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Setting Your Cosmetic Acupuncture Practice Up for Success

What are the foundations for really building success in your practice? Number one, strong diagnostic skills. Number two, really understanding your patients cosmetic goals and their therapeutic goals.

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

Hi, my name is Michelle Gellis. I want to thank the American Acupuncture Council for giving me this opportunity to present for you today on setting your cosmetic acupuncture practice up for success. Please go to the first slide.

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So cosmetic acupuncture practice is very much a growing field in our industry, and I have been teaching cosmetic acupuncture classes for well over 20 years. I am an author and have recently. Published a 500 page hard cover, full color book on treating the face. And I am on the doctoral faculty at Yoong University in Los Angeles.

And before that I worked at the Maryland University of Integrative Health for almost 20 years. I teach facial and cosmetic acupuncture classes internationally. Here are some of the classes that I teach, and you can check them out on my website, facial acupuncture classes.com. So as you can see, all of these classes have to do with treating the face.

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And one of the things that can happen as a student, as a practitioner is you take a training and then you want to incorporate it into your practice, but you’re not quite how to handle the. Maybe the aesthetics of the practice and the marketing of this new offering that you have. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Oh here is my book and you can see all of the different chapters, and it is a comprehensive book, as I mentioned, full cover color. You can also check that out on my website as well. So when you’re thinking about so let’s say you’ve just taken a cosmetic or a neuromuscular facial acupuncture class, or maybe microneedling, red light therapy, facial cupping and gu sha.

What are the foundations for really building success in your practice? Number one, strong diagnostic skills. Number two, really understanding your patients cosmetic goals and their therapeutic goals. Because cosmetic acupuncture is not just about treating the skin. Also maintaining safety and ethics is very important, especially when you’re working with the face.

The face is very unique and in my book I have. Safety sprinkled throughout the book and ethics, and I teach individual classes on CEU classes on safety and ethics that will satisfy your requirements for your licensure. So investing in continuing education is really important. A lot of our patients are getting Botox fillers, having cosmetic surgery, lasers, and a lot of other procedures done to their face.

There is definitely a shift to more holistic beauty. People are tired of not looking like themselves, not being able to move. Their faces looking a little weird, and holistic facial care has become extremely popular. It’s all over social media. And what does holistic. Beauty mean? It means moving beyond just the aesthetics and thinking about the whole person wellness.

So when I perform cosmetic acupuncture, facial cupping, microneedling, any of these techniques, I always include a full body acupuncture treatment. This will work with the emotions which show up on our faces, which can leave wrinkles and make us look more worried, frightened, or grief stricken than we need to look.

Also sustainable. Natural looking beauty is very much in demand now by offering these services in your practice, you are gonna differentiate your practice from other practices maybe that are just treating pain or other sorts of disease. How do you get people to come to your practice? First and foremost is your online presence and your website should be a hub for information and connection.

Showing your services, your products, of course, your credentials. You can use videos and blog posts, testimonials, and in many places, not everywhere, but in many places, you can use before and after images as a way to show people the effectiveness of your treatments. And weave throughout all of the trainings that I do.

And again, throughout my book, I spend a lot of time emphasizing this because it really is very important. So what are some of these marketing essentials? You have to think about who your target audience would be that you’re marketing to. Of course. Clients. Maybe other acupuncturist and other professionals that you can partner with using your social media, your website, and blog posts or newsletters, and.

Having a consistent branding, so colors and aesthetics that will show up throughout all of the platforms that you’re advertising on. Having patient testimonials can really build trust and credibility those along with the before and after photos that are taken in the same lighting. In the same position at that really showcase how well the procedures you’re doing work can really go a long way.

And then perhaps having case studies, things that you can share with your patients, maybe in a binder in your waiting room. Or with other practitioners that maybe are just doing pain or infertility. They don’t wanna get involved in aesthetics, but they know you are the go-to person. Case studies can really help with your marketing and with your with your patients.

One of the things that I emphasize when I’m teaching is how to set realistic expectations, because you never want to over promise and learning how to look at the whole person, their lifestyle, their genetics, their health history. Falls from A TCM and a Western medicine perspective. How much sleep are they getting?

Do they smoke? What are they drinking? What are they eating? How much stress do they have? How old are they? How dark is their skin? How thin is their skin? These are all things that are going to play into what sort of results they will have Also. Educating them about timelines and realistic outcomes within a certain amount of time.

If someone comes to you and they say, I have a wedding next week and I wanna look like my photo from when I was 18 and they’re 58 years old, they have to understand that’s not going to happen. And part of this is experience, and part of this is going to be training. Documenting their goals and any progress that you’re making along the way.

Sometimes people don’t notice these things and it’s up to you to point them out. And then really, this all goes to building trust and not coming off as. Someone who’s just trying to sell them something, but really being professional, having good listening skills. When I was teaching at Maryland University of Integrative Health, I taught a full semester listening skills class as part of our traditional diagnosis class.

It was a whole section on listening skills. Really learning how to listen beyond the words. Additionally, what are the short-term results they can expect? What are the long-term results they can expect? And then looking at not just the cosmetic. Improvements, but their overall health, the way that I teach cosmetic acupuncture incorporates some auricular points.

