Tag Archives: Acupuncture malpractice Insurance

CIGNA ASH Update for Acupuncture Providers – Sam Collins

Well, as always, let’s kind of work with what’s going on and changing for us in the realm of coding and billing. And specifically this episode, we’re going to spend some time with American specialty health and Cigna.

Click here to download the transcript.

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

And we’re Live. All right,

Greetings everyone. This is Samuel Collins, your coding and billing expert for acupuncture and the American Acupuncture Council. Welcome you to another episode of, to the point by the American acupuncture council. And thank you for spending some time with me. I will always want to give you some updates. What’s changing. What’s going on. What’s new. If you have not, please take a look at the American Acupuncture Council Network site to check our new section. Cause we do update information there. Along with these shows. We also have information on our Facebook page too. If you’ll take a look there. Well, as always, let’s kind of work with what’s going on and changing for us in the realm of coding and billing. And specifically this episode, we’re going to spend some time with American specialty health and Cigna. Cause I know a lot of you have gotten some letters, so let’s go to the slides, everyone.

All right. As always here’s our website, of course, we’ll take a look there. That’s where the new section is, but let’s kind of focus in on what’s been going on or what is going on with Cigna. So let’s take a look at this letter that I’m sure many of you received. Notice. This one is just dated February 26 and it says here Cigna is pleased to announce that they are expanding their acupuncture per provides our customers with access to services effective June 1st. Now let’s read this thoroughly because it says we encourage you to become a participating provider with Ash to support acupuncture services for Cigna customers, benefits plans nationwide beginning June 1st. So let’s start first with notice. It says encourage it. Doesn’t say we require. In addition, it says as a result of this program, this will contract directly with providers for acupuncture services for Cigna benefits.

Now, for those that are familiar with American specialty health or Ash, it is one of the largest plans out there that manages typically chiropractic acupuncture as well as physical therapy. And most people often will give a kind of negative outlook to this company. Now I want to be careful. I’m not saying they’re a bad company, but the one factor that many people focus on is that they simply have a very low reimbursement. They do have some other requirements, but as far as being negative towards it, I’ve heard people say it’s not so much the company. I think they’re fine. It’s just the reimbursement as well. So it says here, we’re going to use that company, which means reimbursements are going to decrease based on this. And it says, provide contract administration, medical necessity, review, and claims processing. Now I will say this. They have a very good plane claims processing portal that can make things easier.

And actually if you use their portal, they actually give you a bonus payment. So that’s pretty good. Don’t get too excited. That bonus payment is literally pennies to a dollar nonetheless. Um, this is what’s occurring now. What’s important. It says we encourage you and then notice here. It says what this means to you. You must be contracted with Ash in order to provide in-network acupuncture services. So what that is saying that if you wish to be in network with Cigna, you must Ash. Now. Sure. Some of you have been through the program with Accu care, maybe a couple others that were handling this. They’ve just simply moved the contract over to Ash. So does that mean they won’t have benefits? No. It just simply means that if you want to have in network benefits, now this is where we really have to decide how well this is going to work.

Now it says here about advantages, continuity of care, access to their Ashlyn, which is their, um, billing portion, no fees to join. That’s all good advantages of a hundred percent, a hundred percent. Peer-to-peer here’s the downside. The downside is they’re often very strict when it comes to medical necessity. Now I’m not saying they’re too strict, but you have to remember, they’re going to look for how well is the care working? What are the changes being made? So it’s something you really want to start to take a look at as to whether or not that’s something you can work with or how many visits you see. Because often after five visits, they’re going to request additional information, which I will say is terribly hard, but it doesn’t mean that’s going to be extra work. And we have to decide whether or not this is going to be a benefit we want.

Well, there’s a second part to the letter and something I want to emphasize here is this. It says for applicable areas, this is not going to include California, Washington, state, Oregon, or Tennessee. So those areas already have contracts with Ash. So you won’t necessarily have to join, but the benefits can be managed there. And it’s not including benefits for North Carolina and Virginia, which they say are upcoming. So what they’re saying is if you want to join, they’re looking for you to join sometime around April 1st. Now that’s when you can begin, do you have to join for you to have these benefits? Is what my concern is. The answer is simply no, the patients will still continue to have the benefits, but what will it pay and how do we decide? So here’s one of the things we do. I do seminars, of course, I’m sure many of you have attended.

And I also have a consulting service that our network that I work with you one-on-one. Well, one of the things you have to do is kind of do what I do with my members. And that is to figure out how worthwhile is it to be a member of this? Let’s start to talk about it this way. I’m going to keep this kind of simplistic for the timeframe we have. But think of it this way. When you join Cigna or Ash, you’re trading something now, what are you trading? You’re trading generally, you’re going to get less money per visit, but more patients. That’s kind of the advantage. If you’re in network, are you going to get considerably more people? So one of the things to consider is how does Cigna patients come to you in the first place? Were they coming to you because you were in network with something or were they simply coming? So in other words, if you are already getting the patients, how has joining going to bring more? In fact, my concern would be, if you join, you simply are going to get less. So the choices, if it can give you much

More volume and will it make up

For the decrease in reimbursement. So let’s talk about the in network and out of network in network means you’re controlled to those fees and you may not collect anything different other than what’s allowed. If you are out of network, they’re going to pay what they allow, but then you can balance bill the patient. Now that balance billing is fine, but how much will the patient take? How much can they afford? Would it be better for them to go to an in-network doctor where they have to pay maybe a $15 copay compared to coming to you where it could be $40? So that’s something to consider. Although I will say this, don’t be afraid to offer your patients good service. People don’t choose acupuncturist because you’re cheap. They choose it because you can help them and make them feel better. And there’s a value to that.

So before we begin in talking about what the fees are of this thing, let’s talk about joining. When you join, you have to wait out what what’s good. What’s bad. So I suggest take a piece of paper, draw a line down the center on one side, please. Yes. On the other side, put no and start looking at the potentials. One thing to start with is, is this plant exclusive? Well, I’ll start with, it’s not, so that’s going to be a no. Why would I join something? That’s non-exclusive unless somehow it could send me many more patients. So I’m going to check a no on that one because it’s not exclusive. The next thing says is the pay reasonable? Well, I’m going to show you in just a moment. Not very now. I’m not going to say it’s horrible, but it’s not very good. So that’s already two there.

The only thing I could think that this would do for you is bring you a lot of new patients. Because if I look under the note, it’s, non-exclusive, it doesn’t pay very much. If they’re already current patients, how does that help? And there’s other requests they have after you do a certain number of visits, probably after five years, I have to do what’s called a treatment authorization. So this is, there’s a lot of downside to this in the sense of the extra work. Not saying it’s too hard, but please go in with your eyes open. I want you to think of the value. Well, let’s talk about what does it cost to treat a patient in your office? By example, let’s say your overhead per month is $4,000 and you see about a hundred patient visits. It’s a month now, again, that’s 25 a week.

That means it costs you $40 just to keep your office open on those number of patients. So by example, under some of these Ash policies, they pay 1550 $5 max per visit. So therefore if you’re getting $50 or $55 max, that means you’re making only 10 or $15 per patient think of how much extra volume. So in other words, if you have only asked patients, you’re going to go broke this one, you have to be a value added patient. And maybe this is where this can make a difference. Can it bring you someone that you have not already seen that will be new to your office? My key factor is going to be, does it really bring that type of value is the trade-off worth it? Well, let’s take a look at what they’ve done in California. Over this past year, American specialty health has worked with blue shield of California.

And what it allows is a car, an acupuncturist to do ENM codes. So exams, acupuncture in some objective therapies. Well, that sounds pretty good. Realize too, this plan doesn’t cover massage or TuiNa. So those services can be built with a patient separately so long as you inform them beforehand. So that sounds good. Except when you see, well, what’s the allowance. Well, even though they say they cover all of these things, the max per day is $55 and it’s inclusive and all visits count towards. So if you have a patient come in and get one service, it’s going to count as a complete visit. There’s no like, Oh, I just did a therapy. It’s still going to count. So here’s their allowance. This is the California. One $30 for exams essentially. And then 20 to 30 for re-exams. Okay. Not bad, but remember that’s still within the max.

So you’ll notice here. The plan says it pays $55 max per visit. Well, isn’t it interesting that the first set is 45 and the second set is 10. So in other words, as soon as you do two sets, you’ve maxed out. Even if you did an exam, do you get paid separately for that? Nope. The max per day is still 55. So therefore there’s really no additional benefit of them to think it’s paying you 55 per visit. Even the therapies you’ll notice are $10. So therefore, even if you did these therapies plus the acupuncture, what are you getting? Pre-visit 55. Now I’m not attempting to sound overly negative. I’m just saying, be aware of what the plan pays. This particular plan with Ash in California pays $55. Now American specialty health does do a medical necessity. And I would say, this is something I believe they’re pretty good at.

They kind of look at the patient. Yeah. As an overall, what do they cover? Things like headaches, hip or knee pain with arthritis or not extremity pain, mechanical irritation, pain, syndromes, back and neck pain. And of course not vomiting. And of course, you know, that Cigna has one of the most prolific diagnosis, allowances of all plans. I don’t foresee that changing the concern is how much, well, how much also relates to, well, how many visits are you going to get out of this? What they do pay attention to is your diagnosis understand less severe diagnosis. Don’t get as many visits, back pain compared to, let’s say a disc injury are very different. They do pay attention to things like this. And when you do your authorization, keep in mind indications in their history, such as it acute or trauma or traumatic chronic. Those make a difference.

A patient with comorbid factors, things that inhibit their recovery should be brought up. But when you do an exam, anything, you do the range of motion, palpation, orthopedic testing. If you do it, neurologic testing, quantify it. Don’t just tell me it’s positive. But also they do pay attention to tongue and pulse. So I’ll give them credit. They do follow some traditional principles. However, at the end of the day, what they’re looking for is can you show that you’re making the patient better? So understand that for $55 after five visits, do you have to do more of this information to get additional visits potentially? And it depends again on severity of diagnosis, they also look at the goals, how are you going to get the patient better? Well, let’s look at what this Cigna proposal is. And I couldn’t put the fee schedule up because it says it’s proprietary, but this is one I received from the, uh, Idaho area.

And, and I should say Midwest. And so you can see here, it’s not much different than what I just showed you. The 33 to 44 exams. The acupuncture they’ll notice here are going to be far cheaper. They are doing $40 for acupuncture. And I want to point out, I put a mistake here. This should be 40, not 45. The additional sets are paid for nothing. They’re just certain inclusive. So if you do one set or 10 sets, you’re going to get the same money. So something to consider when joining these plans, if you are a four set type of provider three set, this is going to be hard to absorb because that means you’re spending 45 minutes with a patient and getting $40 of reimbursement. Now, what if you’re the type of provider that does one set can be efficient. You needle the patient, make sure they’re finding, maybe they rest for a while and you’ll come back kind of a battlefield acupuncture or modern acupuncture style.

Maybe it can work because you can do volume. The difficulty is how much volume can you do? You know, at some point there’s a finite amount of things that an acupuncturist can do. Well, here’s what their fee schedule. Again, same thing for acupuncture and for therapies. So notice $10. So again, what is the maximum per visit? Well, it’s going to be 50 assuming, uh, acupuncture and a therapy. What they haven’t made clear, will they always pay the therapy separately. Now here’s for the region for the East Eastern areas. This is when I got out of DC. You’ll notice about the same prices, prices a little higher than the Midwest, I guess, but then you’ll notice fees are all the same. So what I’m going to suggest when you get into this, notice every therapy. Now the thing that frustrates me with this is how do you justify charging $10 for a hot pack and then $10 for exercise.

When exercise requires one-on-one care, that’s detailed undocumented compared to just lay in a hot pack on someone. How does that seem reasonable? So my bone to pick here is they should be paying providers more. And so I’ve had a lot of providers asking me, Sam, what I joined this? Now, all I can say is I’m going to give my opinion. Each of you have to make a decision on your own, how well this works. If you can do a high volume practice and there are a number of patients that are going to come in, only because they’re in this space, it could be worth it. However, if you are a two or three set provider, right, and you’re getting only $40, that’s going to be hard to swallow, but here’s the point. If you’re out of network, is it going to be the same thing?

Anyway, the difference is you can charge the patient. And what I’d explained to the patient is your plan pays $50. My visit is 80 and what you’re going to get with my visit is a much better level of care. I will be able to spend more time with you and really correct it as opposed to what I call a poke and run doctor, meaning, put the needles in and run out. Now, I’m not saying that in a negative way, there’s places for all types of providers. I could just find this very hard to work with now, how is this going to work? If providers do not join, will they still have benefits? Nothing has been shown from Ash or from Cigna. That patient we’ll lose benefits. If they go to out network providers, I think mostly this is a way to get the PR profession to join where they are going to gain more control.

Now I’m not against the medical necessity side. I think that’s fine. I just think that this reimbursement level is a hard one to sustain a practice. Let’s face it. If all you got were $50 from every patient and you spend a half hour with every patient, that means you make a hundred dollars per hour, assuming everything works efficiently or 800 per day, you can say, Hey look, that’s 4,500 per week. You know, or knowing that 4,500, excuse me. Uh, but those amounts could I, well, there’s 4,500 per week. Could I make that work well? Sure. But that’s, if you’re very efficient within that. So is it terrible? No. Is it really commensurate with what they were already paying? I don’t think so. And so that’s something that as a provider, you’re going to have to look at and decide, is it worth it to me now?

