Does scientific research support the beneficial effects of acupuncture for gastrointestinal diseases?
Acupuncture has been shown to decrease disease activity and inflammation, and has demonstrated beneficial roles for all factors that can significantly impact quality of life in patients with inflammatory bowel disease including:
the regulation of gut dysbiosis,
intestinal barrier function,
gut motor dysfunction, and
depression, anxiety,, and pain.
Many clinical trials have investigated the therapeutic effects of acupuncture in ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease; and the data from these trials are promising; however, more studies are needed.
Remember the American Acupuncture Council (AAC) offers an unparalleled track record in acupuncture risk management.
There is a reason acupuncturists have trusted AAC with their business for 50 years.
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Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors. Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.
Greetings to all my friends and colleagues. This is Sam Collins, the coding and billing expert for acupuncture for you, your practice, and of course for the American Acupuncture Council. Always wanna make sure that you’re getting paid correctly and to the fullest extent. To make sure that’s gonna happen.
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What is gonna happen coming up? Here’s a riddle. When do the 2026 diagnosis begin? When do they start? You may be thinking 2026 Sam. Not so fast my friends, the 2026 diagnosis codes will update October 1st. So let’s go to the slides. Let’s talk about what’s going on, obviously, and I hope that you’re aware that diagnosis codes, when they update and they update yearly, always update on October 1st.
In fact, right now is the 10 year anniversary of ICD 10, and so it’s exciting to think wow. It’s been 10 years, so I want everyone to recall. Remember when ICD 10 came, I CD 10 came about and people lost their mind thinking, what the world’s gonna go off? No, it was all fine. In fact, for acupuncturists, I’m excited because you are going to be getting something called ICD 11.
I’m hoping it’s implemented sooner than later because there’s gonna be specific coding directly for acupuncture providers. Are traditional medicine in their descriptions, so it means you’ll be able to code cheese, stagnations, different types of patterns and all other things related to traditional medicine, which just gives a little more granularity of severity.
We’re not there yet, but we’re getting close, so pay attention next year’s seminars. I will deal with that. However. Let’s talk about what’s going on now. I CD 10 for 2026. What has happened? As they do every single year. October 1st, there’s some new codes. This year is no different. In fact, there are now 74,719 diagnosis codes.
And you may think, oh my God, that’s a lot of codes. Are you ever gonna use those, all those codes? Of course not, no. DR. Will, however, realize, keep in mind, we do need to make sure if there’s changes, are there specific to codes we use By example, this year it’s a lot of new codes, 487 new codes. 28 codes were deleted and then 38 revisions, and you’re thinking, Ooh, let’s be careful.
I’m always going to be for you and for our profession, very acentric, I care about the things that are specific to what we do. So by example, let me show you just a little bit of a list of all the codes that have updated and you’ll see here, whoa, malignant inflammatory neoplasm of the breast. And of course these are codes.
You look at this and go Sam I don’t think I’d ever use those. And I would say, you’re probably correct. You can see here primary apraxia of speech, multiple sclerosis. Now, a patient with multiple sclerosis may indeed. Be a patient of yours, but are you treating the multiple sclerosis or treating the symptoms?
Multiple sclerosis would likely just be the comorbidity. So let’s get into what are we doing that is specific to what you do. Now, here’s an important code like last year. Remember if you look at, there were some new codes for disc for the lumbar spine, though they were important. I bet. How many of you used any of those codes this year?
Probably none, but these are some, I think you might. Some of you are probably in likely coding pain codes, specifically pelvic or peroneal pain. The old code is R 10.2, but let me be careful when I say old code. That means as of October 1st, so by example, if you’re treating someone in September or before for pelvic or peroneal pain, you will continue to code R 10.2 for any date of service that was in September or earlier.
Once the data service is after October 1st, then you may begin using the new codes and here they are. So the new codes just get a little bit more specificity. Of course, there’s just the generic unspecified, which is fine, but my hope is when someone has pelvic or peroneal pain, you can identify what part of the pelvis is it?
Is it on the right side? On the left side, is it on both sides or is it more in the pubic area? This allows you to have more specificity and realize pain is gonna be one of the more common things you’re paid for. Certainly this is gonna be one that you add into your arsenal. In addition, there was some deletions of other codes or a deletion of a code here.
