissue, and as the patient does movement, there’ll be an influence down also to help descend the head of the humerus.
But this will be more of a pin and stretch technique, and it’ll be more of a sedating technique. So very frequently we have a situation where this muscle is in excess, this muscle is overactive, the bully. And it tends to create a little internal rotation, pulls the joint forward, but collectively those rotator cuff muscles are failing to seat the head of the humerus into the joint.
And that sets the situation up for the. Bone to rise up and pinch that supraspinatus tendon. This is something we work with quite a bit in our upper extremity class in sports medicine, acupuncture. So this is something we go through quite extensively in our upper extremity class, in sports medicine, acupuncture.
We go through a lot of the dynamics of this, but we’ll get a flavor of this through the videos that are coming up. So let’s go ahead and watch the first video on supraspinatus and we’ll come back and review some of what I just said with the infraspinatus to set up that next video. Look at some rotator cuff techniques.
First of all, just a little bit of cocoa butter. You can see on my finger, not a whole lot. I’m not even gonna put it on patient, just get it on my hands. So just a little bit of lubrication, but I want it to be mostly grab on the connective tissue. So more shearing type techniques. So not too much lubrication.
For the first one on supraspinatus, I’m gonna have the arm up on the table. There’s the spine of the scapula. I’m gonna move this technique. I’m not gonna use my finger like this. I’ll show the full technique in a second, but I’m gonna move the trap slightly out of the way so I can sink down into the supra spinous fossa.
And my target will be on the supraspinatus, but I wanna see the head of the humerus drop down. So this is primarily a technique to drop the head of the humerus down in the glenoid cavity. Using the supraspinatus as a lever. So I’m gonna come at the head of the table, hands on the spine of the scapula, move the traps out of the way, sink down into the spine.
Supraspinous, fossa, and descend the head of the humerus.
Pushed down. I wanna see that head of the humerus drop down. My thumbs are in contact with the supinate and I’m just gently spreading over it.
Spine of the scapula. The head of the humerus push down
spine of the scapula decent. The head of the humerus push down
and I’m just covering the range of it. So right at SI 12, slightly medial to SI 12. Going closer to SI 13. Moving lateral to the region of Ally 16, and I’m just covering as much of the s spine as fossa as I can my last pass.
Alright, so infraspinatus, just the review, I’m gonna be spreading, sinking in kind of at the spine of the scapula. I’m gonna be spreading down and out going across the fibers, but with that emphasis on pulling downward to help descend the head of the humerus. So it’ll be a down and out slow spread myofascial release type technique through the infraspinatus.
Let’s go ahead and look at that technique. So for infraspinatus, I wanna bring the arm off the table. About 90 degrees, unless the patient has some pain. With that, you can make it a smaller angle, but my preference is to be 90 degrees. I’m gonna come back to the head of the table infraspinatus. The fibers are going up and out, so towards the greater tubercle.
So up and out, I’m gonna do a pass across the fibers of it. Again, it’s like I wanna pull through that muscle to drop the head of the humerus down. This one I often use a knuckle, maybe two knuckles. I turn my ulnar side away. That way my bones are lined up. I can start at that spine of the scapula, sink down into the tissue, move the tissue down and out, and I’m gonna start to slowly spread through the infraspinatus.
So just a slow stroke, waiting for the tissue to soften, not trying to rush through the tissue,
getting small fasciculations along the way. And there we go. So same thing, I’m gonna go slightly medial or lateral. I went medial in this case, sink down into the tissue to the depth of tension and shear down and out.
I’m just covering the infraspinatus, so I’m at the lats now. I’m gonna stop there.
Move slightly lateral down and out.
So one more pass. I can add patient movement with this. So the infraspinatus is an external rotator. I can have them do slight external rotation. Then slight internal rotation as if they’re bringing the arm back onto the table. So just the comfort just to get a little movement as they’re doing it. Go and relax there for a moment.
So I’m gonna sink in first, drop into the tissue, and go ahead and do that slight motion now. External rotation, I’m just holding that barrier. That’s good right there. Internal rotation, go back the other way, and this way it’s gonna start to stretch through that tissue. That might be a little more challenging for the patient.
External rotation, so the hand comes up and hand back.
Good. Do one more. Pass there. Hand up. And then hand back. As he starts going that way, I’m gonna really spread through the tissue.
And there we go. That’s good. Alright, so last video and last technique we’ll look at will be for the subscapularis. Again, this is a really good technique if you’ve never done deep needling into heart, one, not only can you get a lot of results and improvement with patient’s conditions by doing this technique.
Maybe that’s all you ever do, but it also does set up the palpation and the sort of kinesthetic awareness of doing a deep needling technique there. So we’ll look at a manual technique for the subscapularis. I’ll hold off on the needling technique because I think this is best left for classroom in person instruction.
If you’ve not needle the subscapularis deep in the heart, one. It’s a safe technique. If you’re taught properly, you’re pretty close to the rib cage, you’re following parallel to the rib cage and you’re going straight down into the subscapular fossa. So if you don’t have the palpation down, the needle could advance into the between the ribs and into the pleura and causing pneumothorax.