I will tell you, I’ve given you a little thumbnail of information. I tried to get it out there to you to get a little understanding. If you need more or want more, we offer services to do that. Our seminars at the American Acupuncture Council do that, but also we offer a service. That’s called the network. Just take your phone, scan this, come and take a look at the services we offer. Allow me to be part of your team where you can call me, email me, text me, or fax me questions. And we can work this through the, see how this is going to work and how to make sure you can keep your practice viable. I’m not going to be overly negative, but I want to say that obviously this is going to create a much greater level of control with much lower reimbursement. And that’s something I’ll say it’s not a positive for the profession.

So I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from different States and I’m talking to their state organizations where they have surveyed and a large number of providers have indicated they’re not going to join. It’ll be interesting to see if there’s not very many, what will Ash do or Cigna? All the patients will still have access to benefits. So what I’ll say to you is make a good decision for your office, make an informed decision. And the good news is what if you do join or don’t join. Can you always go back and change your mind? Sure. You can always go back and drop out or join. You want to do what’s best for your practice. Remember you are important to your patients and it’s good to be important, but it’s more important to be good. And to give that good service, you want to make sure that you have a viable practice to do it, allow us a chance to help you, but also the American Acupuncture Council is always here for you. Next week’s class is going to be with Poney Chiang. So pay attention to that. Otherwise I’ll say to all of you, best wishes, keep a close eye out and don’t be afraid to take a look and decide to be or not to be if you will. Thanks everyone. I’ll see you next time. This is Sam Collins, your coding and billing expert.

Simple Email Strategies For Every Acupuncturist – Jeffrey Grossman

“we weren’t really given the tools on how to effectively market and grow our practice. So that’s what I’m here to do. I’m here to spend the next 20 minutes or so with you to share some insights about how you can do just that.”

Click here to download the transcript.

Hi folks, Jeffrey Grossman here, and I am really glad that you are joining me here. And I’m really grateful for the American Acupuncture Council. We yet, again, to invite me for an opportunity to share some business and marketing with you, I’m thrilled to be back here to share 20 minutes of insights and inspiration to help you build your practice, um, and to attract more patients and to really tap into the tools that we weren’t really given when in acupuncture school, we really received everything that we needed in order to grow our practice. We were given all the tools, all the know-how, all the insights and all the wisdom to be amazing pulse diagnosticians and tongue, tongue readers, and pulse readers. But we weren’t really given the tools on how to effectively market and grow our practice. So that’s what I’m here to do. I’m here to spend the next 20 minutes or so with you to share some insights about how you can do just that.

So, um, you know what we’re going to be talking about today, we were talking about a couple of things that some of you might not think are appropriate. We’re going to talk about email marketing, but I want to hear me. You, I want you to hear me out as we talk a little further, I’m going to lay out the facts as to why email marketing should be important and incorporated into your marketing strategies. And at the end of today’s training, I want to give you a link because I know that if I give you the link now that, um, you’ll go ahead, I’ll lose you, you’ll download it. And I want you to stay focused with me because our time together is really important. So I want to give you a link to an ebook that we just released. Um, um, uh, it’s called resetting your practice for 20, 21, how to get patients on your treatment table.

So if that’s okay, just stick with me at the end, I’ll get that link for you. So welcome. My name is Jeffrey Grossman, though, for those of you that don’t know me, I’m the founder and the owner of acupuncture, media works and acupuncture websites, and Accu downloads 2.0. So I started my practice back in 98 and I struggled just like many of you did back in the days. My background was as a graphic designer. And, um, and, uh, that was what the world that I was working in before I became an acupuncturist. So when I became an acupuncturist, I realized that like, there weren’t enough tools for me to help me grow my practice. I didn’t have the know how to grow my practice. I didn’t have the skills, the techniques and the insights on how to make that happen. So I, I sought some help.

I actually started coaching. Um, I paid about 15 grand to work with, um, a chiropractic coach to help me maximize my patient communications and my marketing strategies. And it paid off in spades for me. So it was one of the best things that I ever did. Um, I just want to just encourage you guys with the fact that marketing is important. And the idea is that in order to grow your practice, you need new people coming in. Therefore you need to have tap into these ideas and these skills and these insights that I’m sharing with you and that the AAC brings to you on a weekly basis. So you guys are an incredible resource. People are looking for you, especially now. They want the type of healing that you offer, right? They want something safe. They want something natural. They want something that lets them feel less anxious and more balanced. And this

Is what you have to offer. This is how you,

As an acupuncturist, changes lives, and people need you. They need your services, but a lot of people don’t know that you exist. And that’s what I want to do is I want to help you get more people in your treatment table. And that’s what these talks are all about us to help you be seen, to be heard and ultimately to bring people into your practice so you can make more money, help more people and change the world. One person, one needle at a time. So if at the end here, if you’re interested in learning more, if you need a little bit of hand holding some help, I’ll, I’ll give you, um, uh, an email address at which you could reach out. And, and, and, you know, if you’re looking for some support, please feel free to reach out to me. So there are more opportunities than ever right now for you to be tapping into growing your practice, especially now, especially now that we’re many of us are working from home and we have to reinvent ourselves.

And one of the easiest ways to do it, excuse me, is what I’m going to be talking about today, which is using email marketing, right? So, um, um, you know, one or two of these suggestions that you come up with in the ebook that I have for you at the end today, that you could download and even in today’s training, could that you put them into use, can make a massive change and a massive difference in your practice. So, today what I want to do is I want to talk to you about, um, a resource that is such an easy tool to use in your practice. And most of us use it every day. All of your patients have access to it and those kids, they probably use it too, right? So this is about tapping into the power of it and to grow your practice.

And I’m sure that when I talked about email marketing and using emails in your practice, I heard a universal grown, right? And, um, I heard people saying that, Oh gosh, email marketing. There’s no way I’m going to be using that in my practice. So sending emails is one of those things that every practitioner should embrace, whether you’re an acupuncturist, a dentist, a chiropractor, massage therapist, or even a big box store, everyone is using emails these days to communicate with your audience and it should be a priority for you in your practice. And here’s a couple of reasons why it’s important. One, it allows you to reach more patients in real time, right? It’s affordable. It keeps you on top of mind awareness within, um, it’s personable and it can be action oriented and you can see results almost immediately after you send out that email.

So think about your own experiences, right? You have email how your friends and family members have emailed. How many times do you check your email out every day? Right. Do you know anyone who doesn’t have an email address these days? Okay. So it’s here to stay and email us something that you need to embrace in your practice. And when you approach email marketing, um, there are a couple of things I want you to consider. Um, and a couple of things to think about when you formulate your emails and your plan to make that happen is the first thing to think about is why are you emailing them, right? What do you want to get across to them? What kind of message are you sending? And what do you want people to know? Okay, these are all important aspects. When you sit down to draft your emails or when you sit down and, and, and, and, and think about what you want to, what kind of messaging and what kind of things you want to get across to them.

It’s important to think about that first. Why are you emailing them? What do you want to get across to them? What’s the message. And also what’s the next step that you can get across to people, uh, to, you know, how can you get them to take the next action? Okay. So you got to have a valid and valuable reason that would motivate them to take some form of action in an email. And I’m going to review five types of emails with you that you should be sending to your patients on a regular basis. And these five emails are the perspective, email, the offer, email, the newsletter email, um, add the benefit email and the simple email, right? And I’m going to talk about each of these five briefly. Um, so let’s talk about the perspective email. This email is designed for you to offer, uh, your, to offer your take on a relevant and trending topic, right?

So the key to this email is not to chime in, um, every time there’s a celebrity gossip or a story or a new figure that are released in the economy. This type of email should be commentary, right? And old area areas that can imply expertise. And when things are relevant, like if there’s, uh, some information about acupuncture and immunity, that’s relevant for today, acupuncture, anxiety, that’s relevant for today, acupuncture for alleviating low back pain from people working from home and sitting in their chair all day that’s relevant for today. So think about how you can chime in to what is on people’s minds these days, and how to make it relevant for them in one of your emails, a couple of tips to consider are be current, okay. Make sure your content is based in today’s right. Think about what your audience or in this case your patients are going through.

Now what’s on top of their mind. What’s their most pressing concern. When you tap into that, you can talk to them and tap into what’s on top of their minds. It’s the what’s in it for me syndrome, right? People want to know what you could do for them. They don’t. They like to understand about all the cool things that you have to offer, but what they really want to know is what’s in it for me, what are my benefits? Okay. Therefore you need to play into their current state of mind and to get that information out to them. Next thing to do is to be factual, okay. Facts for, from up belief. And they can be very important when adjusting people who may not have all the same views as you do. So when you use facts, people can rely on the idea that they are rooted in truth, and that the, they may be more inclined to move closer to your beliefs.

And then the other thing about making stories relevant or emails relevant is to share stories from your perspective. There’s a saying that facts tell and stories sell. So people learn through stories and it’s part of our DNA. It’s what we want. And we really can learn more when things are given us in story form. And when we facts into a story, when you re read the relevance of a study or a program or something, or, or, or research into an email, um, it makes your story more relevant, excuse me, and, um, and gives you a better perspective that you’re talking on it with that topic. Okay. So the next type of email that you should be sending is the offer email, and everyone loves a good offer, right? So that’s why sending out an offer email can bring in inactive patients and prospects. And this email is perfect.

When you have a, a new therapy, a new technique, a new topics to talk about new research that you just unearth new products that you’re carrying or whatever it is when you have something that you want to offer, this is the perfect type of email to get out there. So there’s a couple of types of offers that you could be doing, which is one is a test drive offer. Okay. The test drive offer is exactly that. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Letting people come in to test drive a therapy or a service before they buy it. And before they sign up as a new patient, it’s getting them to take step foot in the door so they can learn about you learn about your offer and then take the next steps, become a full fledged pain patient. The next type of offer, um, is a solution offer.

Okay? And this offer provides answers to people’s most pressing problems, and it can be very powerful and invites people into your clinic. They get them clarity on a particular condition, right? So your offer could be, learn five ways that acupuncture can alleviate headaches or migraines, or, um, you know, it could be come in to get a seven point, you know, back paid assessment exam. Okay, whatever your offer is, what solution are you offering for them? Um, that, you know, that, that th that might be on top of their mind, right? Anxiety come in to receive a two point acupuncture, anxiety, and stress reduction, treatment data solution, you’re offering a solution to anxiety. Um, and that could be part of that email, the other type of offer that you could be offering as a stress reduction offer, and this offer, it does what it says, right?

This is one of my favorite offers that I’ve done in the past. Um, I’ve used it for all of my health fairs. And, uh, as, as a marketing tool, for me, basically offering an acupuncture, stress reduction treatment, um, and who doesn’t have stress these days, right? So the stress reduction offer is perfect to get people to come in for a free or reduced rate stress reduction offer, and that’s pretty straightforward. So those are the different types of offer emails that I feel are important. The test drive offer the solution offer and the stress reduction offer. Okay. So the next, this type of email that you should be sending out regularly is the newsletter, right? So if your practice doesn’t currently send a regular newsletter to your patient base, consider starting one. Okay. It’s um, massive missed opportunity. If you overlook any type of email for that matter, specifically, if you overload, overlook the idea of sending out, um, monthly newsletters.

Okay. And I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Um, it’s important to stay in top of mind awareness with your patients. And, um, you know, it’s all too easy to have patients fall out of care, simply because they were, you know, were feeling better and they just forgot about you. Life happens, they just get caught up in it and they feel good. They forget about you, but I’m not receiving a monthly newsletter or an email from you for that matter puts you back in top of mind awareness. So when they need you next time, they’ll remember where to turn because they understood, or they read an article about how you could help with XYZ condition, um, um, in that way. So hopefully that makes sense. So a monthly, quarterly, or even an annual email newsletter give you the opportunity to share important information and remind patients of the practice.

And of course, you know, keeps you in top of mind awareness. So here’s a couple of things to consider when you put together your newsletter. One thing you could talk about is discussing your practices outreach, or any sponsorship or any type of community involvement. You can highlight any new clinic changes or a new staff members that you may be brought on announced marriages or new babies or new grandchildren, whatever that is. So talk about a new line products or new services that you’ve added. You can highlight condition, specific information. You can obviously always request referrals and online reviews with every type of email you put out there, especially with your newsletter. You can also address seasonal health concerns like or sports injury, or immune acupressure routines and things like that. Um, you can remind and encourage people, um, you know, about good healthy habits. And of course, when you use any type of email, especially your newsletter, you need to promote it, um, on your social media channels.

Okay? So there’s so many topics that you, as an acupuncturist can talk about in your newsletters. There’s no lack of content that you can put in your newsletters, but if there’s any type of email that you should be doing consistently is the newsletter email, and the other type of email that you should be putting out there of course, is the benefit and tips, email. And this type of email never gets old because as long as you can talk about new benefits that people can receive and tips that can help your audience, there are always people who want to hear them. So it’s all too common for practices to make the mistake of talking about how amazing what you do is, and how awesome the thing that you have is while you’re excited about it. Um, you know, you, you know, about the latest, cool thing that you do.