Also, the contusion of an abdominal wall. And you might think come on Sam I’m not gonna deal with that. You might, particularly for those of you who deal with personal injury claims, it’s very common. To have injuries to the abdomen from the seatbelt. So now we’re gonna have three new codes, contusion of the abdominal wall.
Then more specifically to the groin and to the flank. So it allows you like if the seatbelt’s going lower across the chest. Now I do wanna highlight, I hope you’re all noticing, I’m only using the A designation for this sprain strain or contusion code that A is indicating the initial visit. And it also indicates all visits with active care, which means that’s the one you’re commonly gonna use.
However, let’s say someone had a contusion and it’s six months old. That’s when you would use the S or the sequelae where there’s residuals. I think the important thing here is just making sure if you have been, or thinking you may be using contusion based on trauma, it’s updated when it comes to abdominal.
Another update here is again, some common pain codes for abdominal pain. Now, there is a code still you can save from multiple sites, and they’ve always had the quadrants, but now they’re getting more to flank and it’s not pain. Notice it’s going to be tenderness. Part of it, but then you’ll notice there’s also codes specific to pain.
So what’s the difference? Tenderness means that upon palpation, it’s tender. Where is pain is whether you palpate or not. There’s pain. I’ve put a little chart here too of what each of those mean, but the point will be if you’re using codes for abdominal pain, there has been some updates. So make sure you update your list.
This is again, those ones for the contusion. Make sure you’ve updated those again, contusions happen. And keep in mind, there’s some other ones. You’re gonna go well. Sam, I don’t know if I use this one. I doubt it. And here’s my point. Sometimes codes update of varus deformity or myositis. O Ossific hands.
Think of it. If someone has myositis o ossific hands in the upper shoulder, which means that’s the bone. What’s gonna be their symptom pain in the upper arm? So that’s probably the more likely code. The same would apply with cost of vertebral tenderness. If someone has cost of vertebral tenderness, that’s a symptom.
What is that probably gonna mean? Cost of vertebral is part of thoracic spine. I would argue that’s gonna be M 54 6. So keep in mind, it’s always nothing wrong with being specific to your profession because by example, I brought up the one for multiple sclerosis already. But are we gonna treat that directly?
There is a bunch of new codes. Are those gonna be ones you commonly use? I do not think so. So what I’m gonna say is just be conscientious of diagnosis, severity, specificity. Don’t throw spaghetti at the wall and do all types of codes. One of the things that I focus on at our seminars and with my network members is making sure you’re using the codes that are payable by insurance.
So network members expect from me, you’re gonna get a nice list because the best practice of coding. Is always gonna be giving me something about the pain, the symptoms, the signs, and there’s other codes that have within that. But what do each one pay? Get that list. That’s one for Aetna, for Cigna, what I’m gonna say is.
Let me be your advocate. Help me help you. We not only do programs like this for you that don’t cost anything, but we also do tons of seminars and other one-on-one with you to make sure your office is up to date. Again, network members expect from me, you’re getting your email with all the updates for everyone else.
I hope you be part. In fact, if you look coming this Saturday, or excuse me, Sunday for acupuncture, we’ll be doing a whole coding and update seminar. But until then, fr friends, I wish you well and see you next time.
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What does research say about the long-term effects of true acupuncture compared with sham acupuncture?
Included in the study were 249 participants with migraine without aura, occurring 2 to 8 times per month.
The true acupuncture and sham acupuncture groups received treatment 5 days per week for 4 weeks for a total of 20 sessions.
The study concluded that among patients with migraine without aura, true acupuncture may be associated with long-term reduction in migraine recurrence compared with sham acupuncture.
Remember, the American Acupuncture Council (AAC) offers an unparalleled track record in acupuncture risk management.
There is a reason acupuncturists have trusted AAC with their business for 50 years.
Not an American Acupuncture Council member? Get a Quick Quote and find out how much you will save! Click here!
Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.
Hi there. My name is Michelle Grasek. I’m an acupuncturist and the host of the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast. And today we’ll be talking about tips for getting more reviews so that you can get more patients. And before we dive in, I’d like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for the opportunity to be here with you today.
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Alright, let’s get into the slides. Okay. I wanted to talk a little bit about why testimonials are so effective, and I know that everyone is aware of why reviews and testimonials work so well, because we’re all using them in our everyday life pretty regularly. But I think that in terms of being motivated to actually request patient reviews on a regular basis.