So it’s definitely a technique to learn in person with guidance if you’ve never done it before. This manual technique, however, will be very useful to get the palpation down. And the manual technique is extremely effective in and of itself. So I’m gonna do, just like I would do with the needle technique, I’m gonna reach under the scapula, move the scapula out just a little bit.
It doesn’t move it out much, but it gives you a little bit of extra space. I have the lats peck, I have this little triangle right in there. I’m just gonna come in. A couple tricks with this is I don’t want to grab too much skin. ’cause as I advance down, you can feel how that’s pulling skin and it stops me from going too far down, doesn’t feel great on his end, and then it stops me from doing the technique.
So I need to get the skin out of the way. By that I mean I need to lift it a little bit, move my fingers around, kinda get to where I’m gonna go advance down into that subscapular fossa without pulling a lot of excess skin. So I’m gonna now angle straight down. I can feel the ribs on my fingernail side, and I’m gonna angle straight down into that subscapular fossa cross fiber feeling for bands of that subscapularis muscle.
It’s almost like I’m going to si 11 on the front of the scapula, so this would be deep in the heart one. So once I’m there. One of the things I can do is I can have the patient move their elbow down following the angle of the arm. So they’re making their arm long. That might be enough, but but if they can, then I’m gonna have them start to bring their arm up, keeping the elbow out.
There you go. Keeping that elbow out, bringing the fists slowly over the chest, reaching the elbow out. I really wanna. Push the subscapularis down while they reach the elbow out. Decompress the shoulder joint so as much as they can bring you in by bringing the arm up, the better. So they’re gonna get the hand up.
And now external rotation.
To about there, and then if they can bring the fist down towards the table.
There we go. All right. So JT has pretty good range of motion, so that makes it look a certain way that is not necessarily achievable for somebody who, has limited range of motion and this technique would be too much for ’em. So sometimes you can’t even get the arm up to 90 degrees.
It’s okay to back it off a little bit. I don’t wanna put them in an unstable position. I definitely don’t want that humorous. Can you kinda shrug your shoulders as I do this? I don’t want, yeah, I don’t want that arm to shrug up as I bring their arm to 90 degrees. I’m working at counter purposes, so I need that head of the humerus down.
Maybe I can only get ’em up a certain amount. I can definitely get them to reach the elbow out and decompress, pull the head of the humerus down as I’m pushing the subscapularis medial and freeing the subscapularis. That would be enough for some people. Maybe they can lift their arm up a little bit, so you just have to work with where they are.
But the starting position would be to get into the muscles. Okay, if I do this again, so to get down into the muscle. Feel that subscapularis, I’m cross fiber in it right now. Get on that band. I wanna almost bend that band and just gently reach the arm out, decompressing the head of the humerus.
They could also go into external rotation here, but I like them to be able to bring me in by going into horizontal a deduction to bring me more into the muscle. Maybe that’s as far as they could go. JT can go farther, but I’m just saying maybe a patient you’re working with that’s their end point.
No problem. I can work there, have them reach free. Maybe next week we’ll come back and see if we can go a little farther.
Alright. Very good. Thank you for taking the time to watch those. You can see those techniques take a little bit of time, but not particularly much. A lot of that was me explaining and setting up the techniques. You could easily do this if you had the face down portion. You could take the needles out, do these techniques, spending a couple minutes going through the superspinatus and the infraspinatus to help descend that head of the humerus.
It wakes up the muscles. It helps give them proprioceptive awareness so that they can more appropriately pull down. Head of the ERUs and seat, the head of the humerus in the joint. If you do a second round of treatment and you do whatever on the front, maybe even including the needling for subscapularis, you could follow up with this technique on subscapularis.
Or maybe you don’t do the needling on subscap. This is a really great manual technique to cover that that range of the muscle. Something to consider. My last thought on this is point combinations. Is if there is this excess in subscap and more inhibition sort of deficiency in the small intestine channel muscles.
Infraspinatus, supraspinatus, te minor. A combination I use quite frequently is the source point on the SI channel SI four and the low connecting point on the heart channel heart five. So a source low connecting combination. Feel free to comment. I’d love to hear some other point combinations you guys do that might, you find, give good results and good responses for these types of conditions, or if you use that that low source point combination. Tell me if if you feel like that’s been a useful point, combination for you. Always nice to learn from each other, so I’ll be checking out the comments and maybe we can have a little bit of a conversation about that.
Thanks again for taking the time out and watching this, and thanks to American Acupuncture Council for having me. So it’s always great to be able to do these webinars and I appreciate the opportunity. Hope to see you guys next time.
Click here for the best Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance?
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.
Hey everybody. Good morning, good afternoon, whatever it may be for you. This is Perry Barnhill with the Fearless Acupuncturist. Want to first give a big thanks to the American Acupuncture Council for sponsoring this show, and we are going to talk about something you may have heard before, social engineering and how it could affect your practice in regards to HIPAA.