I’ve had patients quit smoking, stop drinking sleeping better, so many other things, better digestion. Just calmer because. Of the cosmetic acupuncture that they’re coming for. So they get unexpected results and it’s important to point that out. Don’t just listen and say that’s great, but really point it out.

Pricing your services is going to be dependent on a lot of things. I see a lot of practitioners. Undervaluing their practice and you really wanna set pricing that reflects both where you are to a point. Because if you’re buying an iPhone costs the same in Idaho as a dozen New York City.

That is important, but not as important as you think your experience. Your knowledge, your training and your ability to get results is going to go very far when you’re thinking about how to set pricing for your treatments. Some states allow you to create packages and that can help to make it more cost effective for people and really don’t put yourself on the sale rack.

Communicate your pricing confidently and clearly. So there’s no, oh, I thought you said this or I thought you said that. Once your practice is started in order to grow your practice, you definitely want to develop referral networks. This can go from attending in person. Networking events, going to seminars, workshops maybe you’re going to offer a little happy hour, healthy happy hour where you do some red light therapy or having little classes where you teach your patients how to do their own cupping in gu and sell them a cupping in gu sha set.

And as I mentioned, collect those testimonials and case studies. Sending newsletters are a great way to stay connected, as I just mentioned, workshops, collaboration and storytelling. People love to hear other people’s stories. So in conclusion, the success of your cosmetic. Your neuromuscular facial acupuncture practice is going to be built on a strong foundation across audiences, people with acne, people with scars, people with aging, and all sorts of different neuromuscular disharmonies.

Affect their face, head and neck. Communication and setting realistic goals are key, and having a business strategy, not just winging it, but having a business strategy will ensure long-term growth. This is how you can find me on social media. I’m under my name on Facebook, and I also have a Facebook group.

With over 10,000 health professionals and acupuncturists full facial acupuncture on Instagram, you can find me under my name and my website is facial acupuncture classes.com. Thank you so much for tuning in and I’ll see you next time.

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5 Common Marketing Mistakes and How to Fix Them – Michelle Grasek

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Hi there. My name is Michelle Grasek. I am the host of the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast and the instructor for the online class of the same name, acupuncture Marketing School. And today we’ll be talking about five really common marketing mistakes that I see among my. Marketing clients and my marketing students.

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And luckily, most of these have relatively easy fixes, so you can quickly improve your marketing to 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. All right, let’s get into the slides.

So again if you find that you are doing any of these things, please just know that these mistakes are super common. I think that. Most of us had very little or no marketing education in acupuncture school. So we’re just all learning as we go along. And what I wanna provide you with today really are easy ways to improve your marketing so that you can consistently get more patients.

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So a lot of the things we’re going to be talking about will help you build out marketing and. Really build out a stronger brand so that your marketing is working for you in the background so that you can focus on treating your patients and put less energy and effort into your marketing on an everyday basis.

Okay, so basically we want to use these tips to make your marketing more effective and more efficient. So the very first thing that I see is that people are either not collecting emails at all. Some people are still not collecting emails on their websites, or they’re collecting emails and then they’re not doing anything with them.

They’re not sending them. So let’s talk really briefly about the debate on whether you should put more time and energy into your email list or social media. So something to think about is that. You own your list of email subscribers in a way that you will never own your social media followers. We know that social media algorithms change all the time.

The way that our content shows up in front of our audience or doesn’t show up is in many ways out of our control, right? So we don’t really control the delivery of our message to our social media subscribers And social media has crashed in the past, which. Really terrified. A lot of influencers whose primary way of making money was through their followers, right?

So email in contrast to that, you do own your list of email subscribers and you have a lot more control over. How and whether your message gets delivered to those people. Now, you could argue you can’t control whether they open your email, right? But at least you know that 95% of the time it’s landed in their inbox.

Okay? So I always advocate for people to put just as much energy into collecting emails and. Staying in contact with their email list, but sending an email newsletter as they do with building out content for social media and being engaged on social media. So think about these two. Worlds of digital marketing, email and social media, and just try to divide your time and energy evenly between them.

Because I personally think that building an email list is in some ways a better long-term plan than social media. It also depends on, if you love social media, just keep going. But I really always advocate for acupuncturists to lean more into. Collecting emails purposefully and sending at least one email newsletter a month.

Because this is such a low lift way for us to stay top of mind with our audience. And again, then we have more control over our message and whether it’s delivered to our audience. Plus, with email, you don’t have to dance around like you might on TikTok. Something to consider if you love dancing.

Totally. Cool. So I would recommend if you don’t already have a newsletter, opt-in box on your website, please put one in. A lot of people are doing that, so you could upgrade your email opt-in box instead of it just saying, join our newsletter. You might learn tips about like women’s health.

Or whatever it is that you specialize in, you could create a PDF download. It could even be one page that explains something like solves a problem for your audience, or it just gives them information that they find really valuable that they’d be willing to give you their email in exchange for. So a really popular one page.

Lead magnet I that I have found for many people if you like, treating digestion, is to create a PDF that just says how to reduce belly bloating using traditional Chinese medicine because people are very interested in their appearance, right? And belly bloating is uncomfortable and a lot of people.