Which is what is needed to really build up your review numbers. I think it helps to dig in a little bit into the background and the, shall we say, the psychology of reviews so that we really understand why we’re doing what we’re doing. So I really wanted to call this social proof. Actually works. Get more reviews so you can get more patients.
Okay. Because social proof is incredibly powerful, especially in the digital world where we are buying things without seeing them and without knowing people. Okay, so we are relying really heavily on the people of the internet to give us their buying advice, and these are total strangers whose advice we actually take very seriously.
So what is social proof if you’re not familiar with this concept? Social proof is whenever people look at what others are doing or have done to ensure that we are also doing something appropriate or. Making a good financial decision. Think about, a long time ago when we were let’s start over.
Hi there. My name is Michelle Grasek, and I’m an acupuncturist and the host of the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast. And today we’ll be talking about how to get more reviews so that you can get more patients. And before we dive in, I’d like to take a moment to thank the American Acupuncture Council for the opportunity to be here with you today.
And let’s jump into the slides. Okay. I wanna talk a little bit about why reviews are so effective from the standpoint of the psychology of social proof. I know that we all really understand why reviews are effective, right? Because we are using reviews ourselves in our everyday life, constantly. I bet it’s pretty rare for you to buy something without first.
Googling it to see if you can find any reviews about it. It depends on what it is, but by and large, we are all aware of the ways that we really rely on reviews for making purchasing decisions. And social proof is this fascinating concept because when we are reading reviews, they’re from total strangers, right?
If we are buying something or signing up for a service. Kind of sight unseen, right? Like we’ve never seen the product in person. We don’t get to try it on before we purchase it like we would in a store. We don’t know the person whose service we’re buying. And so we are relying really heavily on information and advice from the people of the internet to help us make these decisions.
And that is rooted in this psychology concept of social proof, which is this phenomena where if we are making a decision, especially if we’re uncertain about a decision, we look to the experience. Or the activity of other people to confirm that what we are choosing is a good choice, that it’s a sound financial choice, that it is going to be a safe choice.
If you think about way back in the day, let’s say we are cave people and. You notice in a group that people are looking up at the sky, all of a sudden, what is your immediate visceral reaction? You look up at the sky. Why are we doing that? Because this is a, so a form of social proof, right? This is built into us as social animals.
We are looking to see what is everyone looking at in case it is dangerous. And maybe I shouldn’t say it’s a form of social proof, but that’s what social proof is rooted in this really ingrained need as humans, as social animals to check with what? Everybody else is doing in order to stay safe. And of course, now when we’re talking about safety, we’re really talking about making good financial decisions, not making like a big financial mistake and buying a product online or signing up for a service that really turns out to be a dud.
Okay. And I think it’s important to talk about this kind of thing because when we’re doing marketing, I find with my students that the more we understand the background and the psychology behind what we’re being asked to do, the more likely we are to feel motivated to actually do the strategy and do it consistently.
At least I know that when I know why I’m being asked to do something, I’m much more likely to do it. To do it well, and to do it consistently. Okay? So that’s why I like to cover this concept of social proof that reviews are rooted in because they are an enormous decision-making factor. For whether people choose us and our practice or choose someone else, and we just cannot underestimate that, especially because, as I said, it is simply ingrained in us as humans to double check what others are doing for our safety to make good decisions.
Okay? We really can’t escape that as humans. Very difficult. So we have to capitalize on that. We might as well use that natural inclination to our advantage. And collecting reviews in a systematic way is one of the best ways that we can use social proof to our advantage, to build our business and to convince p people to choose us instead of the acupuncturist down the road.
Okay and again, this is obvious, right? Potential patients are more likely to trust us and choose us if they can read about other people’s positive experiences with us, even if those people are strangers, it doesn’t matter. A couple other examples of social proof just in case you’re not familiar with this concept, although you probably are testimonials and reviews, of course, we’re at the top of this list.
But any public endorsements or community awards that you’ve received? Of course, word of mouth and personal recommendations are a type of social proof sharing case studies or success stories. These are clearly very similar to testimonials on social media, the number of people who are following you, or the amount of engagement that you’re getting, the number of likes that you get on your post.
All of that is. Different types of social proof user generated content on social media or even user generated content on your Google business profile where, for example, someone leaves you a review and they also leave a photo with their review. Okay. That’s user generated content. That is a very powerful form of social proof because they’re taking this extra step and making extra effort to share something else.