Click here for the best Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance
Go to slideshow please. Okay. Again, another big thanks to the American Acupuncture Council for bringing this show to you. Okay. Social engineering, you may have heard of this before, so it’s all about, we’ve talked about this in our previous shows. We wanna plan, we want to prepare, and we want to protect ourselves and our practice from things like this, and so it doesn’t happen.
Or if it does happen, we can mini minimize the effects of it. So why do Julie and I teach hipaa? We understand what it’s like to have practices. We understand what it’s like to be concerned about hipaa. We also understand that HIPAA is a very complicated subject. We try to break it down to help minimize the stress in your offices, because if you know what it is you need to know for hipaa, it makes things much, much better.
Okay, so in the meantime, as people are starting to hop on this show, we want you to look at this and maybe consider taking this little quiz. So this quiz, it’s quick, it’s easy. One of the reason we did this quiz is because so many of the providers are not aware of exactly where they stand with hipaa. And simply by doing this quiz, you can see what your grade is.
It’s a few questions. It doesn’t take long, and it’ll give you a grade. Obviously, if you’re F or D, you need a lot of help. If you’re B, you may still need some help, so make sure you check it out and see where you’re at. You can scan the QR code here, or you can simply go to the website that we got listed below.
So what is social engineering and how does it work? Social engineering, it’s a form of psychological manipulation that tricks users. Users meaning us as providers in our offices and our staff, into making mistakes and giving away sensitive information. What do I mean by sensitive information?
Sensitive information in this context is. Patient information, anything you have on your patients be their name. It could be their address, it could be their email address, not just their conditions or not just a treatment that you provided for ’em. It can literally be any one of those things. So what happens is it relies on human error instead of vulnerabilities and software and in the operating systems by exploiting human emotions.
And here’s some examples. If you got an email that says it’s sent by a quote unquote friend, make sure you double check that before you respond. Messages relaying a troubling story about someone you may know or a message saying that time is running out messages that seem too good to be true, or offers that seem too good to be true and messages or offers of giving you help of things that you had never requested.
The sender, you can’t confirm their identity. So these just, these alone, if you pay close attention to ’em and you avoid clicking on the wrong thing, can save you so much time, so much stress, and a ton of money, and a ton of potential fines when it comes to hipaa. So the impacts to healthcare these days for these hacking incidences, it’s huge.
It’s responsible up to 75%. Of all the incidences in 2022, they include phishing, email, attach, and ransom, and malware incidents. 80% of all breached patient records in 2022, they were caused by hacking. This is why it’s a big deal to avoid this. Here’s the other thing, and if you ever wondered why are they doing this?
Guess what? They can sell files a single medical record. And when I say they, the cyber criminals, the crooks out there that steal this information for 250 bucks a file. So you can imagine 10 files. It’s a lot of money. A hundred files. It’s a lot of money. And most of us have all this information in our offices, so we have to protect it.
Common clues in social engineering, things that they trick you into, revealing information. Again, patient information, they can install malware onto your computers. And like I said earlier, it re relies on human error. Human errors from us as providers, human errors from our staff as well, not the software, the operating systems.
They trick us. They trick our brains. Here’s a little quiz I want you to think about and take hackers like to use social engineering techniques to trick you into making a security mistake like I’ve just talked about. They do this by adding these words or phrases to a message. Select the answer from the list below, sending a message with a sense of urgency.
Be including words that say, quick and time. Is running out c mentioning an illness of a family member or a friend, or what about all of the above? I think most of you probably got this. Yeah. The answer’s all the above. They do all kinds of things. They have this sense of urgency. They trick you into think it’s your family or your friends.
They’ll do anything they can to steal that protected health information. ’cause like I said earlier, it’s very valuable when they get it. What are the most common forms of social engineering? If you’ve watched some of our shows before, we talked about phishing, so make sure you see those things, those shows in the past.
But it’s social engineering uses email or malicious websites to solicit personal information by posing as a trustworthy organization. And now they’re doing this thing called spearfishing, and that’s also a form of folks. Social engineering. It targets a narrow audience, hence the word spear. These attacks, they’re more coordinated these days.
We’re getting SMS, we’re getting text messages, even staff, and they can trick staff through their phones to give things out that they shouldn’t be giving out. That could potentially get yourself some hot water. Here’s some examples. If you’ve ever got these before, whether it’s in an email or whether it’s in your text where they say, Hey, your bank account is locked.
You have, it’s a message claiming to be one of your credit cards. Maybe it’s American Express Chase, or whatever it may be, you know about some activity. That you may won a prize and if you click on it, if you click on any of these things, boom. They may be able to get into your systems. It must be a fake, but it’s also a funny attack.
Sometimes things are funny. You click on ’em and they trick you into going to these sites that we shouldn’t be going to. Unusual activity account messages that say you need to click to secure your data. So these five things here is just some of the things that. I would encourage you to talk to your staff about, so they play, a little extra closer attention to not clicking on the wrong sites or maybe asking you before they click on them.
Here’s a few boxes here. This alone can serve as a HIPAA training for you, yourself and your staff. Make sure you talk to these, your staff about these. And you be aware of these things, recognizing and reporting phishing. So four things to check when you suspect that an email might be a phishing attempt.