Would download that because they’re really curious to know how can they naturally reduce belly bloating. Okay, so just one idea. Think about your target market and the things that they are struggling with, and if you could create a one page PDF that you could deliver to them to help them solve a problem, give them a tip they could do at home, and make sure that you include a call to action on that PDF lead magnet.

Where you say, okay, if this worked for you or you found it helpful, the next step for to really help with your problem is for you to get acupuncture. And here’s the link to make an appointment. Okay? So the call to action’s important and if you are collecting emails. Please email your subscribers. I advocate for two emails a month.

I do not think that’s too much. That is a polite number of emails. It helps you stay top of mind and you really only need one reason to send an email. Okay. Like one topic or one message. So it could be as simple as, think about your specialty and answer a frequently asked question. Or if you have updated office hours for the summer, or if you’re going on vacation and you want people to get on your calendar, all of those could be individual emails, right?

But try to email them consistently, at least once a month to stay top of mind so they remember that they intended to make an appointment with you. So the second mistake that I see is people not sharing their face really anywhere, but especially not on social media. So we’re not introducing yourself on social media.

So think about it this way, at its core, part of what we’re trying to do with marketing is to build up enough trust and potential patients that they feel safe and comfortable making a financial investment with us, telling us their. Very personal health history and their story and letting us put needles in them.

So I always like to say that. Marketing for acupuncture is very different for, than marketing for something like a pizza because people already know and trust pizza, whereas not as many people are familiar with acupuncture or prepared to take the plunge and sign up for a series of treatments, make that financial investment.

So we just have to, we have to build up more trust and we’re putting needles in people right. Someone orders a pizza and they know exactly what they’re getting and they know it’s going to be like a. It’s gonna be pure pleasure, right? It’s, they trust that experience is going to be great very much.

Whereas we’re putting needles in people, we’re asking them to talk about difficult health situations. We need to show up in a way that actually helps them build a connection with us and feel like, okay, I feel safe making an appointment with this person. I think I can tell them my story and I trust them to put needles in me.

So for me, part of that, at least what I have seen as a marketing coach in the past 11 years is that when you are willing to share your face, even just occasionally, it helps build that connection and helps people, really helps improve the return on your investment for your marketing making people. Click the book now button more often.

Okay, so on social media, I recommend reintroducing yourself once a month, you’ll probably have new followers and you’ll not all of your previous followers will have seen your introduction post to begin with. And you can always start this post by saying, for all of our new followers, I wanted to introduce myself, or if we haven’t met before, I wanted to introduce myself.

And you can repurpose content that you have. Created in the past. So you could take a snippet from your about page and repurpose it as the caption for an Instagram post. So there’s no need to reinvent the wheel here. If you’ve already written something similar, like maybe you introduced yourself on your email newsletter years ago, dig back and find it and see if you can repurpose it as an introductory post for social media.

You would just be amazed by the number of social media accounts like Instagram accounts for acupuncturists that I visit on a regular basis where they’re, they don’t have their name in their bio and there’s no photos of them at all. And then when I go to their website. On their about page, still no photos.

So nowhere can I easily find a picture of this person who would potentially be taking care of me. And just remember that we’re such social animals. I wanna put my eyeballs on your eyeballs to help me decide if I trust you. Okay, so I also wanted to provide a really quick and easy introductory reel that you could create.

If you have, you could even have a patient that you really like and have a good relationship with. You could have them take this video, so you just sit at your desk in your office. Or maybe at the reception desk, and you just smile and wave at the camera and count to five and have the other person record.

All you’re doing is smiling and waving, and then your caption can be, you’re introducing yourself. If you are savvy, you can put text on the video. On the reel that just says, introducing the acupuncturist or welcoming new followers so that people know what this entire reel is about, what the caption’s gonna be about.

Okay. But it’s super simple. It takes no time to record. And I think you’d be amazed how good the engagement is because it’s a video and because you are in it, people want to see you. You’d be amazed how cheerful they are. Just to say hello to you on Instagram. Okay. So definitely worth your time. Mistake number three is setting up your Google business profile and then pretty much ignoring it.

Google really appreciates and prioritizes. Business profile accounts that are regularly updated that it considers active. So what I recommend is making monthly updates to your Google Business profile. So there’s a lot of ways that you can do this, but some easy ones are each month you can add a new photo.

You could also add A post, so it’s a little confusing ’cause it sounds like social media or it sounds like a blog post, but it’s not. So if you’re familiar with your Google business profile, if you scroll down, you can add a post. Sometimes it’s also referred to as an update, but you can add an image and not a ton of text.

It’s not meant to be long like a blog post. It’s really most meant to be, sorry. It’s really meant to be an update. So 300 words, 200 words, but you can. Share a blog post that you wrote in the past and you could just summarize it, and then you get a link. You get a call to action, click through to read the entire blog post.

But really the idea here is that Google wants to feel confident whenever it provides. A business as the answer to someone’s query. And the way that you help Google feel confident is by regularly updating your Google business profile and your website. But that’s something different. But the reason is Google has more confidence in profiles where they’re active because it looks like your businesses.

Relevant. It looks like it’s open. It looks like it’s legitimate. Remember that Google’s goal is the user experience and answering a search query in the best way possible. And let’s think of a comparison. Let’s say that there’s your profile that you’re updating once a month, and then there’s an acupuncturist down the street who hasn’t updated their profile in three years, and you both treat fertility and someone types in fertility.