Some people might not care, right? People care again about what’s in it. For me, it’s the, what’s in it for me syndrome. People want to know what they can get out of it, what are their benefits? Okay. And, um, it’s always good to start with that in mind. So here are a couple ideas that you could be using, how to end back pain once and for all three simple techniques and, um, two acupressure points you could learn in the comfort of your home or suffering from depression. Here are three supplements that you could use in two powerful acupressure points to help or seven tips to supercharge your immune system. All right. So I’m not sure if you’ve opened emails that talk about X number of tips or ideas or whatever it is. And, but people love learning from emails like these people. And there’s a couple things I want you to consider when you put out these what’s in it, the, these, um, these emails considering your patient’s view of what’s in it for them.

Okay. Is it new? Is it useful? And is it beneficial? Okay. So is it new, given your topic? Is there a new angle or twist on it that you could take? Is there an update or a surprising bit of news that you can share? Do you have something that other people don’t know about yet or something that you’re the other one in your town that’s using, right. Something that your audience hasn’t heard or considered yet that’s about being new. Is it useful given your topic? Is there an application that your audience could use, right. Can you help them sort through or think through a common problem in some way, do you have a solution to something that they face and is it beneficial? Right? So again, given your topic and more importantly, given what keeps audience up at night, what is it that you have that will help them, right?

What is it about your topic that will benefit your audience? Is there a silver lining for them? Is there a net gain for them? How will, what you offer them, change their lives. And finally, the last type of email that I want to talk about is the simple email. So this is such a simple email. I send these out periodically and I’m amazed at the responses I get, and this is the type of email that can get your patients back in care pretty quickly with just a couple of sentences, even it’s so simple, but it works. And, um, it’s short, it’s sweet. And it’s getting an interested party to take notice. So here’s the framework. You have a simple subject line, something like patient’s first name only. So it would say like Jeffrey, right, or something like patient’s name Jeffrey. Can I share this with you?

Okay. One email that I’ve sent to other practitioners is, Hey, Jeffrey, are you looking for new patients? And that got me a ton of responses. And as you can imagine, most practitioners are looking for new patients. So emails like this with, um, curiosity, uh, subject lines, really pique people’s interest. They’re short, they’re sweet they’re to the point, and they get people to take quick action. So first think about, on your patient’s mind right now, right? Is it stress? Is it good health? Is it immunity? Is it better sleep? Okay. So what do they want to learn about where are they at with that? So send off a couple emails, says, Hey, Jeffrey, do you want to learn about better sleep? Hey, Jeffrey, do you want to learn about four points for immune health? Hey, Jeffrey. Um, do you want to learn about, um, you know, uh, five ways to alleviate your back pain?

Okay. So I want to run down a couple of examples of, of, of what the, the S the copy itself could read, like super simple stuff. Okay. Really, really easy. So it could say, Hey, Jeffrey, um, Hey, Jeff, you want to learn about immunity? Question Mark. That’s a subject line. And then the copy of, of, of, of the body, of the text of the email, if you’d be like, Hey, Jeffrey, can I share these immune points with you? These are two acupressure points that alleviate immunity. Um, if you know, um, if you’re interested, just respond to this email and I’ll get right back to you as soon as possible, that’s it? That’s really simple, right? Hey, Jeffrey, I’ve got two acupuncture points to share with you about better sleep. Do you want to know about them? Or, you know, that’s it, you know, so, um, that’s all you’ve got to do for those emails.

Okay. So, Hey, Jeffrey, are you still interested in getting help with back pain or learning how to boost your immunity or getting help with insomnia? If so, respond to this email and I’ll reach out to you as soon as possible your name, that’s the email, like three sentences at most, and that’s it. So people will get back to you. It’s almost like these emails work like magic. And if you haven’t sent an email like this one before, try it right. And let me know what kind of response do you get? You’re basically checking in with them, nagging them as really simple offer. And it’s one of the easiest emails to really send out. And I wouldn’t be doing you any justice today. If I didn’t mention that these other types of emails that you should be sending, like the missed appointment, email, the follow-up email of the reminder and confirmation emails, happy birthday emails. And of course the, please give us a review email. Okay. So I hope that helps.

Reset Your Practice for 2021 – Jeffrey Grossman

And today I want to talk with you about a few things that are going to be helped. Put patients on your treatment table. When we were in acupuncture school, many of us were not really taught, um, how we can build our business and how we can grow a practice.

Click here to download the transcript.

Hi there and thank you for this opportunity to share some business and marketing insights with you. Thank you. The American Acupuncture Council for inviting me back to help talk about building your practice in this day and age. And today I want to talk with you about a few things that are going to be helped. Put patients on your treatment table. When we were in acupuncture school, many of us were not really taught, um, how we can build our business and how we can grow a practice. And we seldom received the foundations of building a successful practice and how we can keep patients coming in. You can have all the know-how in the world, but if you don’t know how to consistently attract new patients and how to systematically keep your patients in care, then all the herbs, the points, the prescription, the tongue diagnosis, all that know-how, won’t be much help.

So this is the reason why I’m excited to host this web class about how to reset your practice for 2021. What’s working now to put more patients on your table. So welcome for those of you that don’t know me. My name is Jeffrey Grossman and I’m the founder and owner of Acupuncture Media Works, Accu Perfect Websites and Accu downloads. And I started my practice back in 1998 and had a lot of trials and tribulations and many struggles. And I basically had no business or any type of marketing savvy. And I had to start from scratch like many of you guys listening today. So I noticed that when I was in practice, I had a problem knowing how to market my practice and properly communicate to my patients, because all I wanted to do was to treat people and not to market to them. But the struggle that I faced took me down the path to create companies that I run today.

And it’s a longer story. And I’ll reserve that for another time. So what I want to do is to remind you that we, as acupuncturists are an incredible resource where natural healers, we know how to get people to feel balanced, to feel healthy. We know how to help people using safe and natural methods. And we change lives, right? We help, um, help w we people want our services, right? And they need our services. But a lot of times people don’t even know that we exist. Let alone know that we can treat this vast array of conditions that we can work with. And I want to help you change that. I want to help you get more people on your table. And that’s what these talks are about. They are here to help you be seen. They’re here to help you be heard and ultimately to bring more people in your practice so you can make more money and help more people.

And I want to remind you that you’re never alone. I’m here for you. And at the end of today’s talk, if you feel like you need help getting set up or becoming focused, or if you just need a little motivation to move forward, please feel free to reach out. And I will share some information with you on how to do that. So I’m here to help you give you a fresh perspective, 2020, and COVID changed how the public thinks about and looks about looks for health solutions. There are more opportunities now than ever to help more people, because you have to understand what people are looking for now and the best way to present it. And I want you to have the latest updates and research. So I created a detailed report for what is working now and any recommendations for you, how you can make it work for your practice and get more people on your treatment table.

It’s a 15 page resource, and you’ll find this information invaluable. And I’ll share that link for you at today’s training, uh, at the end of today’s training. So you can actually download that right away. So I want you to use, today’s talk. I want you to use the ebook that I’m gonna share with you as a resource to reset your practice, because just one or two of the simple changes that you pull from the top or from the ebook can make all the difference in your practice. Okay? So let’s jump right in content marketing. What is it? And why should you care? So content marketing is a proven business strategy that brings you more ideal patients without the expense of advertising, but helps you build trust and establish personal connections with patients even before they come into your practice with content marketing, you’re providing value for patients at no cost to them in exchange for their time for reading your content.

And the more time they spend with your content, the more that they will begin to know, like, and trust you. So content marketing amplifies your credibility, your 30, and the desire ability for people to choose you to be their healer. It is a marketing tool for patient engagement, retention, branding, and professional reputation building. And it gives your community an in-depth perspective of how you can help transform their lives for the better these days. The vast majority of Americans seek health information online. Plus we know often people often times find and choose practitioners online. The first place they go to is to Google you and your treatment modalities. And that means if you’re producing valuable medical content online, you’re much more likely to garner attention and authority for you and your practice and to get new patients. So since COVID the average Americans online content consumption has doubled to almost seven hours a day.

And there’s a consumer survey that found that most respondents cited, that they were looking online for personal health and health for friends and family members as their biggest concerns. And they’re looking for answers about their health, how to stay healthy, professional advice on living with a specific ailment and how you may have helped others with their particular problem. So content can take many forms, and here’s what you can offer. You can offer blogs using written articles and patient stories and videos, patient education, videos on your website and on your social media channels, email newsletters, and patient help sheets e-books and PDF reports, uh, live events and trainings on any health condition. So you need content marketing because if you’re a healer, you’re not a sales precedent and the content does the selling for you, right? So here’s a few content strategy that you can start doing today, make sure that your content is compelling enough to people want to share it, right?

So, you know, as you know, your prospects can get a second opinion or forward it to friends. Another thing to do is to post the latest industry news. People expect you to know about medical breakthroughs and how acupuncture can help with this, or how acupuncture can help with that condition. And the other thing that’s really important to do is be niche specific, okay. Have separate content for whatever problems that you deal with most and that your patients are in particular are looking out for. Okay. So I hope that makes sense. Um, and here’s a question that I received a while back from one of my coaching students, and you may have the same question as well. So the question is I’m an acupuncturist, I’m a trained healer, and I’m not a salesman. What is the best way to find new patients to get patients to commit to a full treatment plan?

And that my friends is the million dollar question, right? And there are a million answers to that, but here’s one answer use something that everyone understands and what that is just connecting with your patients through story. I think that you, um, most of you would probably agree that building trust with your patients is paramount in, uh, in with them accepting your care and staying with you for the long-term. And, and you have to build empathy. You have to build trust. You have to build likeability and one sure. Fire way to do that. If I telling stories and the stories that I’m talking about are success stories about how you help people and other patients with similar problems. And when you do this, the sales will take care of themselves. People will read and resonate with a particular patient success story and practically sell themselves on coming to see you.

Nothing is more powerful, right? Patient success stories are the most effective and least expensive ways to find new patients. And they get patients to accept treatment plans. There’s a native American proverb that goes something like this. Tell me the facts and I’ll learn, tell me the truth and I’ll believe, but tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever. So the number one questions that your prospects want to know is, can you help me with my problem? That’s it, it really is that simple. They don’t need a medical explanation. They’re not looking for a TCM diagnosis. They’re not looking for you to convince them that acupuncture helps. They need something simple to understand and that they can relate to. And storytelling helps people learn because stories are easy to remember. Um, so there’s an organizational psychologist. Her name is peg new Hauser, and she found that learning, um, which stems from a well-told story is remembered more accurately for far longer than learning derived facts and figures and Jerome Bruner’s, who is a research psychologist also suggested that facts are 20 times more likely to be remembered if they’re part of a story.

So stories boost our feelings of trust, compassion, and empathy, and they connect you with your patients on a whole different level. So when we hear facts, it activates the data processing centers in our brains. But when we hear stories activates a sensory centers in our brains, so here are some things that you could do, right? So have at least one patient success story for every major element that you treat in your practice, give hard copies of those stories to patients, post them in your clinic, post them on your website and use electronic versions of those on social media, blogs, and emails. And also, the other thing that’s really important to do is have a story about why you became an acupuncturist. What was your journey to be the healer that you are today? Okay. And I have a rhetorical question for you. What is the number one way your prospects meet and judge you okay.

Online, especially through your mobile device. So my question to you is your website and content mobile ready. We’re obsessed with being connected with the world, through our mobile phones, many Americans check their mobile devices up to 96 times a day. And that’s once every 10 minutes. And that’s a 20% increase in the last few years. And here’s another disturbing fact that 66% of all Americans check their phones 160 times a day. We are obsessed. It’s really true. How many times do you check your mobile mobile device in a day? So you might be saying to yourself, Jeffrey, I get it. I check my mobile phone a lot of times, but how does this affect my acupuncture practice? Well, the number one, your website must be mobile friendly in this day and age. So given how many people own a smartphone and how often people use their phone, um, to access the internet, it’s really good for business to have a mobile responsive website.

And when we are done here today, um, um, take a look at your website on your mobile device and ask three or four friends to do the same. Ask these questions. What’s how’s it working? What happens when you scroll up and down on the homepage? Is it easy to find your contact information is easy to clip a, cook, a button and make an appointment? Can you find your social media links? Can you schedule or call with one click if I’m ready for an appointment, but what I’ll learn if I’m not ready for an appointment, but I want to learn more about your success in helping patients. Is there good content that is easy for me to find? Do you have content or proof on your blog or webpage that tells me why acupuncture is a good clinical modality. Excuse me. Can I download any digital reports, any newsletters, any patient help sheets, anything that can help me further my knowledge or experience about acupuncture?

Is there a way for people to join your mailing list? Is it easy to find reviews that you have? Is there video, okay. There’s no escaping it. We live in a digital world and both your website and your content must fit into that world. Okay. Or you may be losing patients and referrals every day. Make sense, check your site, make sure it’s 100, a hundred percent mobile ready. If you need a second opinion, feel free to request a free website evaluation. I’ll give you a link towards the end of today’s training, where you can access that free website evaluation. All right. And finally, the number one way to positively positively influence prospects to become patients is with video. I know many of you are cringing with the idea of actually producing videos, but video continues to be one of the most effective elements in a patient digital marketing strategies that we roll into 2021.

And with good reason, because as a visual species, humans find videos, more engaging, more memorable, and more popular than any type of content out there. So video as a means of storytelling, marketing and content is no longer just a nice option, right? It’s a necessity. If you want to increase conversion and exposure, incorporating a video marketing strategy is the only way to go from. I understand that viewers retain 95% of a message when it’s in a video versus 10%, when they’re reading it in text and mobile consumption this year about watching videos on their phones has gone up 100% this year, over last year. And by 2022 videos are going to be more than 82% of what drives traffic to people’s websites. Okay. And if that wasn’t enough, a website is 53 times higher to be ranked on the front page of Google. If it includes a video that’s huge.