I’m not gonna read all the bullet points, but I want you to be aware the sender’s unfamiliar or unexpected, go through those bullet points, read those things, or the message doesn’t look right, it sounds funny, maybe the grammar isn’t correct. Double check those. Check the from address, you know who sent it.
Does it look legitimate? A lot of times you can spot a fake just because it just doesn’t look legitimate at all. Don’t click on that. Inspecting links and attached files. So again, share this with your staff because if we can prevent. An attack from happening, then we never have to report it. But if it happens, guess what?
We have to report it. We even have to tell the patients, sometimes you have to take ads out in newspapers to tell the public it happened depending on the sizes of these things, and that’s not to mention the fines of penalties that could happen as a result of this. Here’s a checklist, and again, this is a really good thing to share with your staff and for you to make mental notes of print it out, talk to the staff about these things, not recognizing the sender, not expecting an email or an attachment.
The from address looks funnier. It doesn’t match it. Invokes or sensing invoking a sense of urgency, not recognizing the destination. URL, is it a accurate website or not asking for login credentials. Bad grammar, bad spelling. It’s a greeting. The signature, is it generic or does it lack contact information?
Again, make sure that you share this with your staff. Now, of course, this isn’t enough to be HIPAA compliant, but again, if we can prevent these things from happening, we’ll be far better off in the end. So what are some next steps that you can do? What about questions? Couple things you can do. You can schedule a demo if you’d like to.
You can get started right away. You can go to fearless provider.com and slash demo, ask for one of the demos. We’re happy to hop on there and show you what we have here with our HIPAA program. You can scan the QR code here. Go right to it. You can get started. Just go to fearless acupuncturist.com. Get started with the HIPAA program.
Or you can contact me at Dr. perry@betterhippoblueprint.com. In the meantime, everybody, I hope you learn from the show here. Please pay close attention to those things and please share this information with your staff. In the meantime, I hope you all have an amazing day.
Click here for the best Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance
Opening a new acupuncture clinic? There’s one vital piece you can’t overlook: acupuncture business liability insurance. When the physical well-being of people is involved, insurance protection becomes non-negotiable — because even tiny accidents or complications can lead to complaints that may end up in court, draining your finances and professional reputation. The right insurance keeps your practice (and reputation) safe without putting stress on your finances.
Your experience and credentials — Insurers will check your training, licensing, and how many years you’ve practiced. Newer acupuncturists often pay more until they build a track record.
Clinic location — Where your clinic is located matters in acupuncture insurance. Costs will be higher in areas with greater healthcare risks, stricter regulations, or a history of more claims.
Practice type and business model — Running your own clinic? Or working in a shared wellness center? Or, perhaps, working as an independent contractor? All these structures carry different risk profiles and therefore, may have different rates.
Scope and limits of coverage —The higher your liability limits (i.e., how much protection you carry), the more your policy will cost. The key here is to find the sweet spot, the trade-off between insurance protection and affordability.
Claims history — Past claims, safety practices, and how well you manage risks can also play a crucial role in premium (e.g., sterilization, record-keeping, informed consent forms).
Why the American Acupuncture Council is a top choice for acupuncture business liability insurance.
Specialized in acupuncture malpractice — AAC is the oldest and largest provider in the field.
High reputation — The company has a strong professional standing in the acupuncture community.
Discounts via partner associations — For example, members of CSOMA get a 10% discount on new malpractice policies with AAC.
Transparent quotations & support — You can request a quick quote and get help directly from AAC.
Your acupuncture business liability insurance premium depends on your experience, location, business model, the value of the coverage you want, and your track record. Choose an insurance provider that understands acupuncture and ensure your coverage aligns with your risk.
—
Looking for a reputable acupuncture business liability insurance provider? Look no further than the American Acupuncture Council. Call us today at (800) 838-0383 for inquiries.
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.
Greetings to all my friends and colleagues. This is Sam Collins, the coding and billing expert for acupuncture for you, your practice, and of course for the American Acupuncture Council. Always wanna make sure that you’re getting paid correctly and to the fullest extent. To make sure that’s gonna happen.
Click here for the best Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance
What is gonna happen coming up? Here’s a riddle. When do the 2026 diagnosis begin? When do they start? You may be thinking 2026 Sam. Not so fast my friends, the 2026 diagnosis codes will update October 1st. So let’s go to the slides. Let’s talk about what’s going on, obviously, and I hope that you’re aware that diagnosis codes, when they update and they update yearly, always update on October 1st.
In fact, right now is the 10 year anniversary of ICD 10, and so it’s exciting to think wow. It’s been 10 years, so I want everyone to recall. Remember when ICD 10 came, I CD 10 came about and people lost their mind thinking, what the world’s gonna go off? No, it was all fine. In fact, for acupuncturists, I’m excited because you are going to be getting something called ICD 11.
I’m hoping it’s implemented sooner than later because there’s gonna be specific coding directly for acupuncture providers. Are traditional medicine in their descriptions, so it means you’ll be able to code cheese, stagnations, different types of patterns and all other things related to traditional medicine, which just gives a little more granularity of severity.