On top of just their written review, or let’s say that someone visits your office and they take a picture and then they put it on their Instagram story and they tag you, that’s user generated content and that really builds trust in a big way. And remember that something that we are trying to do in marketing always is to build up enough trust.
With the people in our community who are very likely strangers, they don’t know us, we don’t know them. We’re trying to build up enough trust that they feel safe, making an appointment, making a financial investment, sharing their personal health information, having sharp objects put in them. Okay? So a lot of what we’re doing is about building trust, and that is especially true with social proof.
It builds trust rapidly. Okay. You could also think of social proof as, aggregated numbers, things like, 10,000 total patients treated, if you’ve been in business for 10 years or something like that, or trusted by X, Y, Z community members. And that’s not really a metric that a lot of acupuncturists use, but it is one that you will see used in a lot of different types of marketing in different industries.
Okay, so there’s many examples here. And I really just want you to think of reviews as a tool in your toolkit for helping build trust and credibility. And I mentioned this already, but you are, you know how powerful these are because you probably always use review, like read reviews before you decide to buy something, or if you were gonna go to a new massage therapist or pt.
It’s almost a guarantee that you’re gonna look them up online and look for reviews before you make an appointment. Okay. It’s no surprise, however, so the surprise here is that a lot of people, a lot of acupuncturists assume that if they do a good job and their patients are happy, that eventually patients will leave a review for them.
And I have been teaching marketing in our industry for 11 years and. That just is not the case. By and large. Most people are not going to leave a review without being asked, even if they are really happy with the service. It just is not something people think about. They’re not thinking about us in their business.
They’re thinking about how much better they feel and then they go about their life. They’re only going to think about us and our business if we ask them to. Okay, so you must ask if you really want to grow your reviews so that you become the obvious choice when someone is Googling acupuncture near me, and you really wanna stand out.
You have to ask people consistently for reviews. Okay. And once you ask, most people are actually very supportive. They’re very happy to leave you a review. It’s just that we cannot ask them to do our job for us. We cannot expect them to do it without the request. So I think that there is, there’s a variety of ways that you can ask for reviews and they’re all likely effective to some degree.
What I have seen be most effective in the past 11 years is when you send. An individual personal email to the patient asking them for a review. And it comes from you as the provider, as the acupuncturist, and not from, for example, your receptionist or your office manager or another acupuncturist in your practice, like maybe their job is marketing, but.
And they’re sending out these review requests on behalf of the other acupuncturists in the practice. It is so much more effective when you as the patient’s provider, make the request. Okay? And this doesn’t mean that you can’t use a testimonial. It doesn’t have to be a super personalized email, but you just want to ask them, will you leave a review for me?
Okay. Because they have a relationship with you, and that just makes them much more likely. To actually do the thing and give you a review. And then the second thing that makes a request incredibly effective, and I would never leave this out, is to include a direct link to the section of your Google Business profile where it’s on the page where they can leave a review, right?
So if you click around on your Google Business profile, you can click reviews, and then you can click leave a review, and then you can. Click on the URL, the webpage for that and copy and paste. You can also, if you’re signed into your Google Business profile account as the business owner, you can click on, get more reviews, and it will offer you a short code link that goes directly to that page where it has the five stars, and all they have to do is click the number of stars and leave the review.
So why am I harping on this so much? Because a lot of people will ask a patient either verbally or over email and say, will you, would you be willing to leave me a review? And the patient says yes, and then they’re just letting the patient figure it out. It is so unlikely that people are gonna remember to look up your Google business profile ’cause they literally have to Google you and find your profile and then click around and realize oh, this is how I leave a review in the digital world.
We need to give people as many shortcuts as we can. We cannot expect them to look these things up themselves. They are just gonna get lost on the internet. It. It just get distracted. Really. I’m not saying that people aren’t smart and they can’t figure it out. It’s just if you want this to get done, you need to give them the link, the direct link to your review page on your Google Business profile.
Okay? It’s very important to include that. So here’s the strategy that I recommend to my marketing clients and my marketing students. So on your. In your EHR, like actually inside your patient scheduling system, block off time every four to six weeks. Set aside an hour where you are going to look back at the happy patients from the past four to six weeks so that you can select who am I going to send one of these email requests to?