When you Google acupuncture in your state, in your zip code, you need to be on that front page. Having video will increase that by 53 times and that’s massive. Okay. So how does this affect your practice? Video is the fastest and easiest way to establish credibility and connection and a 30 and reputation healer. And you might be wondering, you know, do I have to do the videos? And the answer is no, you could have, um, you could use done for you videos. You can outsource your video. You can do audio only videos on top of a PowerPoint, um, and the types of videos that work, uh, um, you know, you also might be wondering what types of videos work best? Well, the answer is that any video is better than no video. So with good lighting using your phone is a great way to do a video.

And the great news is that most videos on Facebook today do not have a video. It’s all audio with images, right? And slides that are, that are rolling across the screen. So it’s not actually you or a person on there. It’s just images. And that’s really easy stuff to create. So using videos for your marketing can take many forms. You could use it, um, as explainer videos or Intelihealth on your website or presentations on educational events or tutorials on how to use these points for these particular conditions or cooked foods for these particular elements or customer testimonials or interviews or product or service videos, or even a live video like we’re doing today. So imagine having one to two minute videos on your social media and on your website, about a few key conditions that you deal with that you can use over and over and over again, to educate patients on the effectiveness of your services.

That’s huge. Okay. You can talk about back pain and allergies and digestive problems and stress and anxiety. These are all topics that you would use over and over again and make sure well, practice more memorable. So dope, intimidated. Your video does not have to be perfect. It just has be honest and sincere. So my hope is that you received some answers and inspiration and insight for what you needed today. And I want to encourage you. If you need to reevaluate your plans and to make actual strategies feel free to reach out to me, I would love to give you a fresh perspective. I, if you need help reach out and let’s just start with a free 15 minute mentoring and discovery call. And all you have to do is shoot me an email at Jeffrey, J E F F R E Y at acupuncture, immediate works.com and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

So again, J E F F R E Y at acupuncture, media works.com and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. You are an incredible resource. You change lives every day, day in and out, and people need you. Okay. So, um, I promise that I want to share with you, um, go download this ebook. This is resetting your practice for 2021. What’s working now to get more patients on your table. I go through a bunch of different topics that really show you everything that you could be doing now in this year to re set your practice, I have to do is go to Accu media dot U S um, slash reset, 2021. Again, Accu media dot U S slash reset 2021. And you’ll be able to access this 15 page ebook that you could use as a resource for this year and future years coming down the line, too.

And for those of you that are interested in getting the website evaluation, um, all you have to do is go visit this URL and, um, request, uh, fill it out, request an eval. So that URL for you are your evaluations, acu.pw/p E P hyphen evil. Okay, so again, a C U dot P w slash P E P hyphen evil that’s for that free evaluation, you guys are awesome. You change lives every time you put a needle in somebody you’re shifting people for the positive. This world needs, you reach out. If you need some support, I’m here for you. I got your back and thanks again for having me, uh, to share some more insights and more wisdom with the AAC on this call today. Take care, stay beautiful. Talk soon. Bye. Bye

Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel (http://www.youtube.com/c/Acupuncturecouncil )

LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/american-acupuncture-council-information-network/)

Periscope (https://www.pscp.tv/TopAcupuncture).

Twitter (https://twitter.com/TopAcupuncture)

If you have any questions about today’s show or want to know why the American Acupuncture Council is your best choice for malpractice insurance, call us at (800) 838-0383. or find out just how much you can save with AAC by visiting: https://acupuncturecouncil.com/acupuncture-malpractice-quick-quote/.

Exercise Prescription for the Acupuncturists – Callison, Lau, Armstrong

Hello, everyone. Happy holidays. Thank you very much for coming. Welcome to our December issue of the sports acupuncture webinar podcast. My name is Matt Callison. I’m Brian Lau. Thank you very much for coming you guys. And thank you for the American Acupuncture Council for inviting us here. We have a very special guest today. Ian Armstrong, who’s on faculty and the teacher of the postural assessment and corrective exercise class that we have in the sports medicine acupuncture certification program.

Click here to download the transcript.

Thank you again for coming. Thanks for having me a bit, you know, watching you guys through these types of podcasts here for, for a few times, then I’m excited to join. Alright, awesome. Great. Can we go to that first slide there, please? And we’ll go ahead and do a little overview of what we’re going to be trying to accomplish in this very short 30 minutes or so a quick overview, and this is playing off of the blog article that Brian and I wrote on the sports medicine, acupuncture, webpage, um, exercise prescription for the acupuncturist in particular, it’s for, uh, when you have a patient with medial knee pain, a few different things to take a look at that can really end up helping quite a bit with, um, your patients.

And we’re talked about an elevated ilium and the muscle imbalances and the sinew channel imbalances that can end up causing the knee to move in. So we’re going to be speaking about that. Um, but also what can happen with, uh, PEs planus. So, um, let’s let’s, as a reminder, do something about this, uh, exercise prescriptions that we feel that the exercise prescription is a very important adjunctive therapy for an acupuncturist to use this. It’s just as important as prescribing herbs or dietary recommendations and exercise prescription is not only just for a postural imbalances and orthopedic rehab, but there are also many exercise prescriptions that are exercising muscles that stimulate the front move and the back shoe points, uh, as well as she cleft Lulu and, uh, Jean Wellpoint. So it’s important that we are exercising certain areas even for as food components, for example, like upper jaw, um, asthma, or even post COVID patients, how wonderful it will be to actually give them some exercises that gets their rip cage moving in such. And I know Brian has a few comments on this as well, so I’m gonna just hand it over to him.

Yeah, I think, uh, just the parallel that, uh, the, the space, you know, if you think about the whole chest and the abdominal cavity, you want a space in there for things to circulate well and move well. So if there’s a lot of collapse in the chest, well, that’s going to put a lot of pressure on the lungs and the diaphragm. If it’s, if it’s pushing inward, that’s going to put a lot of pressure on the liver. So to have really good, just circulation through the abdominal pelvic and through the thoracic cavity, um, corrective exercises, chigong, uh, Tai Chi, all of those types of movement exercises, which is a big part of the tradition of Chinese medicine, uh, is really essential both for like Matt said, orthopedic conditions, uh, especially, but for really any condition just to have proper circulation and proper movement throughout the whole system.

Great. So then let’s go to the next slide and Ian, do you want go ahead and start with this and walk us through?

Sure. So when we’re looking at, um, some contributions to, um, medial knee pain, there’s a couple of aspects that we’ve got to look at. Um, often the, the knee is really the joint that’s just caught in between two other joints that have a lot of range of motion that can have a lot of, uh, propensity for deviation, both standing or statically and through movement. So, um, in the pace program and smack, we look at both, uh, movement assessments and static assessments. Um, and with these two joints that I’m speaking of, I’m talking about the hip and, uh, later on as we’ll get to the, the ankle and foot. So in the first picture, we can see the gentlemen here, standing here with a plumb line down the center of the, of the body there. And you can see on his right side even a little bit more without having any palpatory confirmation, we can see that that right. Side’s got a little bit of elevation. You might be able to see even a little bit on that. Um, if you’re comparing the distance between the side of his body and each hand, you can see that there’s a little bit less on that right side. You can see a little bit of a fold on that right side. And you can almost tell that there’s a little bit of elevation of his, of his right ilium there.

Um, moving to the picture in the middle. We can see as a practitioner. It’s, it’s always good to confirm what we’re trying to see with palpation. You can see Matt’s got his hand over and on top of each iliac crest, and again, we’re his different patient. We can see that this, this person’s also got an elevated ilium on that right side. Um, and then we can confirm these, these, um, what will happen with these deviations are the imbalances of the myofascia the sinew channels and how it’s going to affect, um, the movement. So in this case, we, we like to use the, um, overhead squat. Uh, it’s it’s often used in the, in, in the national Academy of sports medicine or NASA. Um, it’s also a big movement screen. That’s that’s used in something called selective functional movement assessment that uses a lot of movement screens to try and help with pain and increased, uh, performance and function. You guys got anything to add to that?

Yeah, I do. For the, uh, actually two things for the middle picture. Uh, of course it’s a nice chance to see an elevated Valium again, but also, um, it really gives you a good picture of how to assess, uh, the elevated Lam. Now that math is kind of moving off to the side. So you can, you can’t see through Matt. So he’s moving off to the side, so you can see his hands, but if you were really assessing and there was no need to take a picture and he was right behind the person, the goal is to get your, your hands really at the top of the iliac crest, not just come in and feel bone, cause you might be in a slightly different place with each hand, but to kind of crawl up until you sink in just above the iliac crest sink into the area where it’s a little softer where there’s no bone under your knee, underneath your hands and come down on top of the iliac crest in the finger position really tells you if one hand is higher than the other. So that’s really the proper assessment, you know, a good way of assessing it.

Very true. I think it’s common to kind of miss that stat top of that iliac crest. It can hide from you. So sometimes I’ll even like to start at the rib cage and palpate down until I feel I’m in definite space. And then as you can see, as Matt’s using his hands, like, like, like, uh, levels that are really distinct, um, you know, landmarks of each of each height of each crest, um, and that’s really helpful to get, to get that clear distinct Mark and then just to get right at eye level with it when you’re assessing. Yeah,

You should be able to see it, but, but some it’s good to confirm with your hands. Cause sometimes maybe just a little bit of the adipose tissue sets on the structure and in a way that can confuse you or the pant line can confuse you or something like that. So, so the palpatory assessment is really, um, key. If I could add one more thing I’d like to see if Matt has anything to add to, and this is the last thing we’ll say about this because, um, the rest of it will be a little bit more on the biomechanics, but the person on the left of course has an elevated ilium. We could look, look at the musculature, the quadratus lumborum and stuff. We’ll talk about as we progress forward with, um, with the, the, uh, channel sinews that are involved. But if you kind of just think past the muscles for a little bit and think, well, his kidneys would be moving along the psoas muscle.

So what’s happening with the position of the kidney on the right or the liver. You know, the liver can have a range of motion that it does as you take a breath or as it slides in relationship to the stomach and the kidneys and all the organs, it can be complex, but you know, maybe that internally that that liver is stuck down to the kidney or to the intestines and isn’t able to sort of move freely. So he has to position himself in a way to sort of free and take pressure off that liver. And that’s what we were alluding to in terms of the internal design Fu can really be affected by posture and a lot of different ways,

Absolutely pelvic curdle, um, any kind of, of, of pelvic inflammatory diseases or any anything, actually, when you look at the dog food with an elevated alium, so let’s zero, uh, back into the medial knee pain with all orthopedic examinations, the practitioner will be thinking about what channels are affected in excess and deficiency. And therefore you can start figuring out what points do we be able to use. So this is a good segue then going into our next slide, going into our next slide. All right. Awesome bye. So here, it’s going to be taking a look, you’ll see a frontal plane muscles of the hip AB doctors and the hip Ady doctors along the gallbladder sinew channel, and also the liver send your channel. So when you have an elevated ilium, you can see that the hip AB doctors will be in a lengthened and relative deficient position on the side of the elevated ilium.

And then the add doctor muscles, the doctor muscles will be locked short and a relative excess. Why is this important to know, because it’s going to predicate your needle technique at the motor points of these particular muscles. So on the opposite side, you’ll see where the ileum is on a lower position that glute medius and minimus on the gallbladder channels in a lock short position, pulling that ilium downward. And then you have the add doctors are going to be in a deficient lock long position. Now these are only going to be in the frontal plane. Now these, these muscles themselves are going to be directly indicated with elevated ilium and as the person’s going into an overhead squat, what you’ll commonly see is that knee moving inward. Now there’s also other important muscle that we’re going to be talking about, uh, on the urinary bladder sinew channel. Ian, do you want to go from here?

Sure. Um, great explanation. I think from through the wonderful artwork on the left side, and then seeing the visual of me and an overhead squat on the right, you can see how the excess adductor, uh, is, can be pulling that knee moves need, uh, moving in, um, and the, the inability, uh, or the inhibition of the gallbladder sinew channel on the glute medius and minimus to properly support that, that knee and keep it stable. Um, however, there’s other things that we’ve got to tease out of this because it can, it’s not going to be the only culprit or it can be, um, other things obviously that, that, that they can cause that need to move in. Again, we mentioned the ankle, which will get and foot, which we’ll get to later, but also even looking at other kinds of muscles that are attaching to the hip.

And, um, th the issue, for instance, with the lateral hamstring group. Now we know that the lateral hamstring specifically the long head of the bicep is, uh, by articulate muscle, meaning it’s going to extend the hip and it’s also going to bend the knee. Therefore it’s going to cross that knee joint. So if you can think of it as the string on a bow and the leg being a bow, and how, if that string is tightening down, that leg is going to not have the ability to keep straight in. It’s going to start to collapse that knee to move inward. Um, so there’s other variations of this overhead squat that we would use to try and tease which one is being a culprit, and they could both be contributing to that needed to move in. Um, but we learned different variations of this overhead squat to, to try and tease that out, to see if that lateral hamstring group, um, is really contributing to the tightness and the not allowing that knee to keep straight and pulling that, that bow in. So that would be your, your urinary gallbladder, excuse me, in the urinary bladder SNU channel. Brian, you want to comment on that,

Uh, just to add to it, you know, that could, of course be in the same way that Ian described that could be the, the lateral head of the gastrocnemius also. And for that matter, Proteus longest that whole urinary bladder channel on that side. And again, just like we did in the sand, those both cross the knee, you know, gas rock coming from above hamstrings coming from below. So if you think of the whole channel from the hip to the foot, as Ian was saying, you know, you can see on the lateral side that bow, that, that line is short and creating a bowing of the knee versus the more medial hamstring and medial gastrocs. So it’d be relative excess on the, um, on the lateral side.