We’re not there yet, but we’re getting close, so pay attention next year’s seminars. I will deal with that. However. Let’s talk about what’s going on now. I CD 10 for 2026. What has happened? As they do every single year. October 1st, there’s some new codes. This year is no different. In fact, there are now 74,719 diagnosis codes.
And you may think, oh my God, that’s a lot of codes. Are you ever gonna use those, all those codes? Of course not, no. DR. Will, however, realize, keep in mind, we do need to make sure if there’s changes, are there specific to codes we use By example, this year it’s a lot of new codes, 487 new codes. 28 codes were deleted and then 38 revisions, and you’re thinking, Ooh, let’s be careful.
I’m always going to be for you and for our profession, very acentric, I care about the things that are specific to what we do. So by example, let me show you just a little bit of a list of all the codes that have updated and you’ll see here, whoa, malignant inflammatory neoplasm of the breast. And of course these are codes.
You look at this and go Sam I don’t think I’d ever use those. And I would say, you’re probably correct. You can see here primary apraxia of speech, multiple sclerosis. Now, a patient with multiple sclerosis may indeed. Be a patient of yours, but are you treating the multiple sclerosis or treating the symptoms?
Multiple sclerosis would likely just be the comorbidity. So let’s get into what are we doing that is specific to what you do. Now, here’s an important code like last year. Remember if you look at, there were some new codes for disc for the lumbar spine, though they were important. I bet. How many of you used any of those codes this year?
Probably none, but these are some, I think you might. Some of you are probably in likely coding pain codes, specifically pelvic or peroneal pain. The old code is R 10.2, but let me be careful when I say old code. That means as of October 1st, so by example, if you’re treating someone in September or before for pelvic or peroneal pain, you will continue to code R 10.2 for any date of service that was in September or earlier.
Once the data service is after October 1st, then you may begin using the new codes and here they are. So the new codes just get a little bit more specificity. Of course, there’s just the generic unspecified, which is fine, but my hope is when someone has pelvic or peroneal pain, you can identify what part of the pelvis is it?
Is it on the right side? On the left side, is it on both sides or is it more in the pubic area? This allows you to have more specificity and realize pain is gonna be one of the more common things you’re paid for. Certainly this is gonna be one that you add into your arsenal. In addition, there was some deletions of other codes or a deletion of a code here.
Also, the contusion of an abdominal wall. And you might think come on Sam I’m not gonna deal with that. You might, particularly for those of you who deal with personal injury claims, it’s very common. To have injuries to the abdomen from the seatbelt. So now we’re gonna have three new codes, contusion of the abdominal wall.
Then more specifically to the groin and to the flank. So it allows you like if the seatbelt’s going lower across the chest. Now I do wanna highlight, I hope you’re all noticing, I’m only using the A designation for this sprain strain or contusion code that A is indicating the initial visit. And it also indicates all visits with active care, which means that’s the one you’re commonly gonna use.
However, let’s say someone had a contusion and it’s six months old. That’s when you would use the S or the sequelae where there’s residuals. I think the important thing here is just making sure if you have been, or thinking you may be using contusion based on trauma, it’s updated when it comes to abdominal.
Another update here is again, some common pain codes for abdominal pain. Now, there is a code still you can save from multiple sites, and they’ve always had the quadrants, but now they’re getting more to flank and it’s not pain. Notice it’s going to be tenderness. Part of it, but then you’ll notice there’s also codes specific to pain.
So what’s the difference? Tenderness means that upon palpation, it’s tender. Where is pain is whether you palpate or not. There’s pain. I’ve put a little chart here too of what each of those mean, but the point will be if you’re using codes for abdominal pain, there has been some updates. So make sure you update your list.
This is again, those ones for the contusion. Make sure you’ve updated those again, contusions happen. And keep in mind, there’s some other ones. You’re gonna go well. Sam, I don’t know if I use this one. I doubt it. And here’s my point. Sometimes codes update of varus deformity or myositis. O Ossific hands.
Think of it. If someone has myositis o ossific hands in the upper shoulder, which means that’s the bone. What’s gonna be their symptom pain in the upper arm? So that’s probably the more likely code. The same would apply with cost of vertebral tenderness. If someone has cost of vertebral tenderness, that’s a symptom.
What is that probably gonna mean? Cost of vertebral is part of thoracic spine. I would argue that’s gonna be M 54 6. So keep in mind, it’s always nothing wrong with being specific to your profession because by example, I brought up the one for multiple sclerosis already. But are we gonna treat that directly?
There is a bunch of new codes. Are those gonna be ones you commonly use? I do not think so. So what I’m gonna say is just be conscientious of diagnosis, severity, specificity. Don’t throw spaghetti at the wall and do all types of codes. One of the things that I focus on at our seminars and with my network members is making sure you’re using the codes that are payable by insurance.
So network members expect from me, you’re gonna get a nice list because the best practice of coding. Is always gonna be giving me something about the pain, the symptoms, the signs, and there’s other codes that have within that. But what do each one pay? Get that list. That’s one for Aetna, for Cigna, what I’m gonna say is.