Acupuncture near me. Obviously, Google is going to rank you higher because you are active and it. It just gives it a ton more confidence that your business is the most relevant answer because you keep showing up in that way. Okay? So don’t underestimate how important this is. Most people are finding us, like from a search.

They’re finding us through Google, right? It’s huge. You. You just have to remember that the Google Business profile is owned by Google and Google controls all of the search algorithms related to Google. And if you wanna show up at the top of a search engine results page, your Google Business profile needs to be a, is an important part of that.

Okay? Excuse me. Tip number four is, or I’m sorry. Mistake number four is having a really vague messaging on your website. I am a huge advocate for niching down even just a little bit, even if you wanna be a general practitioner, because when you have a really broad message, it doesn’t. Speak to any particular person or group of people, and so instead the message feels really watered down and vague.

It might leave people with more questions than answers. So the example that I always like to give is, that big list of the conditions that the World Health Organization supports the use of acupuncture for. And I know people don’t do this as often as they used to, but when I graduated acupuncture school about 15 years ago, it was very common to just copy and paste that list onto your website and save.

I treat everything. Here’s what the WHO says, acupuncture is good for. Pick your thing off the list. It’s overwhelming for people to see that. It feels broad and vague, and a lot of people will read that list and even if. Let’s say they’re there for carpal tunnel and they see that carpal tunnel’s on the list, they might still have questions like, okay, that’s good that it’s on there, but does it pertain to me and my particular situation or experience with carpal tunnel?

And so it helps a lot to pick. We’ll say three broad categories that you love to treat and feature those on your website. Imagine imagine your landing page and then if you scroll down a little bit, maybe you could have three columns, right? Or three images next to each other. And they could be like pain management, women’s health and cosmetic acupuncture, or whatever the top three things are.

Sorry, I just banged into my desk. Whatever the top three things are that you really like to treat, because if you are just saying on your website, acupuncture for everybody and every situation and every symptom, it isn’t really going to. Peak the interest or grab the attention of any individual people.

So I recommend, even if you’re a general practitioner, just pick three things that you wanna highlight or feature. And you are still going to get plenty of patients who fall outside of those categories. But it just helps give your website some structure and it gives people who visit some. Some guidelines to help them know if they’re in the right place.

And ultimately, you are gonna end up with more of the patients that you are really aligned with and that you love to treat, which I find generally. Leads to better outcomes for patients. Leads to better patient reviews. Leads to more referrals. It’s a cycle. Okay? So I really hope that you will consider getting specific and niching down on your website, even just a little so that you can build a connection with your visitors so that they feel like, oh yes, this sounds like exactly what I need.

Alright. And then the last mistake that I see is just not repurposing content. I talk a lot about creating content, especially if you have a specialty. You want to talk about the frequently asked questions. Who’s a good fit, what’s your experience like? And you do have to talk about the same concepts over and over again, but that does not mean that you have to keep rewriting the same Instagram post of frequently asked questions.

All the time. You can go back and you can copy and paste a caption from seven months ago and give it a new image or a new video, and you can republish it. Okay? You could make some tweaks if you don’t wanna do something identical, but. The definition of repurposing content is taking something that you wrote or created for one platform, we’ll say Instagram, and repurposing it either for the same platform to publish it a second time or for a totally different platform, for example.

An email newsletter, right? So you are just tweaking the text to have it make sense for this other platform. And of course the idea here is that you, it just cuts down the amount of time that it takes to. Create and publish content, and I believe very strongly that the best way to maintain your sanity in the digital marketing world is to repurpose content.

If you’re not repurposing content, you are working way too hard. I encourage you to take a look at the content you’ve created on your website. So frequently asked questions if you have service pages, if you have a specialty, and you. Have a specialty page, like maybe you do orthopedic acupuncture, and you have a whole big long page where you talk about what are the symptoms?

Who’s it for? How many treatments do I need? Do I take insurance? Et cetera, et cetera. All of that is considered evergreen content, meaning it, it doesn’t really, it doesn’t really get stale or go out of style or become irrelevant. It’s always going to be. True and useful to your audience. That’s core content on your website, and that is always great to repurpose for email newsletters, for social media captions, or post inspiration.

And I really recommend if you’ve written blog posts. Again, no matter how old they are, they’re probably still partially evergreen content. Think about repurposing those as well. I bet you’ve already written or created a lot of content that you could repurpose into something else to allow you to stay visible in front of your audience today.

Okay.

And lastly, I’ll just say that you don’t need to make all of these changes today. I recommend maybe pick one thing per month. I work with a lot of acupuncturists and wellness business owners and I know that, having too many assignments leads to often not doing anything right. It’s a bit of overwhelm.

Everyone has lives. So just pick one thing for this month and make a list for things that you wanna update in the future. Okay? It will make a difference in your marketing effectiveness even if you don’t do it today. So if you have questions, you are always welcome to shoot me an email, michelle@michelleGrasek.com.

I love getting your questions clearly. I love talking about marketing and I have a brand new membership for wellness professionals that you are welcome to join. It’s called the Snack Size Marketing Club. It is a low cost marketing membership where once a week I pretty much tell you here’s what to do for your marketing this week.