Right.

All right. So good, good, good. So just as a reminder for everybody, what we’re describing right now is zeroing in, on one partial dysfunction that can cause medial knee pain, that’s useful for the acupuncturist to assess now looking at the biceps, femoris that lateral hamstring being an excess position and what we already covered with the hip AB doctors and 80 doctors being excess and also deficient. So that’s going to be important. Now we also have to look at the constitution of the patient, right? So if we have our assessment, we do our tone, our pulse diagnosis. We figure out who is this patient with this medial knee pain, and perhaps maybe actually have the Ritchie stagnation or Libby inefficiency as well, where that Oregon is also contributing possibly to some of that medial knee pain, in addition to these partial dysfunction. So we would be developing our acupuncture treatment plan and protocol, which we don’t have time in this, in this particular podcast or webinar to, to go over.

Um, but after the acupuncture and a balanced acupuncture treatment, and then doing your myofascial release techniques or cupping or quash on Sasha, everything that we do as acupuncturist, you’re now priming body for exercise prescription. And this is really no different what our founding fathers have done before with acupuncture. And I’m sure teaching Tai-Chi exercises, movement patterns, and she’d gone. We’re just describing it in Western biomedical terms. So therefore, let’s go ahead and discuss, um, a, uh, really excellent exercise for lowering an elevated ilium after the acupuncture treatment, which would be in the next slide. And then this would be a nice little segue also for Brian. If you want to get ready for the demonstration, we’ve got a little treat for your products in his office, and he’s going to be demonstrating some of these exercises for us. So let’s introduce them first, the exercises, what you’re going to be saying.

So here on the slide on the left, you see, uh, Ian on a figure four wall. So his right hip is at 90 degrees and on his left ankle, you see that lateral malleolus over extra point. Hey Dean. So he’s going to be pressing the knee outward in order to work on the hip. The hip abductors are going to be contracting in the hip Ady doctors are going to be relaxing in this case. So you could see on the side of an elevated ilium, if you put the person into this particular position, the lox long deficient hip abductors on the elevated side are now contracting isometrically. Now this is after your acupuncture treatments. So they’re really in primed and ready for this. You have treated, you’ve treated the adductor muscle with the reducing needle technique. And now the adductors in this particular position are being reciprocally inhibited. So as complimenting the acupuncture treatment, now, if the person has lack of flexibility in this particular position, there’s a number of different sequences that we can do, which Ian, do you want to follow up with that? And, uh, just briefly just describe it and then we’ll go right into Brian so you can show it.

Sure. So, um, I mean, great description of me on the left there. Um, when we’re looking at these are other variations of what we would call figure four exercise. So you can see, um, someone else here on the right hand side, um, being able to, um, add a little bit more of a rotational type of movement to, um, again, as Matt was saying, uh, contract and, and stimulate the contraction of the gallbladder, sending channel with the AB doctors and getting that release and stretch of the adductors can, which will especially be profound and, and, and effective once the treatment has been completed. Um, I think, I imagine we’re pretty ready to move on and see, um, Brian here. Cause I’d love to talk about some of the nuances of these exercises and the keys to really making sure that they’re effective.

Yeah, that’s great. Let’s go to Brian. Awesome.

Great. So as you can see, Brian set up here, he’s got his hips flexed at 90 degrees. He’s got his knees flexed to 90 degrees. Um, it’s hard to tell from this angle, but we really want to make sure when someone is up against the wall like this, that their starting position is, is neutral with their feet. And by that, I mean, they’re not AB ducted. They’re not adducted, uh, with their feet and as Brian’s just demonstrating now, they’re all aligned North South or superior to inferior. So you don’t want to have that, that movement, um, of, of the misalignment of the feeds important to have those nice and aligned and together in line with the hips.

So,

Um, running with the two examples, meaning the, we saw on the first slide and then the second slide with the artwork of the, of the musculoskeletal system and the imbalances of the muscle groups. Let’s say that Brian had an elevated right side. Um, so it’s, it’s nice to you notice when you’re looking at the exercise in the photos before you saw that, obviously we’re, we’re addressing one side, it’s not a bilateral exercise, you’re addressing one side at a time. So when it comes to, um, giving this exercise to your patients, I think it’s nice to obviously have them do side both sides, but also it’s important to have them give a little bit more attention to that elevated side. We want to get more activation from that deficient gallbladder, uh, Cindy channel, the glute medius and minimus that are elongated and lengthen it inhibited by that elevated ilium.

So we’ll have him start with his right ankle. We’re going to have him go ahead and put his right ankle over his left knee, just like, so you can see that lateral malleolus even with heading. We want to make sure that his right foot is generally flush with the outside of the thigh. And it’s a good marker. So he’s not too far over, uh, and crossing beautiful. Um, and then he’s going to go ahead and extra, you know, abduct and externally rotate that hip and push down just like, so, and when we’re going through this exercise with the patient, we want to make sure that they’re not compensating at the hip and seeing that hip elevate. I know if it’s hard and humid, for those of you who are watching, you can kind of see what he’s doing through the mirror there and get an idea of how that compensation can often be had.

Um, with these postural exercises, you know, they don’t seem too difficult and, uh, and, and they aren’t. But the, the, the thing about them is, is when we have these deviations, uh, for a patient it’s often that they will, are used to moving their body to get out of the, the crux and the importance of, of the effectiveness of what that exercise is trying to do. So paying attention to these little deviations or wiggles and how they’ll try and get out of doing that, that the exercise properly is really important to pay close attention to.

Hey, Ian subgroups, I’m sorry for interrupting. You’re probably just about to say it, but I just want to make sure that we do cover some patients, right. As we know a difficult time getting that figure four, because of tightness in the hip, what would, what would you instruct to do

Beautiful Brian? Yeah, exactly. He just can’t get there, or maybe he can get there, but there’s so much deviation at the hip that hip starts to really tilt up, but that’s just, that’s no good, right? That’s not going to be effective. There’s no way that they can get out of that and get into proper alignment. So what we really need to do is decrease the, the angle of the leg. That’s not being stretched. So in this case, it would be Brian’s left leg. We’re going to go ahead and have him decrease that, that hip angle. So meaning that, that taking down that 90 degrees of hip flection, and really trying to make sure that we can give proper space for their, whatever their flexibility is to get that right aid, uh, ankle back over the left knee. So, and then being able to AB duct and externally rotate that hip, being able to stay, put that transverse plane, if you will, through that hip is not being, being deviated away from, and we’re getting a nice activation of those AB DRS, gallbladder, sinew channel, and that, that w you know, openness and the release of the, of the adductors and the liver sinew channel

So should we maybe move on to the rotational?

Sure. And then once the person can able to graduate from these particular exercises, and we’ll go into more, uh, an exercise that w that the person needs to have more flexibility for. So let’s, let’s take a look at that one.

Yep. So now, um, Brian’s in a position called a hook line position. You can see the soles of his feet are on the floor. Typically, I would say that I like to have about, um, 90 degrees of knee flection. So he’s a little bit more than that right now. That’s okay. That’s something that’s actually sort of customed to that patient. Again, you can decrease or increase that angle depending on how flexible they are. For instance, if the person is not so flexible, you can lengthen that, that, that, uh, there you go, just like that, just like that brand. So obviously you can see that that needs coming down. It will be easier for that patient to put that ankle over the knee. And then if they’re not getting enough stretch, you can increase that angle too. Right. You can go the other way. So going, you know, up just like Brian did allows that increase and maybe more stretch if that’s what they need depending on the patient.

Um, so once they found that, that right angle, you’re going to go ahead and take that right ankle over the left knee. Again, making sure that the ankle that left that left foot is flushed with the outside of the thigh. He’s going to go ahead and let that wrote that whole sole, that w that right foot to be on the floor. So he’s going to go ahead and rotate over. So that whole right leg outside of the leg, you know, that perennials, that it down all, that’s flush without side of the floor. He’s going to go ahead and dorsiflex and activate that right foot. So can see through the mirror, but he’s, he’s, he’s flexing that right foot. That’s all flush with the floor. We want to make sure we have Brian go to the other side so we can see that.

Sure. Good idea,

Please. He’s flexing that, uh, that right foot. Now that’s on the floor, the left sole the foot should be able to stay on the floor. So if that’s not being able to stay on the floor, then what we need to do is decrease the flection of the hip angle, just like we showed in the beginning. Uh, that means he’s probably too steep of an angle. It’s too much of a stretch. So it’s like the figure four wall. He’s going to go ahead and externally rotate an abduct AB duct, his, his left leg. And, uh, we haven’t really discussed that too much about the time. So you can hold for this for about 30 to 30 to 60 seconds. Um, I really also like to give a cue for the patient to really reach with the, in this case, it would just, this would be for Brian’s left knee.

So kind of reaching that towards the mirror, we’ll call it a quarter of a long gait, that area, um, um, and give more of a stretch, sometimes felt in the TFL sometimes even felt more in the quadratus lumborum, which is also on that liver sinew channel. So this one in regards to it’s difference with the figure four wall, I think sometimes people, uh, patients can feel more of the stretch moving in through that liver sinew channel up through that quadratus lumborum. You can also, if, if he’s comfortable with it, go ahead and rotate his head towards the leg that is, is being activated. So that left side for him, as you can see does that to the mirror. So I, that location can really feel all the way up through that necessary. Cause as, as we can see, we didn’t see in the artwork, um, uh, that, you know, the, the elevation of the ilium is also going to cause a shortened quadratus lumborum on the ipsilateral side.

This is excellent. Yeah. Um, we’re running short on time, so we’re going to have to cut that one. Um, Oh, this is also a it’s. All right. This is great. This is really good. Um, for step-by-step information on this exercise, we have that in the blog article on this sports medicine, acupuncture.com, it’s the September as the December blog article. So, um, let me discuss a little bit real quick. What we teach in the pace class, paces and acronym for the partial assessment of corrective exercise. Uh, we talk about intradermal needle using pine next needles on extra ordinary vessel points to be able to, uh, increase their range of motion and decrease pain. For example, if you had somebody that was in this figure four position, and they had some hip joint problems, or let’s say some, um, uh, discomfort in the hip abductors or so you could use a particular master and confluent points, uh, to help decrease this. So the patient can stay in that position and, um, perform these exercise successfully. So now what you’re about to see right now, a particular mastering fluid points. I’m not sure why there’s feedback happening right now, but anyways, um, let’s go to the next video. Please stop the CB right now.

This is from the pace class in a Chicago smack class, which you’re about to see

What’s your [inaudible] might have to do more and let’s see how [inaudible]. That’s pretty cool. Isn’t it? Let’s keep this rolling. This is really good. You guys, this was a really good one. You guys ready, guys? This is a really good one. And what the problem that she was having is just getting into this position. She was spending a lot of pain and the glute medius minimus. It was fatiguing. She wanted to actually get out of this position. So that movement is actually pretty complex. Isn’t it? It’s rotation. It’s extension hip AB duction. So we went ahead and did gallbladder 41, Sandra five on both sides. And she’s now able to do the exercises. Stay into this position is really quite an interesting face that she had is a lot of surprise. It was good. Okay. So if that one didn’t work, we would have used probably do my Yon chow or ran my child to be able to see what the extension and the happy option you guys good. Do it making sense. It was the points on the unaffected side that were most tender to the unaffected side were the most tender. All right. Good job guys. You’ve gone.

All right, let’s go to the next slide please.

All right. So what we’re using are the pioneers needles by Sarah and, um, the distributor for that is Los OMS. Los OMS is the sponsor for the sports medicine acupuncture certification program. That’s the size needle that we normally like to use people. Um, it will stimulate the receptors enough, the extramural vessel mastering called flow points enough. Um, and it’s usually painless for the patient when they’re doing exercises. So I know, I know that we’ve gone over time, everybody. I really apologize, but we only have like three or four more slides. So let’s go ahead and finish this up. Um, let’s go to the next slide please. And you want to take this over for the biceps femoris?

Sure. We’ve just got a couple examples here of some, um, some good bias, uh, bicep for Maura stretches again, understanding that with its biotech nature and how it crosses the knee joint, it can be a culprit for that knee moves in as well. So, you know, there’s a variety of different ways to address the bicep for Morris in terms of trying to get at a little bit more lengthened and, and, and not pull, have so much tension to pull that knee in or to move that knee. And so, um, you know, there’s a variety of other ones, but these are just a couple of examples, um, that you can do to try and, and solve that side of the knee moves in from the hip.

Yeah. We don’t have time to go into all the assessment for it, but there are ways in the overhead squat to change things to really tease out. Is this more coming from the, the UV, you know, biceps from Morris, uh, gastric, uh, area? Is it coming more from the liver gallbladder, uh, Sydney channel sort of aspects and it could be a combination of both. Yeah. Yep. Yep.

So let’s go to the next slide so we can see this. Yeah,

Go for it again.