Let me be your advocate. Help me help you. We not only do programs like this for you that don’t cost anything, but we also do tons of seminars and other one-on-one with you to make sure your office is up to date. Again, network members expect from me, you’re getting your email with all the updates for everyone else.
I hope you be part. In fact, if you look coming this Saturday, or excuse me, Sunday for acupuncture, we’ll be doing a whole coding and update seminar. But until then, fr friends, I wish you well and see you next time.
Click here for the best Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance
Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.
Hi there. My name is Michelle Grasek. I’m an acupuncturist and the host of the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast. And today we’ll be talking about tips for getting more reviews so that you can get more patients. And before we dive in, I’d like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for the opportunity to be here with you today.
Click here for the best Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance
Alright, let’s get into the slides. Okay. I wanted to talk a little bit about why testimonials are so effective, and I know that everyone is aware of why reviews and testimonials work so well, because we’re all using them in our everyday life pretty regularly. But I think that in terms of being motivated to actually request patient reviews on a regular basis.
Which is what is needed to really build up your review numbers. I think it helps to dig in a little bit into the background and the, shall we say, the psychology of reviews so that we really understand why we’re doing what we’re doing. So I really wanted to call this social proof. Actually works. Get more reviews so you can get more patients.
Okay. Because social proof is incredibly powerful, especially in the digital world where we are buying things without seeing them and without knowing people. Okay, so we are relying really heavily on the people of the internet to give us their buying advice, and these are total strangers whose advice we actually take very seriously.
So what is social proof if you’re not familiar with this concept? Social proof is whenever people look at what others are doing or have done to ensure that we are also doing something appropriate or. Making a good financial decision. Think about, a long time ago when we were let’s start over.
Hi there. My name is Michelle Grasek, and I’m an acupuncturist and the host of the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast. And today we’ll be talking about how to get more reviews so that you can get more patients. And before we dive in, I’d like to take a moment to thank the American Acupuncture Council for the opportunity to be here with you today.
And let’s jump into the slides. Okay. I wanna talk a little bit about why reviews are so effective from the standpoint of the psychology of social proof. I know that we all really understand why reviews are effective, right? Because we are using reviews ourselves in our everyday life, constantly. I bet it’s pretty rare for you to buy something without first.
Googling it to see if you can find any reviews about it. It depends on what it is, but by and large, we are all aware of the ways that we really rely on reviews for making purchasing decisions. And social proof is this fascinating concept because when we are reading reviews, they’re from total strangers, right?
If we are buying something or signing up for a service. Kind of sight unseen, right? Like we’ve never seen the product in person. We don’t get to try it on before we purchase it like we would in a store. We don’t know the person whose service we’re buying. And so we are relying really heavily on information and advice from the people of the internet to help us make these decisions.
And that is rooted in this psychology concept of social proof, which is this phenomena where if we are making a decision, especially if we’re uncertain about a decision, we look to the experience. Or the activity of other people to confirm that what we are choosing is a good choice, that it’s a sound financial choice, that it is going to be a safe choice.
If you think about way back in the day, let’s say we are cave people and. You notice in a group that people are looking up at the sky, all of a sudden, what is your immediate visceral reaction? You look up at the sky. Why are we doing that? Because this is a, so a form of social proof, right? This is built into us as social animals.
We are looking to see what is everyone looking at in case it is dangerous. And maybe I shouldn’t say it’s a form of social proof, but that’s what social proof is rooted in this really ingrained need as humans, as social animals to check with what? Everybody else is doing in order to stay safe. And of course, now when we’re talking about safety, we’re really talking about making good financial decisions, not making like a big financial mistake and buying a product online or signing up for a service that really turns out to be a dud.
Okay. And I think it’s important to talk about this kind of thing because when we’re doing marketing, I find with my students that the more we understand the background and the psychology behind what we’re being asked to do, the more likely we are to feel motivated to actually do the strategy and do it consistently.
At least I know that when I know why I’m being asked to do something, I’m much more likely to do it. To do it well, and to do it consistently. Okay? So that’s why I like to cover this concept of social proof that reviews are rooted in because they are an enormous decision-making factor. For whether people choose us and our practice or choose someone else, and we just cannot underestimate that, especially because, as I said, it is simply ingrained in us as humans to double check what others are doing for our safety to make good decisions.
Okay? We really can’t escape that as humans. Very difficult. So we have to capitalize on that. We might as well use that natural inclination to our advantage. And collecting reviews in a systematic way is one of the best ways that we can use social proof to our advantage, to build our business and to convince p people to choose us instead of the acupuncturist down the road.
Okay and again, this is obvious, right? Potential patients are more likely to trust us and choose us if they can read about other people’s positive experiences with us, even if those people are strangers, it doesn’t matter. A couple other examples of social proof just in case you’re not familiar with this concept, although you probably are testimonials and reviews, of course, we’re at the top of this list.
But any public endorsements or community awards that you’ve received? Of course, word of mouth and personal recommendations are a type of social proof sharing case studies or success stories. These are clearly very similar to testimonials on social media, the number of people who are following you, or the amount of engagement that you’re getting, the number of likes that you get on your post.