And I encourage you to put this in your patient calendar. And give it the same amount of importance that you would for a patient, right? Don’t bump this so that you can fill it with a patient. Maintain it with the same level of importance as you would for a person who’s coming to your office, because this is the number one thing that I find happens to people is they put a marketing activity on their calendar and then someone says, oh, can I have Mondays at two o’clock?
And they immediately bump the marketing activity and they say I’ll do that another time. And they never put it back on their calendar. Okay, so long story short. Put it on your calendar, give it the same importance and permanence as a patient appointment, and then look back over the past, we’ll say six, even eight weeks, and ask yourself, who are the newer patients that I’ve had who’ve now seen me four to eight times, who are pretty consistently happy with their results?
And you’re gonna know, right? You always know when someone is. Having a great experience. So look for people who you think would give you a five star review naturally, and then email them and you can use the template. So here’s roughly the template that I recommend, hi Jane. I meant to ask you at your last appointment, but I forgot.
Would you mind? Leaving a review for me on the Ageless Acupuncture Google Business page on my Google Business profile. These reviews are really helpful. They help new people find me and trust acupuncture. If you’re comfortable leaving a review, here is the link directly to the review page, and I like to offer people an out ’cause.
Not everyone is comfortable. Making these statements online. So that’s exactly what I tell people to say. So the next part of the email can simply say, if you are not comfortable with it, no worries at all. I understand not everyone is comfortable making public statements online. No pressure. And then, thank you so much.
And then your name. And obviously you’d wanna massage it a little bit. I think I was repetitive in my word usage there, but you get the idea, right? You are helping them understand how helpful this is to you and your business and how it’s gonna help future patients find and trust you. You give them the link and then you give them an out in case they’re not comfortable with it.
So a lot of people will email you back and say, yes, I’d be thrilled to give you a review, and then they won’t do it. They just forget. Okay. So I recommend giving them like two weeks and then following up and saying, there’s two ways to do this. One is if they didn’t respond, you could just send them another message and say, Hey, I don’t know if you got my previous email about leaving a review.
That email is below or you can repeat yourself. And then if they said yes, but they haven’t done it, you could just reach out and say. I just wanted to check in and see if you’re still interested in leaving me a review. You mentioned that you might be interested. Here’s the link.
Okay. So you’re not bothering them if you follow up now, if they don’t do it after you’ve emailed them twice. For me personally in my practice, I tend to leave them alone in case they’re non-answer is a way of saying that they’re not comfortable doing it. But that’s the strategy that I recommend for my students.
And I think it’s perfectly fine if you are just getting started in this process of building up your reviews to go way back in the history of your practice. You can even go a couple years back and think about the patients who are like your star patients. They really stood out for you, even if they’re not actively seeing you anymore.
It is totally fine. Especially if you had a really great rapport, you had a relationship with them. It’s fine to message them and explain what you’re doing. Say, I’m trying to build up my reviews to help more people trust me and to try acupuncture. And if you’re interested, et cetera, you can leave a review.
Here’s the link. Okay? Because really what you wanna do here is make as many requests as you can from people who were really enthusiastic. And if you have to go back in the history of your practice to do that’s okay because. It, this is a numbers game, right? If you ask 10 people, four or five, we’ll probably actually leave the review.
So the more people you can ask, the faster your numbers will build, obviously, right? But think of it as a numbers game where a certain amount of people are just not gonna respond, and that’s okay. The more you ask, the better you’ll do. And I really have seen this work so many times that if you simply start asking people regularly to leave you reviews, you are very quickly going to outpace all of the other acupuncturists near you who are doing nothing.
Okay? They are waiting for their patients to do their job for them and to just think of me in my business and leave me a review. It just. So unlikely. It’s just very uncommon. Okay? If you wanna approach this as a marketing strategy, you have to you have to do the asking, right? You have to bring that young energy and be the first person to take an action and make a request.
And as I said. So many times now, patients are very happy to leave your review. In general, they just have to be asked. So if you are doing this, let’s say every six weeks, you are reviewing the new patients that you’ve had over that timeframe, and you’re sending out, three to five requests, you are gonna consistently grow your numbers.
And again, you’re gonna quickly outpace the people who are doing nothing. Okay, so a few other ideas for how to use reviews once you’ve got them. I recommend copying and pasting reviews onto different pages of your website because there are a lot of great keywords that your patients are using in their reviews that other people might be searching for.