It’s a five minute audio. Keep it very simple. You can visit my website, Michelle Grasek dot thank you fake.com to check that out. All right. Thank you so much for being here, as always, many thanks to the American Acupuncture Council for the opportunity to be here with you today. Have a good one.

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HIPAA – The 6 Types of PHI You Never Even Thought Of

Today we are gonna talk about the 18 different types of protected health, inform information and how to relate to it in your office and how to protect it, most importantly, so that you don’t get yourselves in trouble.

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Hi, everybody. Good morning, good afternoon, whatever it may be for you. My name is Perry Barnhill with the Fearless Acupuncturist, and I want to give a big thanks to the American Acupuncture Council for bringing this to you. Today we are gonna talk about the 18 different types of protected health, inform information and how to relate to it in your office and how to protect it, most importantly, so that you don’t get yourselves in trouble.

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Slideshow please. Okay. Like I said, my name is Perry Barnhill. We teach hipaa. We’re certified in HIPAA certifications and compliance. Myself and Julie McLaughlin, we want to protect you. We want to educate you and we wanna defend you. So that you don’t get yourselves in trouble with HIPAA or with the government.

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So we’re gonna talk about some of the things that could potentially get yourselves in hot water and how to prevent those. Like I said earlier, we’re gonna talk about different types of protected health information and sometimes you may hear me say EPHI, and all that means is. Electronic protected health information.

This is the information that we have with our patients in our devices, on our computers, on our laptops, and things such as that. So believe it or not, there are 18 different types of protected health information of which we would literally go through. Each and every one of them, because there’s many of ’em you would never think are actually considered PHI.

So let’s talk about that kind of a little quiz here. We like to call the fearless quiz. What do you think are some of the different types of protected health information that you have with your patients? I’ll give you a little clue to get you started here. We all know, or most of us realize that the patient’s name would be considered part of the protective health information.

What about some other things? Just for a second, start. Start thinking about that. Okay, so we are gonna go through and we’re gonna identify each of those 18 different types. Here we go, and I’ll actually read these to you. Like I said earlier, the name of the patient or the individual or the patient’s child if you’re taking care of the child.

So obviously names are gonna be protected. Health information, an address, anything smaller than the state of residence, any date. And you know what? It includes dates that identify their onset admission, discharge date, birth dates. Even be careful with people and patients that are deceased. Okay? Bottom line is this.

As we go through these, the reason I’m bringing this to your attention is that if you are aware of all the different types of PHI, these are things that you need to be very careful about who you disclose this information to. Because if you disclose any of this information to people that shouldn’t see it or hear it, that’s actually considered a breach.

And believe it or not, we have to report the breaches. These are things we don’t want to have to do because the last thing we want to happen is have the OCR, the Office of Civil Rights, looking at all of our stuff. So let’s prevent these things in the first place so that they don’t happen. Telephone numbers, fax numbers, email addresses, even.

Social security numbers. I know most of us realize that this is a pretty important one. They’re medical record numbers. Be careful with that one. Health insurance plan, beneficiary numbers, their numbers that are on their ident, their insurance cards for identification, even account numbers, certificates or license numbers, things such as their driver’s license.

And of course, I think most of us realize that driver’s licenses can be considered PHI. The thing is that a lot of us take copies of those things, so be very careful who gets that information. Even a CPR certification number, believe it or not, passports. I think that makes sense to most of us.

But what about this one, VIN numbers or even license plate numbers? And the thing I wanna elaborate about, the license plate numbers are, many of us will do patient testimonials. Sometimes we’ll do videos of the office and in the office parking lot there’s cars. But in that same video or in the same photo is the car in your office name.

So guess what? Somebody could go online. Check that license number, and I’m not saying they were going they will, but it’s possible and the government doesn’t care whether it was possible, probable, or very likely. If it’s something that you accidentally disclosed and it was linked to the patient and their information somehow was breached, then you’re the one that gets in trouble.

So be very aware of that. Here’s some more device identifiers or serial numbers on the medical devices and treatments that you use during procedures. Web, universal, URLs, internet protocols or IP addresses, biometric identifiers, facial recognition, fingerprint scans, even tattoos. Be careful. You have to be so careful that let’s say for example, someone has a tattoo on their arm and you take a picture and maybe put it up on the internet or somehow it gets out.

And it gets linked back to your office, that could potentially be considered a breach. So be very aware of that. Full face photos, yes, if you do full face photos or you’re doing testimonials, this is where the supplies is. You have to get your patient’s authorization to do and guess what? In our HIPAA program, we have patient authorization video forms, all the things that you need to do that or any other uniquely identifi, num, numbers, characteristics, or even codes.

So here’s my big point on this. Know the different types of PHI. If you know what they are, the likelihood that you’re going to disclose those inadvertently or accidentally are gonna become much less. Therefore, the odds are reduced, that you’ll have the government in there looking at your manuals and everything like that.

That doesn’t excuse the fact to not have one. But of course, we wanna prevent accidents, if you will, from happening before they occur, and then life is much better for all of us. One of the things we talk about all the time is the importance, not just the importance, but the requirement, the legality that we’re required to do monthly, or let me say this ongoing required training for hipaa.