All of that is. Different types of social proof user generated content on social media or even user generated content on your Google business profile where, for example, someone leaves you a review and they also leave a photo with their review. Okay. That’s user generated content. That is a very powerful form of social proof because they’re taking this extra step and making extra effort to share something else.
On top of just their written review, or let’s say that someone visits your office and they take a picture and then they put it on their Instagram story and they tag you, that’s user generated content and that really builds trust in a big way. And remember that something that we are trying to do in marketing always is to build up enough trust.
With the people in our community who are very likely strangers, they don’t know us, we don’t know them. We’re trying to build up enough trust that they feel safe, making an appointment, making a financial investment, sharing their personal health information, having sharp objects put in them. Okay? So a lot of what we’re doing is about building trust, and that is especially true with social proof.
It builds trust rapidly. Okay. You could also think of social proof as, aggregated numbers, things like, 10,000 total patients treated, if you’ve been in business for 10 years or something like that, or trusted by X, Y, Z community members. And that’s not really a metric that a lot of acupuncturists use, but it is one that you will see used in a lot of different types of marketing in different industries.
Okay, so there’s many examples here. And I really just want you to think of reviews as a tool in your toolkit for helping build trust and credibility. And I mentioned this already, but you are, you know how powerful these are because you probably always use review, like read reviews before you decide to buy something, or if you were gonna go to a new massage therapist or pt.
It’s almost a guarantee that you’re gonna look them up online and look for reviews before you make an appointment. Okay. It’s no surprise, however, so the surprise here is that a lot of people, a lot of acupuncturists assume that if they do a good job and their patients are happy, that eventually patients will leave a review for them.
And I have been teaching marketing in our industry for 11 years and. That just is not the case. By and large. Most people are not going to leave a review without being asked, even if they are really happy with the service. It just is not something people think about. They’re not thinking about us in their business.
They’re thinking about how much better they feel and then they go about their life. They’re only going to think about us and our business if we ask them to. Okay, so you must ask if you really want to grow your reviews so that you become the obvious choice when someone is Googling acupuncture near me, and you really wanna stand out.
You have to ask people consistently for reviews. Okay. And once you ask, most people are actually very supportive. They’re very happy to leave you a review. It’s just that we cannot ask them to do our job for us. We cannot expect them to do it without the request. So I think that there is, there’s a variety of ways that you can ask for reviews and they’re all likely effective to some degree.
What I have seen be most effective in the past 11 years is when you send. An individual personal email to the patient asking them for a review. And it comes from you as the provider, as the acupuncturist, and not from, for example, your receptionist or your office manager or another acupuncturist in your practice, like maybe their job is marketing, but.
And they’re sending out these review requests on behalf of the other acupuncturists in the practice. It is so much more effective when you as the patient’s provider, make the request. Okay? And this doesn’t mean that you can’t use a testimonial. It doesn’t have to be a super personalized email, but you just want to ask them, will you leave a review for me?
Okay. Because they have a relationship with you, and that just makes them much more likely. To actually do the thing and give you a review. And then the second thing that makes a request incredibly effective, and I would never leave this out, is to include a direct link to the section of your Google Business profile where it’s on the page where they can leave a review, right?
So if you click around on your Google Business profile, you can click reviews, and then you can click leave a review, and then you can. Click on the URL, the webpage for that and copy and paste. You can also, if you’re signed into your Google Business profile account as the business owner, you can click on, get more reviews, and it will offer you a short code link that goes directly to that page where it has the five stars, and all they have to do is click the number of stars and leave the review.
So why am I harping on this so much? Because a lot of people will ask a patient either verbally or over email and say, will you, would you be willing to leave me a review? And the patient says yes, and then they’re just letting the patient figure it out. It is so unlikely that people are gonna remember to look up your Google business profile ’cause they literally have to Google you and find your profile and then click around and realize oh, this is how I leave a review in the digital world.
We need to give people as many shortcuts as we can. We cannot expect them to look these things up themselves. They are just gonna get lost on the internet. It. It just get distracted. Really. I’m not saying that people aren’t smart and they can’t figure it out. It’s just if you want this to get done, you need to give them the link, the direct link to your review page on your Google Business profile.
Okay? It’s very important to include that. So here’s the strategy that I recommend to my marketing clients and my marketing students. So on your. In your EHR, like actually inside your patient scheduling system, block off time every four to six weeks. Set aside an hour where you are going to look back at the happy patients from the past four to six weeks so that you can select who am I going to send one of these email requests to?
And I encourage you to put this in your patient calendar. And give it the same amount of importance that you would for a patient, right? Don’t bump this so that you can fill it with a patient. Maintain it with the same level of importance as you would for a person who’s coming to your office, because this is the number one thing that I find happens to people is they put a marketing activity on their calendar and then someone says, oh, can I have Mondays at two o’clock?
And they immediately bump the marketing activity and they say I’ll do that another time. And they never put it back on their calendar. Okay, so long story short. Put it on your calendar, give it the same importance and permanence as a patient appointment, and then look back over the past, we’ll say six, even eight weeks, and ask yourself, who are the newer patients that I’ve had who’ve now seen me four to eight times, who are pretty consistently happy with their results?