So, um, as, as we, we mentioned, there’s, we’ve talked about some of the different things from different aspects from the hip that can cause that need to move in. Um, we can also be looking as we mentioned before at the foot, um, and how it can, you know, be a contributor to that knee moving in. So on the left side, we’re looking at, um, the, uh, has planets, um, and also sort of the foot abduction, uh, being part of that issue to move that knee, the knee moves in. And sometimes even if you don’t see, um, any, any Pez planets or, or, you know, from a standing posture or a foot abduction from the standing posture, when someone goes into an overhead squat, the, the tightness of that whole, um, lower urinary bladder, so new channel will come to light and you’ll see that foot abduct and even maybe start to collapse and overpronate um, so that would be, you know, restriction and tightness from the urinary bladder. So new channel, like your peroneal groups, your lateral gastrocs, some of the things that we mentioned that that could take that tightness and pull that knee in.

Yeah. A little change of subject, I guess, by the quick question popped up about the previous example of a San gel five. Uh, there was a question of is Sandra five or six Sandra at five and gallbladder 41. And typically in the corrective exercises, when there’s difficulty for various reasons, I would tend to help with more rotational aspects of rotational problems.

Yeah.

Um, the protocol for this isn’t in chapter four of the sports medicine acupuncture textbook, and this is something that we also teach a lot during each one of these, uh, pay series and the sports medicine acupuncture certification program. Going back to this slide, let’s take a look at the image on the right. Let’s just put our, our, our assessment and clinician hat back on when you’ve got that patient with medial knee pain and they go into an overhead squat and you see that knee moving inward, or possibly that foot then goes into abduction. That starts to move out. That’s really demonstrating a lot about the sinew channels that we discussed already, but let’s look at it. It looks slightly different way is that we saw that as you was mentioning earlier, that that doctor is going to be in a lock short position. It’s going to be access, pulling that knee inward, the biceps femoris being part of the urinary bladder sinew channel is also pulling, pulling that knee inward.

So therefore that also means that the medial hamstrings are going to be deficient now that entire UV myofascial Sr channel, even all the way down into the foot. All right. So that lateral musculature of the urinary bladder senior channel will be in an excess position, which I believe is information that we discussed in a Pez plan webinar that Brian and I discussed in a webinar a few months ago. So you can always go back and take a look at that one as well. There’ll be more information about needle techniques and session, how to get old, lift the arch with that. So you’ve got a whole treatment protocol locally, just to be able to treat this. And again, you’re always going to try to link this to the organs because nine times out of 10, there’s always going to be some kind of Oregon disharmony that the licensed acupuncturist can treat this traditionally is treat traditionally as well. In addition to this very Western biomedical way of looking at things, Anything else

That’s good just to highlight that Ian Ian’s demoing the overhead squat. And I dunno, even if you were just doing that for the picture, or if you have a tendency for the right knee to move in, but kind of what Matt was saying, if, Oh, go ahead.

I was going to say it’s probably both. Yeah. Yeah. I think probably I have more of a tendency of that foot to move out. And I think it was probably trying to demo that made many moves in, but yep.

So just to highlight, you know, through other assessments can tease out of, this

Is more of a balance between abductor and abductor and maybe this patient has signs of liver cheese stagnation, or liver blood deficiency. So you’re really putting all of it together. You know, this is, this becomes just another assessment that ties into the, uh, the full tongue polls questions, all of that.

Excellent. All right. So our next slide we’ll room going over is one quick exercise, which I think we actually taught in a previous webinar, but it’s such a great exercise for that, a foot abduction or a Pez planus piece. Um, so we’ve actually got two more slides, but let’s start with this one that we’re on right now. Uh, Ian, do you want to go ahead and take it over from here?

Sure. Um, we call this, uh, inchworm in the pace, uh, seminar series. You can also, I think you’re looking it up if it’s something that you want to learn about. Sometimes it’s also called a short foot exercise, but the first, uh, picture on the left-hand side, that’s the, that’s the beginning, uh, that’s the beginning photo or starting position. Um, you know, patient can be sitting, um, even if they’d like to, with their foot on the floor, um, standing cause just fine too. Um, and really making sure they’re getting all parts of the foot, that heel, maybe just under that big toe and part of that, uh, you know, right around UV 64, um, that part of that foot should also be planted on the floor and what they’re going to go ahead, as you can see in the second picture is that that big toe is starting to scrunch.

So what really you’re doing is you’re starting to get activation and we’ve talked a lot about the tightness or the restriction from the urinary bladder, so new channel causing that foot abduction. Well, we didn’t mention it when it’s talked about, I think in the previous, uh, seminar that Matt mentioned through, um, um, the American Acupuncture Council here is that the spleen and kidney sinew channels are ones that we’re trying to activate. And beginning of those channels, we have the abductor [inaudible] and the flexor health has previs. Um, so we’re really trying to activate the flexor hallucis brevis and the abductor, how has to try and get that activation and flection of the big toe in that medial arch. Uh, so they flex that toe forward and then they go ahead and lift and fall through. So it’s almost like your inch warming your foot, hence the name of the exercise. So you go ahead and scrunch that toe, kind of follow it up with the heel and then go ahead and lay that toe flat again and repeat maybe three, four times one way and then actually start to crunch and push it back as well. So you would go both directions.

Cool. You now Brian’s got a modification to the, Oh, sorry about that. Brian’s got a modification for this one. Uh, Brian’s got a modification for this, so let’s go to the next slide. Brian, let it go.

Yeah. So in this one, you, if, if you kind of see the ghost image on the top corner that his foot, uh, AB duction abduction, so you’re flattening as as much of the medial arch, as you can. You’re exaggerating that PEs planus and really collapsing that medial arch as much onto the floor as you can, to give yourself something to move out of. And then you’re sweeping the, the foot along the floor. It’s not as much a leg rotation is trying to use the foot muscles, the curve, the foot to make the foot like a going from a long position where the medial arch is flattened to the floor, the lifting and, and shortening that medial arch. So you’re like fully contracting that medial arch and the muscles that Ian mentioned abductor hallucis primarily. And this one, I think, and probably a little bit of flexor hallucis brevis and then you could repeat it, turn the foot back out, flatten the arch as much onto the floor as possible, and then make one big sweeping motion where you’re turning it in.

Yeah. Excellent. Well, gentlemen, this was, we gave a, a lot of information and just a super quick overview for those patients that are coming in with medial knee pain. Uh, please take a look at the hip for an elevated ilium. Please take a look at the foot for going into abduction, make sure that you are looking at the channels that are affected with this. As we described, make sure that you also are treating the patients constitution with this, because that does make tremendous changes and we’re not just treating locally. Uh, that’s going to inhibit us quite a bit. So let’s remember our roots in traditional Chinese medicine. And, uh, gosh, we went away. We went over. I’m sorry, everybody, but you know, this is what a good surprise. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on. Really, really appreciate you very much. My pleasure. I’m

Very excited to join with you guys. I, I,

Yeah, it was awesome. Thank you. Yeah. Good, Brian. You as well. So it’s a pleasure speaking with you and we want to thank the American acupuncture council, um, for again, inviting us to be able to do this. Um, and also for next week, we’ve got Jeffrey Grossman coming in for the American acupuncture council. So make sure you, uh, tune into that as well. You guys thank you very much and we will see you in January happy new year. Happy holidays, everybody

[inaudible].

Nanopuncture with Clayton Shiu & Poney Chiang

Hi, my name is Poney Chiang from Toronto Canada. I met my opinion education provider from new everyday.net. Welcome to today’s live Facebook broadcast for American Acupuncture Council. My guest today is Dr. Clayton Shiu from New York City…

Click here to download the transcript.

…Creighton and a bachelor of science in human physiology from Boston university and a master of science with traditional Oriental medicine from psychology, went into medicine. He received his PhD in acupuncture, and moxibustion from the Tangi university of treaters, Chinese medicine, and completed as well as residency at the first teaching hospital of Tangie. Any of you that are joining us today. My note that this is the hospital in which the movie 9,000 year old takes place, and the Clayton were close to you with their father and modern acupuncture. His name is Dr. [inaudible], who is the inventor of a neuro rehabilitation medical. She now KHL, um, Dr. Hsu is the creator of the narrow punches stroke and neuro logical religious rehabilitation system that he teaches across the country. Dr. Sushi. I mean the, uh, the father of modern acupuncture, invited Clayton to present his breakthrough research and then a punctured system at the 2020 international acupuncture conference in change in China, Clayton holds faculty positions at the American Academy of Chinese culture, health sciences in Oakland, and at the American college of nutrition and Chinese medicine, teaching short rehabilitation courses for their doctoral program. Thank you for joining us today. Clayton, how are you doing?

I wanted that. I’m sorry. I blanked out a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay. Uh, would you mind telling us about your experience doing a PhD in tangy or what was that like?

Oh, okay. Um, so my time in tangent was about three and a half years approximately. Um, it was a great experience. Um, it was, it’s a hospital facility that’s quite large. Uh, they treated about 10,000 stroke patients a day, um, as a whole. So we were able to really see all kinds of different kinds of cases. Um, everything from like, like full paralysis of the patient to seeing like a nasal tube being put into, um, the patient to help them feed and also seeing how acupuncture can even take a nasal tube out eventually and give the person the ability to swallow and chew food again. Um, so because of all the different wards and different buildings, um, you could find almost any kind of case, um, and kind of track how acupuncture over the long-term can actually treat and help the patient. And I think that was a major advantage of being in that environment, whereas quite often in our own private practices in the States, um, possibly even Canada too, like, you know, maybe we might see a patient for one week or two months at the most.

Um, and it’s not treating like these kinds of severe kind of cases, but in this case, at the tangent first teaching hospital, we can track patients over six months, eight months a year, et cetera. So it’s, it’s, it gives you a wider, bigger perspective on, on an arc of how a person can heal versus, you know, when we have a private practice, we think, Oh man, okay, maybe in six sessions, something should happen or not. And so my, my perspective on time and also, uh, frequency for treating, uh, certain neurological disorders changed a lot after being there. So

Yeah, it must have been great to be able to see it sort of firsthand the CMB applied every day. Um, I would imagine PA patients are admitted to the hospital and begin acupuncture immediately, right? There’s no waiting for six weeks before they’re discharged from our Western hospital before they come to our private practice. Right. And they’re doing acupuncture every day, maybe several times a day.

Yeah. They, um, at a hospital like this for probably getting treated like at least two sessions of acupuncture, two more sessions of physical therapy, moxa, um, you know, Twain off like, uh, herbal medicines, you know? So, so in a sense you’re getting treated like six to nine times a day, or you’re very active. You’re not very complacent basically. And I like the rooms are, uh, in certain words they’re very big. So like, you know, Chinese are very family oriented, so there’s there’s room for your whole family to kind of sit there, you know, and be loved. So it was very nice to see that too. Um, but yeah, and it was, it was great to see like different, um, like the different directors and specialists in each ward, they were good at different things. So you could, you could pick their brain and ask them, like, how would they needle something? Or why is, why are you using, you know, spleen six this way versus that way, you know, et cetera. Cause that’s a lot of the devil’s in the details, you know? So, um, you puncture, so yeah.

Was like amazing. I’m jealous. Okay. Um, so, um, tell us about your style called nano puncture. What if it’s possible in a few words or a few sentences to give us a nutshell one nano?

Sure. Um, so after I returned to the States, uh, um, I want to give the system of what I was doing. Um, like a kind of a different name. One is it’s a play on words because nano is like the smallest measurable unit in most cases. So it was a play on words of Tai Chi, right? Because Tigie could refer to the smallest or the largest, um, kind of measurement. So nano is referring to like that we’re simply using like needles and the acupuncture, but we can have a large effect to treat like paralysis or treats speech issues or treat, you know, pretty miraculous things. Whenever you see like acupuncture do a very spontaneous kind of changes someone that’s still fascinates me today. Um, and then the other word origin of nano puncture was I was, I was treating a very famous, uh, prostate surgeon and he didn’t believe in acupuncture at first.

And so when I treated him, he could feel me manipulate the needle and I basically converted him. And so, because he was doing sensories, right. He wouldn’t, he wouldn’t need to like the best deference, which was a very small right on a tissue. So he was the first surgeon that kind of related to what needles can do because this needles are a little bit smaller than ours, you know? And we were saying that, Oh, the instrument’s so small. It’s like, it’s like, nano-sized right. So, so that’s how we came up with the word nano puncture. So, so in a sense, nano is like the smallest, smallest unit. Right. Which is like the acupuncture versus reviewing like a major machine or a major, you know, device like a gamma, like a gamma Ray or something like that. So, you know, we’re using just the needles, we’re able to get like an amazing result. So yeah. So that’s that for that. Um, and then mix them with a training from can Jen has just 20 years of like sports medicine and orthopedic experience and stuff like that. So, so we gave it that label. Yeah.

Actually I’m glad you brought up like gamma knife and things like that. Because as part of the material that you teach you to teach something called photo biomodulation and I take it, that sounds a lot like star Trek to me, which sounds really exciting. I’m nothing wrong against dark trade. I’m a trache. So tell me about what that is. Sounds like full-time for Peters.

Okay.

Right. The photo biomodulation or, um, uh, could you repeat your question one time? Cause the, uh, the signal got a little slow.

Tell us what photobiomodulation is that, are you teaching your training program?