So we do what we call monthly HIPAA training. Each and every month we do a training. And guess what? This can be one of your monthly trainings. You can scan the QR code right there, and then what’ll pop up is this form. This form has those 18 different types of unique identifiers on there. For PHI, you sit down with your staff document.

Remember, if you don’t document it, it didn’t happen, document your training with your staff. If you have a staff, if it’s just you, it’s easy, but you still need to document that. You did the training on different types of PHI. This will help you go a long ways. In the case of an audit, it’s not the only thing you need, obviously, but it’s one of the pieces of the puzzle.

Like I said earlier, document your monthly training in your manual. You can download HIPAA compliance checklist. We have these ’cause a lot of practitioners ask us, I’m not sure if I’m have compliant. One of the things I will say, if you’re not sure, the likelihood is that you’re probably not.

That’s why you may be asking that question. This is a great checklist. Go through these things. If you can’t check off every one of these. It’s very unlikely that you’re HIPAA compliant, so make sure you do this. You can scan this QR code here and you’ll get this list to check for yourself in your office.

If you have any questions, don’t ever hesitate to reach out to us. Couple different things you can do here. If you want to schedule a demo and check out the HIPAA program and all the training that we have, just go to go dot fearless provider.com. Slash demo or you can simply scan the QR code over there.

The other thing too is if you just want to get started and make sure you become HIPAA compliant, you can go to ww dot fearless acupuncturist.com. And like I said, if you have any questions, more than happy to help you. Myself and Julia, more than happy to help. You can contact me at Dr. Perry at better HIPAA blueprint.

Dot com. Don’t hesitate to reach out. In the meantime, everybody, I want to say thank you again and thanks to the A A C for hosting this short webinar on the 18 different points of protected health information. And everybody, have an amazing day. Have an amazing rest of your week, and I will talk to you later.

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Reasonable Treatment Amount Per Visit?

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Safety Considerations When Purchasing A Microneedling Device

So the first thing you want to look at when you are considering purchasing a device and you’re looking at safety features is the weight.

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Hi, my name is Michelle Gellis. I am an acupuncture physician and an author, and I want to thank the American Acupuncture Council for giving me this opportunity to speak to you about safety concerns when purchasing a microneedling device. So there are a lot of microneedling devices out. On the market now, and I’m not here to try to sell you one, but the American Acupuncture Council is an insurance agency, and so safety is very important to them, and it should be very important to us as practitioners, both the safety of our patients and Our peace of mind when we are taking on a practice, whether it’s acupuncture, needling, or in this case, if we are doing microneedling.

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So the first thing you want to look at when you are considering purchasing a device and you’re looking at safety features is the weight. Of the pen itself and the reason why this is important, if you are doing a lot of microneedling, then if your pen is too heavy, your hand will get tired, and you may not have the consistency across the face, neck, chest, hands, wherever you’re going to be microneedling that you would have with a lighter device.

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Now that said, you don’t want to buy a product that is merely made out of aluminum, which is very lightweight, but it’s not going to be durable, and then you can run it into other problems with the product. Breaking or just not lasting very long. Something that is aluminum and stainless steel will give you the durability and also the lightness that you are looking for.

The next important thing when you’re looking at safety in a device is how easy is it for it to use and to adjust? So there should be two adjustments on any microneedle pen. And the first one, which is also a safety feature, is the speed. So in this particular pen, the. Speed, which is indicated by these different numbers is easily visible.

And so you know exactly what speed the pen is operating at. What does speed mean? The speed is how quickly the needles go up and down. So if they’re going too slowly. So we refer to this as RPMs. If it’s going too slowly, it can actually tear at the skin, and so you don’t want a pen that isn’t at least 16,000 RPMs with 18,000 being the kind of gold standard for professional microneedle devices.

The next feature. Setting is, if you look at the pen here, there’s numbers on the. Pen and these numbers indicate how deep the needles will penetrate into the skin. Professional micro noodle devices typically will adjust from zero. To 2.5 millimeters and usually when you are using a microneedle pen, you’re going to start out around 0.25 and you really, when you’re working on the phase, really don’t wanna go over 1.0 millimeters.

The next important safety feature that we’re looking at. So these numbers should be easy to read even if you have a protective sleeve over the pen, and it should be easy to adjust without any confusion about. What number you’re at. Next is the actual cartridges themselves and the cartridges you purchased should be pre sterilized.

And this is usually done through a gas process and. The package itself should be sealed. It should be dated, and it should be easy to open. So heal them open and. The cartridge itself should not be a screw type, and the reason is screw type cartridges can pop off the pen. You want something that has a bayonet.

Tight, and you’ll see this is a three prong bayonet. You want a bayonet type, which when you put it into the pen, it will click on nice and tight, and you don’t have to worry about the cartridge popping off. So another. Important feature of buying a professional pen should be some sort of anti backflow technology.

So let’s break this down. What does that mean, anti backflow technology? The prongs when they go into the pen should. Fit into sorry, my camera’s reversed, so you can actually see right inside there. There are three little holes inside the pen and there are three. Places where the pen connects and then there are three hall.

Let me do it this way. Let’s see, trying to get the right light. You can see, almost see there’s three holes here on the cartridge itself. So these three prongs go into the hu inside the pen, and they fit like this, and then you push it on. And once it’s connected, it stays connected. Also, the needles should be protected with a tip so that when you open the package up, if you put the cartridge down, the needles aren’t exposed.