And you’re gonna know, right? You always know when someone is. Having a great experience. So look for people who you think would give you a five star review naturally, and then email them and you can use the template. So here’s roughly the template that I recommend, hi Jane. I meant to ask you at your last appointment, but I forgot.
Would you mind? Leaving a review for me on the Ageless Acupuncture Google Business page on my Google Business profile. These reviews are really helpful. They help new people find me and trust acupuncture. If you’re comfortable leaving a review, here is the link directly to the review page, and I like to offer people an out ’cause.
Not everyone is comfortable. Making these statements online. So that’s exactly what I tell people to say. So the next part of the email can simply say, if you are not comfortable with it, no worries at all. I understand not everyone is comfortable making public statements online. No pressure. And then, thank you so much.
And then your name. And obviously you’d wanna massage it a little bit. I think I was repetitive in my word usage there, but you get the idea, right? You are helping them understand how helpful this is to you and your business and how it’s gonna help future patients find and trust you. You give them the link and then you give them an out in case they’re not comfortable with it.
So a lot of people will email you back and say, yes, I’d be thrilled to give you a review, and then they won’t do it. They just forget. Okay. So I recommend giving them like two weeks and then following up and saying, there’s two ways to do this. One is if they didn’t respond, you could just send them another message and say, Hey, I don’t know if you got my previous email about leaving a review.
That email is below or you can repeat yourself. And then if they said yes, but they haven’t done it, you could just reach out and say. I just wanted to check in and see if you’re still interested in leaving me a review. You mentioned that you might be interested. Here’s the link.
Okay. So you’re not bothering them if you follow up now, if they don’t do it after you’ve emailed them twice. For me personally in my practice, I tend to leave them alone in case they’re non-answer is a way of saying that they’re not comfortable doing it. But that’s the strategy that I recommend for my students.
And I think it’s perfectly fine if you are just getting started in this process of building up your reviews to go way back in the history of your practice. You can even go a couple years back and think about the patients who are like your star patients. They really stood out for you, even if they’re not actively seeing you anymore.
It is totally fine. Especially if you had a really great rapport, you had a relationship with them. It’s fine to message them and explain what you’re doing. Say, I’m trying to build up my reviews to help more people trust me and to try acupuncture. And if you’re interested, et cetera, you can leave a review.
Here’s the link. Okay? Because really what you wanna do here is make as many requests as you can from people who were really enthusiastic. And if you have to go back in the history of your practice to do that’s okay because. It, this is a numbers game, right? If you ask 10 people, four or five, we’ll probably actually leave the review.
So the more people you can ask, the faster your numbers will build, obviously, right? But think of it as a numbers game where a certain amount of people are just not gonna respond, and that’s okay. The more you ask, the better you’ll do. And I really have seen this work so many times that if you simply start asking people regularly to leave you reviews, you are very quickly going to outpace all of the other acupuncturists near you who are doing nothing.
Okay? They are waiting for their patients to do their job for them and to just think of me in my business and leave me a review. It just. So unlikely. It’s just very uncommon. Okay? If you wanna approach this as a marketing strategy, you have to you have to do the asking, right? You have to bring that young energy and be the first person to take an action and make a request.
And as I said. So many times now, patients are very happy to leave your review. In general, they just have to be asked. So if you are doing this, let’s say every six weeks, you are reviewing the new patients that you’ve had over that timeframe, and you’re sending out, three to five requests, you are gonna consistently grow your numbers.
And again, you’re gonna quickly outpace the people who are doing nothing. Okay, so a few other ideas for how to use reviews once you’ve got them. I recommend copying and pasting reviews onto different pages of your website because there are a lot of great keywords that your patients are using in their reviews that other people might be searching for.
Things like knee pain, neck pain, et cetera. Okay, incorporating reviews on your website can be great for your SEO. You could add a different testimonial. At the bottom of each email newsletter that you send. You could just say something like, feedback from a happy patient, copy and paste. If you are creating your reviews or.
Sorry. If you are creating brochures for your practice, I would recommend putting a couple reviews on there. And you can also say, if you hit a significant number of reviews, you can put on your website, on your brochure, even in your social media bio. You can say. Over 55 star reviews or whatever it is.
Okay? That’s a form of social proof, right? That accumulation of positive feedback from the people of the internet. Okay, so just some. Extra ideas for how to really maximize on the reviews that you get once you’ve put in the effort to ask for them. So a again, just this whole presentation is just a quick reminder to take a look back at your recent happy patients and I encourage you to pick.
10 of them. Send your review request. Include that direct link and follow up with them at least one time and just see what happens. Okay? So of course if you have questions, please feel free to send me an email, michelle@michelleGrasek.com. You can check out my website for free resources. Free PDAs, marketing checklists, et cetera.
And before I sign off today, I’d like to thank the American Acupuncture Council one more time for the opportunity to be here with you and to talk about these really important concepts for growing your practice.
Click here for the best Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsI ACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