Sure. So, uh, what we like to do is even though we’re using, um, or using acupuncture and traditional needle manipulation methods, I like to combine modern technology with what I do. Um, it’s kind of the yin and yang to the practice. Uh, I do like photo biomodulation a lot because what, what sunlight is the chlorophyll red light is to the mitochondria of your cells. And so it’ll actually reset the P and bring energy and create energy into the cells of your body. So interestingly enough, for, for, for us as humans or animals, or, uh, or what have you like, we, we have tissue, right. And if you take this flash like off my cell phone, right. So this is every color in the spectrum, but if I put my finger over it, okay. Like this, right. You see a red light. Okay. And the reason why is that wavelength is about 610, uh, nanometer wavelength.

And that is the wavelength of the red wavelength color. And the red wavelength color is the color of light that can penetrate through our flesh into our muscles, which is what photo biomodulation uses. So that red light okay. Passes through human flesh into the tissue, into the cells. And so with photobiomodulation you can now pulse the frequency to adjust to things like gamma, brainwaves, or Delta brainwaves. You can, you can actually, um, increase the wavelength up to 700, 800 or near infrared light. Um, and when you do that, the neuron for infrared light spectrum will actually kill the viruses, including COVID. That’s why a lot of our devices today have like, you know, the cell phone, cleaner box or the air cleaner with the UV light, you know, and that’s, and that’s not a new thing. Anyone that has surgery before they do any surgery or down to work, they always flash a UV light device to actually prepare the room.

So,

Um, so that’s, so what we do is we use photobiomodulation, we will put it in a tissue that’s maybe we knew we activated the nerves of that body, but we know the tissue isn’t is still weak and fatigued, so we can use red light that way. Um, there’s also devices that go into the nose, right. Or into the tongue area. And what happens is because of the cranial nerves, like cranium, or, um, like the old factory created owner and the nerves attached to the hypoglossal, you can simulate that rather than help, but speech and also with memory. So for like all commerce patients, there’s a great device called the V light, which there’ll be like a headset and like a little stimulator that stimulates gamma, um, for the speech, right. Gamma, wavelength, and then a nose clip. And the clip will shine into that, that area of the factoring of that has like thousands of little Villa.

Okay. And when I’ve, when I worked for end, that it’s actually helped patients, who’ve had like, uh, dementia and memory fog where actually seen noticeable improvements, you know, and that’s a great device it’s shining off, you know, a red light wavelength, um, up through the nose. So, so the great thing about, yeah, and it works great with acupuncture. So like, whereas acupuncture can move CHAM, blood, right. Things like red light and OXA charges, the blood gives it energy. Do you see what I mean? So one thing creates like the flow, the other thing creates, like in a sense, um, like March she, for that blood or for that tissue. So

Do you have a preference of doing, uh photobiomodulation first and then acupuncture or vice versa? Do you do them at the same session or the patients come in separate sessions for different modalities?

Oh, no. I always do acupuncture and like a full neurological assessment first, and then we decide if they need, um, photobiomodulation um, and the, you know, the thing is, is even though it’s great for like, if you have lower back pain, if what I can tell you is that if you have more of a pinpoint lower back pain, or if, you know, it’s affecting the disc, I would use acupuncture first and then do the photo biomodulation to follow up, uh, because acupuncture is still extremely precise. Um, and then once you get that flow, it’s good to have that. So we have like, would you have a light bag? We have the region pod at my office. Um, so we, what we did was created like a rejuvenation studio. So we may have, like, we may have taken acupuncture to a certain extent. And then we feel like, okay, we know everything is rewired and plugged in together, but you know, the power sources and high enough still send them a sample. Yeah. Like let’s, let’s use, use the red light or let’s use like give the person energy, you know? So then we may say, try to do like 10 sessions of red light and then come back. We’re gonna reevaluate. Um, yeah. And, and the interesting thing is, uh, photobiomodulation will actually work on the digestive system. It’s not just for muscles and tendons. Um, we’ve had people had, um, digestive issues and swelling or water retention and a lot of dampness and the red light actually works. Photobiomodulation works great for that. So

Cool. And I like your analogy. Um, you have to make sure things are connected properly first, before you try to turn off the power, right. There’s no point trying to power. It is not connected. So to that, presumably through acupuncture, we’re reducing the resistance of the, um, of the nervous system. So now we have greater flow, right. That’s resistance or more or more conductivity. Now, once that groundwork is done, now it’s ready to actually get some sort of tonification from the F for the red light. Then did I read, I can actually go somewhere and do do the things that it’s intended to do to help you understand. Thank you very much for that. Um, can you tell us, you know, um, how, how can acupunctures, um, benefit from learning from you or learning from, um, nano puncture?

Um, well, I think what I do is we do give like neuro anatomy lessons and education on what a stroke concussion or traumatic brain injury is. But what we do is I set them a [inaudible] program that I did from 10 and two different modules. So, um, what we’d like to do is bring back a lot of the classical knee manipulation, um, so that, you know, you can, you can manipulate something with your needle and also get like the different, like, effects that I learned through [inaudible] or, you know, if we need like heart one, we, you can feel, and you can even direct it into each finger, like the sensation of, of the nerve and stuff like that. So we train you on how to do that. Um, so we might take a section of the body, like the arm or the leg, and for one weekend for about 16 hours or, you know, more you’re constantly practicing and needling mix them with, um, I’ll invite, like just, I’ve never met and I’ll demonstrate how I would approach them in front of the crowd, so of acupuncturists.

So we, we treat them together, but I like to, I think there’s a lot of little details, um, even just, even just down to positioning. Right. And I know like your work is amazing with, within the Academy and dissection and stuff, and, you know, if you don’t position the body correctly, we can’t needle. Right. We can’t get into that sweet spot to manipulate the Meridian and the nerves and the tissue. So it’s, uh, I think that takes like, almost like, uh, like committed, coordinated group practice. It’s like, it’s like when you join a, like a tiger group and everyone’s trying to do form at the same time, you know, and right. One bird was done in one minute, the other people are done in 10 minutes and you, you tend to reverberate together. And so you can feel, you know, the training and what you have to do to the concussion part of it. And then there’s the hands-on part that I think makes our modules special. Yeah.

Can you share with us like a very memorable patient or a case where you, you know, um, feel that you couldn’t have helped them as well as you could, or her as well as you could have had, you know, incorporated let’s put about modulation or Chanel K char or something, some of the things that you’ve learned in China, or some of the things that you discover yourself, you know, private practice,

You mean, like was difficult. And then when we tried that technique and it made it work or something like that, like yeah.

Something inspiring for us. I never get tired of listening to those success stories.

Right, right. Um, yeah, I think, I think, uh, so there, there is quite a few patients, um, that, like, one of my things I left to do is, uh, speech and speech paralysis and dysphasia. And we, you know, we had a patient who, uh, had a very severe stroke about three years ago. And, um, he was, you know, he had salivation problems. It has salivation problems, he’s in a wheelchair. And, um, it’s a difficult case for anybody to treat basically. But at the same time, like just kept putting in different points, like non [inaudible] and angled correctly, like GB, Toni, and long glues, like [inaudible] and stuff now. And when it came close to, uh, to the election time, right. And this patient is usually he always like this, he’s kind of like his eyes are closed, you know, he’s very quiet. Right. And we would treat them twice a day. Like he stays at my office all day and we treat them twice with about a three hour window in between. But about like four weeks ago, when it came close to election time, you know, we asked them who, who we should vote, or, you know, he’s lying there and just goes by them like that, you know, like that,

Yeah. It was like the first word he spoken in our office that was like, you know, cause, uh, you know, it wasn’t a yes or no question. It was something you had to think about. And then later it kept going and we asked him, well, who should run for president? And he said, Dr. Shoe. Right. So we were like, like he could cognitively had a sense of humor. Right. Like he could put that together. So after that, and my staff were like, we just have mocks on the neck. We kept doing all this stuff in the brainstem. And, um, yeah. So it was, uh, it was pretty cool. So it was, you know,

Maybe, maybe you can sit in a nomination for you to become the surgeon general [inaudible] yeah.

Yeah.

Would you be able, um, to give us some tips or advisors, some simple technique or insight, uh, from your unconscious system so that maybe we can start applying a little bit. I know it’s not something that we can really learn over a webinar, but if, is there anything you can, any of tips and advice at the thing I, myself and our viewers would be very appreciated.

Yeah. I think, um, no matter which system you’re using, um, one of the things like Dr. Sherwin says is, uh, he was famous for, for using the principle or creating the principle of quantitative manipulation. Right. So, and what that means is is every 10 minutes we would do a technique like Sparrow pecking, or Phoenix flapping their wings on plants like neg Juan or Sonia and chow because he knew, and he could tell that like every 10 minutes you have to re stimulate the nerves. So my advice is like, it doesn’t matter if you’re using [inaudible] or not whatever technique it is. Like I would go back, we’ll just leave your patient there for like 30 minutes or 40 minutes or whatever, like every 10 minutes go back and just touch that needle. Uh, give it a little adjustment, no matter what your technique is, you know?

And then you’re going to see like a more drastic change in results because, because maybe the body responded that it plateaus and during the session, you can peak it back up. You know? So that’s something that he was very strict about. Like everybody knew that in this hospital, it was very interesting. And I knew that when, uh, one of the hospitals only had 200 beds, he would, like, I heard he would run out of the office, make sure someone manipulated the needle correctly, then run back to his, like, you know, to his conference. He was very strict on that. Yeah. And then also just trying to take care of your hands, whether you’re practicing Tai-Chi or sword work or something, like treat your hands, like they’re gold because, uh, you know, they’re your instruments, right? So you want to make sure you’re always like, you know, don’t, don’t just neglect them and, you know, leave them on a table somewhere, but treat your hand really good and keep them like help because when they’re helping and supple and soft, you can, you can get better results too. You can be more sensitive and it increases your, your tingly, which is like your listening skill, like the needle. So yeah.

To touch detention, the, uh, advisor about, um, sort of re stimulating the needles every 10 minutes or so she didn’t give us an idea, like what they’re doing, kind of w or in your practice that you saw, um, like how long was the average, uh, stroke. We have acupuncture session. And then within that timeframe, how many times are they going into re-stimulate?

Yeah, so, uh, I would say like the, the average time takes about probably about 45 minutes to like an hour for a stroke patient, because you’re going to treat the front for about 20 minutes and then the back for 20 minutes or a specific part of the body. Right. And then you should be like every 10, 15 minutes, you should be going back to manipulate the session. We usually say that like, one course of treatment would be 30 sessions at that hospital. Right. But a lot of patients in the word I was in, um, it was like an international word. So like patients who were living in that hospital for, for like several months, like they, they were getting in a special program, you know? Um, so, you know, in terms of like, it was very congruent to what we say about neuroplasticity. If you think about like, you know, we, usually we say, right, but if, if something’s pretty severely damaged, like if there is damage to the brain STEM or to some of the upper motor tracks, you know, you’re looking at 20 or 30 sessions.

And I think the important thing why I’m glad you’re a teacher and, and other of our peers are teaching, this is because, you know, this isn’t like spraining an ankle new, you need to explain to the patient a care plan and figure out, um, how long, and realistically it would take for them to recover this. That’s not going to be done in five sessions and five quick sessions, like, you know, um, so it’s important that you can guide and manage the patient on the law through that process. So, yeah, I mean, one of the inspirational stories is, uh, I want to add to that is like, for instance, uh, there’s a patient, um, and his name is Jim Wharton and he was the, he was the creator of active, isolated stretching. He’s he coached many Olympic athletes and runners. Right. And he had a stroke, uh, uh, about a year ago.

And he came into my office about a month after the stroke. And he was, he completely could not move. Um, you know, he had a gastric tube and everything he couldn’t speak. And I can tell you that one year later. Okay. Because it was a very severe stroke. Uh, well, within six months he was already eating without a gastric tube and he’s a healthy guy to amazing specimen person. But one year later he was riding the train, the subway train, and he gave me a stretching session. So he treated me instead of I treated him. Right. And it was amazing. Yes. But realistically,

Yeah, yeah. A year is nothing compared to having to get your life back. Right. I mean, it’s all, it’s all relative. Um, right. Thank you very much for sharing your experience with us about an Ana puncture before, if our listeners and viewers find out more information, do you have a website or some social media information? You can let us know so we can get in touch with you or get more information about your upcoming training sessions.

Sure. Um, it’s an amateur seminar doc. Um, and my clinic website is, is, uh, the shoe clinic.com too. So, uh, we’re gonna, we’re going to create some, um, new, online format so people can start learning the different modules. I’m teaching again. Um, cause of Irvin can’t really, um, easily meet face to face, but we’re going to create, we’re going to do the academic portions. And then later we’re going to have like group, uh, when everything is more in control, we’ll have like a group practical time too. So, but yeah, we plan to put a lot of the modules. And so it’ll be like upper extremity, lower extremity, speech paralysis, uh, concussion, like, um, but the first one will probably be the base. We call it the, the, the classical, uh, points, or I actually caught them. They’re all flash. So, because I believe the Chenelle

Cocho points, everyone should know and know how to manipulate so that at least you have something in your toolbox, but yeah. So we’re going to have that coming up in 2021. So yeah, very excited. Thank you very much, Clayton. It’s been awesome talking to you and for our listeners, don’t forget to join us next week. We’re going to have another exciting show with my cohost, Virginia Doran. Thank you. And take care.

Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel (http://www.youtube.com/c/Acupuncturecouncil ) Follow us on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/acupuncturecouncil/), LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/american-acupuncture-council-information-network/) Periscope (https://www.pscp.tv/TopAcupuncture). Twitter (https://twitter.com/TopAcupuncture) If you have any questions about today’s show or want to know why the American Acupuncture Council is your best choice for malpractice insurance, call us at (800) 838-0383. or find out just how much you can save with AAC by visiting: https://acupuncturecouncil.com/acupuncture-malpractice-quick-quote/.