But don’t forget to take the tip off before you do your microneedling. Then as you adjust the pen, you can see the needles will come out over the top, just like that. You see that? So that’s adjusted. Right now I am all the way up at 2.5, but you would never, so that’s how deep those needles would be going into the skin.

Perhaps you could use that on acne scar on the back or the chest, or stretch marks on a leg, but you would never have the needles out that far for working on the face. So we’ve talked about some of the actual safety fit features of a pen. So lightweight, easy to read display, easy to read, and easily adjustable numbers, the cartridge, pre sterilized, and individual packets.

And good connection, no backflow, so that when you’re microneedling any serums that are on the face you really shouldn’t have any body fluids coming out. But any serums that are on the face do not go back into the pen itself. And lastly your device should have, should come with a couple of rechargeable batteries.

And that way if you are in the middle of microneedling and your battery dies, you have a backup. And just as an extra backup, should you have a really busy day and you. Forget to charge your batteries or you just completely use up the batteries, both of them having a cord that you can plug in. Sorry, mine is in a case.

Having a nice long cord that you can plug in. To the same sort of instead of a battery, this would be something that shows you the speed and controls the pen just like the battery does, except this plugs into the wall. Having a nice long cord so that if your treatment table is not anywhere near a, an outlet, you have plenty room to work with.

So last but not least, having good instruction manual, something that is also easy to read, very important having. Nice pretty pictures and what each one of the parts does and all the contraindications and precautions. And this will ensure that you don’t that you actually know what you’re doing or what each one of the parts or four.

So I just wanted to give you that. Quick overview on safety and kind of what to look for when you’re purchasing a microneedle device. There are a lot of knockoff products and multifunctional devices that maybe or not. Designed just to do microneedling, and I would caution you that these devices probably are not very good.

If you try to do too much in one tool, you’re not really going to be very good at any one thing. So if your pen has red light or if your pen does microcurrent. It’s not going to be as good as a dedicated red light device or a dedicated microcurrent device, or as a dedicated microneedle pen. Wanna thank you again and.

I look forward to speaking to you next time. We will be. I also will be talking a little bit about marketing and so stay tuned for that. Thank you so much.

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HIPAA – Immediate Nationwide Update Alert – Dr. Perry Barnhill

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Hi, everybody. Good morning. Good afternoon. This is Perry Barnhill with the Fearless Acupuncturist. Today I want to give a big thanks to the American Acupuncture Council for bringing this to you. Today we are going to talk about HIPAA and as it applies to reproductive healthcare. Many of you acupuncturists deal with reproductive healthcare, even for those of you that don’t in your files, in your patient’s histories, in the forms that the very patients fill out.

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There will be things regarding reproductive healthcare, like contraception, pregnancy management, fertility, sterilization, and also sexual health. Just as a reminder of what reproductive healthcare means in the context of hipaa, slideshow, please. Okay, so how fast things change. Literally at the beginning of the year, we had some new laws regarding reproductive healthcare, and now, like just within the last few weeks on June 18th, it’s changed.

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Some of those things have changed for most of the states out there, but not all of them. And this is what we’re gonna talk about. And again, things change very quickly. Sometimes you really need to stay on top of all the HIPAA laws, new, old, and the changing ones as they’re coming down the pipe.

Strengthening reproductive healthcare privacy under the new HIPAA privacy rule. Now, again, like I talked about a little bit before, there was the new requirements that we talked about in December and also in January, but now there’s some new requirements regarding attestations, or shall I say, some things you may not need to do, and we’re gonna talk about the action steps and specifically how it applies to you and how it applies to compliance and relationship to hipaa.

Here’s what happened on June 18th, so just a few weeks ago, a US district court judge for the Northern District of Texas, federal judge has invalidated the 2024 HIPAA reproductive health modifications to the privacy rule decision is immediate and it applies nationwide. This is how we’re saying there can be a law, and then several months later that law no longer exists, or you no longer have to do certain or specific things within that particular law.

The Texas judge, this is what the Texas judge said. He said that HHS had overstepped its bounds, and he cited three main legal issues, which we’ll just talk about briefly. One, the rule unlawfully restricted public health laws. Two, it redefined terms like person and public health in ways that exceeded the federal authority.

And three, it addressed politically charged issues like abortion without clear congressional approval. A violation of a major questions doctrine. And again, let me just remind you what the reproductive healthcare law that I was talking about just a little bit before, things like contraception, pregnancy management fertility, sterilization, sexual health.

So those was what specifically they stated was fell under that umbrella of reproductive healthcare law. However, some of the things we had to do, like I said earlier, like attestation statements. Most of us will not need to do any longer. Okay, so let’s just keep going here. HIPAA related entities, covered entities like you and your business associates.

Remember, business associates are folks that you do business with or basically people that have access to your patient’s information or basically anything that you have that you share with somebody else in relationship to a business associate for protective health information have to follow state laws.

Regarding that particular reproductive health. All right, so now let me say this. It does get a little confusing. It gets confusing for everybody. Federal law. There’s federal law as we know, and then there’s state law. When it comes to hipaa, actually state laws will supersede or become in addition to.

Federal law. So you can have a federal law, but your particular state may have it more strict, it may be more detailed, or you may have to do additional things regarding that particular law. So we always say stay on top of your state laws as well. So in the absence of hipaa, reproductive health rule, some states, not only many states are increasing.

HIPAA privacy protections for the residents. So here’s some of the states that you need to pay attention to that will likely, or I wouldn’t, going to suggest to you to keep doing what you’re supposed to be doing in regards to reproductive healthcare and providing attestation statements, which we’ll get into just a second.

So anyways, New York, California. Washington, Nevada, and Connecticut, and there may be some more to come. We’ll see. How does this impact you? Here’s the thing. Covered entities, at least most of them in those state or in most states, are no longer required to seek attestations from requesters regarding protected healthcare or rather protective health information related to reproductive healthcare.

So what does that mean? Basically because of this new law. The states that I didn’t mention, you follow the federal law, okay? You do not have to provide an attestation statement if someone asked for those certain things regarding reproductive healthcare. All right? What that means is if you did what you were supposed to at the beginning of the year with all the new updates that came down the pipe and you change your privacy notices, now you would actually take that out.

’cause now it no longer applies to you. But if you’re in those states that are going to continue to follow this. You need to keep it in there. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, make sure you reach out to me so we can make, tell you the things that you need to know regarding this and many other things that changed at the beginning of the year.

So double check your state now, navigation or navigate the prohibition on disclosing protected health information for the purpose of investigating or imposing liability unlawful reproductive healthcare imposed by your state. Let me put that in some different words here for you. If you have patient files, which we have patient files that do in fact many times contain the very things that I detailed regarding the big umbrella of reproductive healthcare, and if somebody like from law enforcement or a judicial BA branch, we listed these things before, requested that information, we were supposed to by law actually send them this model attestation form, which basically said, Hey, listen, we’re sending you some information here.

You have to fill this out. Actually, let me reverse here. We’re not gonna send you this information, this protective healthcare information until you fill this form out and basically promise to us that you’re not going to punish anybody for whatever was in those particular files regarding reproductive healthcare.

So now, because that federal state judge said what he said. Most states no longer have to do this. All righty? So make sure you pay attention to your state. This is why we always talk about hipaa. It’s not like you can just do HIPAA and you can just fill out this manual and you’re good to go and you just sit back and you forget about.

It’s constantly evolving and it’s constantly changing as you can see and what happened in Texas is just a real simple reminder that a single court ruling can unravel. A lot of the new guidelines that were literally just presented and required six months ago. It’s evolving from reproductive privacy rules and think about this, cybersecurity, look at ai, artificial intelligence, and all the new things that are coming down with computer systems and privacy and cybersecurity threats and phishing.

It gets really scary at times. This is why. Monthly training isn’t optional. It’s your, it’s literally your lifeline such that you have to stay on top of these things. And I’ll be very clear, it’s not like the government says, Hey, by law, you have to absolutely do one monthly HIPAA training a month.

That’s not what they say. What they say is you need to do continuous training throughout the year for yourself and to all of your employees and even to your business associates, believe it or not. What I’ve also heard other people say that teach the things that we teach is that even the government suggests that you do HIPAA training.

To about two times a month. Now, is that a law? It’s not a law, but it’s what we’ve heard for suggestions. We step back and say, Hey, you should be doing things at least once a month. All right, so staying informed protects your license. It’s your patience and your peace of mind. And believe me, if you don’t have these things dialed in like you’re supposed to and someone comes knocking on the door for an audit, it’s something that you don’t want to go through because I talk to doctors all the time.

I talk to acupuncturists all the time. That get scared because they don’t have the things that they should have. So it’s really easy to get the things that you need to have, and I’ll talk to you about that here in just a second. HIPAA compliance, again, you can’t just check a box and be like, okay, cool, I’m HIPAA compliant, or fill out a particular form.

It can get a little bit involved. It’s about staying ready for whatever comes next. Keep learning. Keep updating the things. Stay fearless. We want you to be fearless so you can focus on your patients. That’s why you became an acupuncturist, is to focus on your patients. We can help you with the HIPAA side of things, so what are some of the next steps that you can do?

Couple things here. HIPAA checklist, if you’re wondering like, ah, I wonder if I’m HIPAA compliant, or I wonder if I’m even close to being HIPAA compliant, you can scan the QR code and get this checklist, or you can just look at it here and go through these questions. You can’t answer these questions, or if you’re not doing these things on these questions, you’re not HIPAA compliant.

It’s not worth the risk. So if you want to, you can set up a demo with us, where we can talk to you, we can show you the HIPAA compliance program that we have and how easy it is to navigate through this. Just go to go dot fearless provider.com/demo. You can scan the QR code here as well.

Sometimes acupuncture, you just wanna get started. So you can go to ww dot fearless acupuncturist.com to get started. Or. A lot of times people just wanna reach out and ask me questions, and I am more than happy to answer any questions that you may have, and you can contact me there at that email, Dr.

perry@betterhipaablueprint.com. If you have any questions, like I said, reach out to us. We are absolutely more than happy to sit down and talk to you and spend some time with you and clear up any questions or confusion that HIPAA presents with many of the times. In the meantime, everybody have an amazing day and we will talk to you soon.