3 Critical Success Factors To Grow Your Acupuncture Practice Now

Hi folks. Welcome. Thank you for joining me here today. And thank you again for the American Acupuncture Council for inviting me back for yet another Wednesday training for you guys. I really enjoy doing this and showing up and sharing this information with you, especially since many of us have not had much marketing and business tools to help us build a solid business.

Click here to download the transcript.

So before I go further, I want to ask you a couple of questions and you can put your answers to the questions below. Where are you currently in your practice? Where are you going in your practice and what kind of roadblocks are you facing in your practice? Currently, I’ll check back at the comments towards the end. I’ll respond back to you, but I just kind of want to get a sense of where everyone is and what your concerns are. So today we’re going to talk about three success factors to grow your acupuncture practice now next month and beyond.

So the thing is, is that you, as an acupuncturist have so much expertise and the world absolutely needs you right now, probably more than ever before people are suffering and they’re looking for what you have to offer, but most likely people don’t actually know that you can help them with all of these amazing things that you can help them with. So I’m sure you would agree with me that acupuncture and most patients understand that you could help them with pain, right? This is the most widely known use of the medicine to help people alleviate pain. But what about everything else that we could do on noon, support, allergies, support, improving sleep, helping families make, you know, make babies up, reducing stress, alleviate all of those things that people are looking for, but maybe they don’t know that you could do that. So most people are looking for these kinds of solutions, but they don’t even know that you could be the go-to practitioner to help them with what you can.

So how do you make more people aware of what you do and how you, what you could help with? And part of this challenge is that you need to put on your business person cap and get out there and do the work of marketing your practice, especially in these times, especially in slow times, because if you’re not out there marketing and staying in top of mind, awareness with your patients and your prospects, someone else is. So it’s really important for you to figure out how to remain and maintain and get out there and be in top of mind awareness. When people think about allergies, they think about you. When they think about immunity, they think of B, they think about you and what we’ve been sharing all of this time, all of these weeks for the AAC are the different tools and tips and strategies to give you options and marketing strategies to grow and build your practice.

Um, but before we go any further, um, before we, you know, get into marketing, you need to know that your practice, your business needs to be rooted in a solid foundation of proper messaging, business modeling, service offerings, pricing, fees, and systems. And when you have all these things in place, you’ll stand out from the friendly neighborhood competition and position yourself as the go-to acupuncturist in your community. And that’s my assumption of what you want is to be the go-to practitioner in your community. So when people think about all of these things that, um, that are going wrong with them, you come to top of mind. So today what I want to do, I want to dip into some of the waters and talk about the three success factors to help you create a solid foundation to grow your practice. And these successful, these three success factors are clarity, focus and decisions.

Okay? And these are really important pieces to help support all aspects of your marketing, all aspects of your patient communication, all aspects of you being the business entrepreneurial acupuncturist that you are. I know you did not go to school to become a business person or an entrepreneur, but you are since you’re in private practice and you own a business and you are a business person, so you’ve got to embrace these ideas. Okay. And that’s what we’re here to share with you today. So clarity, okay. Clarity is getting really clear okay. On you, your practice and how you stand out, what makes you and your practice different? Okay. So you need to ask yourself these two questions. Who are you and what do you offer? And with that, what kind of transfer w can you cause to happen with a person’s health in their life, in, in the change that you are able to offer them in what you offer in your practice and why is what you offer different smarter, better than any competing clinic.

Okay. So that the first part of really identifying who you are is really understanding, getting clear on what makes you different. Okay. Now I hope that many of you have an idea of like, what makes you different from the practitioner down the street? If not, you need to get really clear on that, that this, this, this clarity portion really will allow you to identify this little piece of marketing wisdom, this little piece of practice knowledge that allows you to differentiate yourself from the next person down the street. So my question to you would be this, if you were to think about the acupuncturist down the street or the chiropractor that has an acupuncturist on board or the chiropractor that does acupuncture, how are you different? Do you offer a different specialty? Do you offer a pain-free technique? Do you offer pain-free acupuncture? Is your clinic beautifully inviting and Zen, like, and people just walk in there and they melt because of the atmosphere and the function way.

What is it that makes you and your practice different? Okay. So who are you and what do you offer as far as transformation so that you can cause in people’s lives and in their health. Okay. That is the first part of, one of these success factors is wrapping your head around this idea. The next idea is focused, right? The idea is to get laser focused on exactly who you serve and what problems you solve. Okay. I know many of us were trained to be general practitioners, and that’s amazing because we could help with so many different conditions. And that’s, what’s so beautiful about this medicine, but you’ve got to figure out who you serve and what’s unique about you and also what, what will resonate with your clients. Okay. So with this, you’ve got to really, you know, like in, come up with the idea of getting clear on the type of person that you want to work with by getting into the mind of your perfect client and find out what resonates with them.

So for instance, if you are a fertility clinic, what would resonate with those clients that you to attract, get it? How can you get into their mind to understand what they need, what their pain points are? What, what, what, what kind of transformation they are looking for? So you can offer that and that could be unique to what you offer in your clinic. Okay. So getting focused is really coming up with who do you serve? And I know that you want to serve everybody, but here’s the same. If you serve everybody is just like taking a big net and casting out over the waters of the population and hoping that you’re going to pull everyone in. But you know, you might pull a few people in, but what you want to do is you want to get really clear, really laser focus on the specific type of person you want to work with.

Okay. And, um, and then when you do that, you can, you can focus your marketing message. You can focus your communications, you can focus your website, you can focus your branding and all of that towards that. What’s unique about you and what resonates with your clients. And the other part of getting focused is what problems do you solve? Okay. And the key to understanding what problems you solve is to understand what your patients are thinking. Right? So they’re thinking w I F T okay. So they want to know what’s in it for them or for me as a patient. Okay. And they want to know what’s in it for them. Like, like, like if they come see you, what are they getting out of it? What kind of transformation is going to be happening? So part of your, um, expertise as a business entrepreneurial acupuncturist is really getting clear around the problems that you self.

Okay. And really being able to tell someone that in 30 seconds or less, like if you were trapped in the elevator, how can you communicate who you serve? What you, you know, uh, what problems you solve and who you are and what you offer, right? Those are the three things that are super important for you to begin this process of getting really clear on growing, you know, creating the solid foundation for your practice. Let’s say, so you have clarity, you have focused. And now the next thing to really come up with is decisions, right? And meaning what marketing tools do you use, where do you find your best prospects and your new patients, and how do you build your following? Okay. These are decisions that you’re going to be making. If you’re not making them already, or if you don’t make them, when are you going to make them, right?

When are you going to start embracing this idea that you’ve got to market your practice? You need to have a deep understanding of what your patients want. You need to have an understanding of what they need and what they value. Okay. You also need to develop content and communication strategies that address the things that keep them up at night. So for instance, let’s handle, let’s go back to that fertility issue. What keeps those families up at night that are looking to make a family and make babies, right? Maybe they am I going to get pregnant and am I going to be a good parent? Um, is birth going to be easy? Um, am I going to be, you know, am I going to keep, you know, keep the baby, uh, for full term, okay. Those are things that keep them up at night. And when you can come up with those ideas, when you can, you know, get into the mind of them and figure out what it is that resonates with them, right.

Um, in the sense of, um, uh, what’s on their mind, then you can talk to that with them. Then you can share that with them, even if they’re not expressing those problems and those things that keep them up at night. Okay. You need to ask yourself a couple of questions. How can you add value before money changes, hands and, um, with your patients? Okay. So how is it that you can add more value to your clients now to your prospects and your inactive patients now, before they come in and schedule them before they come in and, um, and, and, and, and, and become a paying patient with you. And that’s important because people want to see people that like stack on all of like, like, it’s like you, over-deliver right. How can you over-deliver for your patients in that way? You know, um, how can you make it so that your marketing, your efforts, your communication strategies leave them better off than when they first came to see you.

Um, and when you are teaching them, when you’re doing a webinar or a training or anything like that, how are you teaching and giving them actionable things to make their life better? Okay. You’ve got so many tools in your arsenal of, uh, of teaching ideas and potential that you should have no lab of what you could be sharing, how you could teach and give them actionable things to make their lives better. Acupressure techniques, breathing techniques, moving technique, different seasonal recipes and things of that nature. So part of the decision making is really coming clear as to, you know, understanding what your patients want, what they need and what they value. And talking to that for them coming up with ideas on how you can communicate to that, to them. So a couple, you know, like straight up marketing tools that you, that are hyper-relevant for, um, for, for what you, what you can be doing for your patients are to make sure that you have a really strong call to action to motivate your audience.

Okay. If you’re a fertility expert, what would make someone who’s looking to start a family, raise their hand and come into your clinic. If you are a pain specialist, what can you offer them that would make them raise their hand, to motivate them to come into your clinic? Every single communication you have, every single marketing you do. Every single event needs to have a really clear, strong call to action at the end, that gets people to raise their hands said, yes, you are the practitioner for me, because you resonate with me because you know what I want, because you’ve already done the work that we’re talking about here today. So that is one of the biggest and most important things about your marketing is making sure that you have a really good, clear, and solid call to action. And a few ways to find prospects are internally and externally, right?

And online. So internally you could be doing referral drives. Uh, you could make sure that your patient education strategies are really solid and, uh, make sure that you have a plan to keep, to nurture your patients. So they would fall out of care less. And if they do fall out of care, you need to have a plan to get them back into care. So that is, you know, a few really important internal marketing strategies that you need to tap into referral drives having a communication plan and having a patient reactivation plan three really important pieces of your internal marketing, external marketing content is King these days. And you need to be out there doing social media, doing video marketing is really important. And even these days direct mail marketing is actually gaining more traction because people, no one’s doing it anymore. Once everything’s online email and newsletters, everything is online, but when you can do direct mail marketing or send a letter or postcard in the mail, it’s actually touched, they open it up, they look at it.

So it’s actually been showing that, um, that, uh, that, that direct mail marketing is actually making a little bit of a comeback in some instances. Um, so with external marketing, make sure that you have a content calendar set up, that you can be out there and in front of your audience regularly, again, talking to them about what resonates them, talking to them in, in explaining, you know, through your content and your communications, what’s in it for them. Okay. So you can really get clear and focused on your communication patterns with them and online, make sure that, um, all of, you know, all leads are gonna be pointing to your website. So make sure that your website is really dialed in. And, uh, you know, when you come up with your clarity and your focus, you need to add all of that to your website. You need to make sure that you have a really strong call to action on there that, that, that, uh, communicates with what you’re, what you’re offering in there.

And when people hit your website, they to know exactly what you do and what you offer and what is what’s in it for them within the first few seconds of landing on that page. So your website needs to be checked out and audited. And, um, and if any of you are interested in audit, um, you know, check, uh, put some, put some, um, information below the video over here. And, um, I will reach out to you and, uh, you know, just let me know that you want a website audit and I will reach out to you and we’ll get something set up for you. So, um, you know, without clarity, without focus, without decisions, your marketing strategy is always changing. Your marketing tactics are scattered, and it’s going to be exhausting because you’re going to try something. It’s not going to work. Um, you’re going to, um, you know, you’re going to get disenchanted because you’ve done marketing.

You’ve put some efforts out there and you’re not getting the type of return on that investment. Um, and your results might be inconsistent and subpar. So focusing in on these foundations of clarity, focus and decisions will help you create a better strategy, you know, more effective tactics and, and give you some consistent, reliable, um, techniques that you could be using to pull patients into your practice. So decide who you are, who your practice is not for, which is important, because if you can identify who you, you know, who you don’t want in your practice, um, then you can really focus on, you want to focus on in your practice, who you want to fill your practice up. And then, you know, when you can, you can focus on their behaviors and their traits and their likes and dislikes. And you can pull in the type of people that you really resonate with, that you want to fill your practice of. And also the last thing I want to talk about is to really simplify what you do. So

Figure out what, what, what you offer, like

Really simplify what you offer as an acupuncturist. And also come up with an idea of when you’re asked at like a cocktail party or some type of event or a networking event, or if you’re doing anything online, you know, w w you know, how you help people, you need to get really clear on your message. You need to have some laser clarity on your mission, on who you serve and why people should choose you, and what’s in it for them. And lastly, I want you to think about these four questions that you can just go away with, um, and just ponder on. Um, and if you have any questions you can reach out to me, um, at, uh, Jeffrey, jeffrey@acupuncturemediaworks.com. Um, or you can put some comments below, uh, some comments below here, and now I’ll ask, ask them, but how do you stand out from the noise and get attention?

Okay, what makes you stand out? How do you leverage the season and create marketing campaigns to result in new patients, and how do you continue to grow your audience and deepen your relationships with them, and what creative ways can you use content to get clients? Okay. So those are just four things that you should be thinking about on a regular basis. These are questions that, um, CEOs ask themselves often. And I would want you to ask this of yourself because you are essentially a CEO of your own business. So I want to remind you that you’re never alone. I am here for you. If you’ve got any questions, please reach out. Thank you again for joining me. Thank you again for the AAC for hosting me once again, so I can share some insights and wisdom and some knowledge with you. Please let me know what your thoughts are. I talked to you guys soon. Take care. Be well. Bye. Bye.