Things like knee pain, neck pain, et cetera. Okay, incorporating reviews on your website can be great for your SEO. You could add a different testimonial. At the bottom of each email newsletter that you send. You could just say something like, feedback from a happy patient, copy and paste. If you are creating your reviews or.
Sorry. If you are creating brochures for your practice, I would recommend putting a couple reviews on there. And you can also say, if you hit a significant number of reviews, you can put on your website, on your brochure, even in your social media bio. You can say. Over 55 star reviews or whatever it is.
Okay? That’s a form of social proof, right? That accumulation of positive feedback from the people of the internet. Okay, so just some. Extra ideas for how to really maximize on the reviews that you get once you’ve put in the effort to ask for them. So a again, just this whole presentation is just a quick reminder to take a look back at your recent happy patients and I encourage you to pick.
10 of them. Send your review request. Include that direct link and follow up with them at least one time and just see what happens. Okay? So of course if you have questions, please feel free to send me an email, michelle@michelleGrasek.com. You can check out my website for free resources. Free PDAs, marketing checklists, et cetera.
And before I sign off today, I’d like to thank the American Acupuncture Council one more time for the opportunity to be here with you and to talk about these really important concepts for growing your practice.
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Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.
Hi everybody. This is Perry Barnhill with the Fearless Acupuncturist. Good morning to you, or good afternoon, whatever it may be. Today we want to give a big thanks to the American Acupuncture Council for sponsoring this video that we’re about to show you in regards to ransomware. Next slide, please.
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Again, a big thank you to the American Acupuncture Council for sponsoring this. All right, here we go, everybody. Ransomware, you’ve heard about this. You’ve probably heard TV shows talking about it in regards to the computer things that happen, and it’s not if it’s going to happen to you. It’s when, so what I wanna talk about today is how do you plan for it?
How do you prepare and how do you protect yourselves if these things happen or maybe when these things happen? Myself again, Perry Barnhill. Julie McLaughlin in the background as always, much help. We are here as healthcare providers just like you with certifications in compliance and hipaa. Okay, so ransomware, let me just take a moment.
I want to share a story with you. This is an actual event of what happened. Now, it’s a hospital situation, but these things happen in private practices. All right? So keep that in mind. They happen often, unfortunately, so I’ll just go over this little story with you. It was approaching midnight on Sunday and the head of an IT person at Florida.
The hospital had a problem. The emergency room of this 100 bed facility called to report that it couldn’t connect to the charting system that the doctors and providers were using to look up the patient’s medical histories. So a Florida hospital IT director soon realized that the charting software, which was maintained by an outside vendor, was infected with ransomware and that he didn’t have much time to keep the computer virus from spreading.
So guess what? The hospital shut down his computer system. On his advice, and here’s what he said. He said, if we hadn’t stopped, it would’ve probably spread throughout the entire hospital. And what had to happen was the hospital had to revert back to their paper records, which I know a lot of offices have paper records.
But this is all applicable because not if you just have paper records. You generally, and almost always have at least something regarding the patient in your computer. So even if you’re just using paper charts, you still have patient’s financial information in the computers, a lot of times you have their histories in their computer.
In the computer all the time. Something’s there. So if the computer gets infected by ransomware, they can access that and they can hold it for ransom. So what is ransom, or at least what do most of us think ransomware is? It’s extortion software and it locks your computer and then they ask money for it, or they ask a ransom for it.
So in simple terms, what happens is the malware gains access to device, your, to your device, the computers, and depending on the type of ransomware, either your entire system, your entire operating system. Or individual files are encrypted, and then what they do, these cyber crooks, they demand a ransom from you or sometimes even the victims from patients.
So just some simple facts with ransomware. I think a lot of us are aware of these things. Basically, they can massively impact your practice. One little ransomware effect can cause chaos in our practices. In some cases, these ransomware, these cyber criminals can demand excess of a thousand, or rather, I wish only a thousand, but million dollars so that you can get this information back.
Now, that doesn’t mean you pay, okay, I’m not saying that, but let me do this first. Let’s go over a quiz and just go through this. So is this true or false? According to an IBM report in 20, in 2022, do you think the frequency of ransom breaches has increased from previous rare years? True or false?
I bet you know the answer. It’s definitely true. Most of us realize that these computer, these hackers these cyber criminals are creating more problems for us as time goes on. Yeah, 7.8 in percent breaches in 2021, and then 11% in 2022, and it continues to increase each year. How about this one, the impacts.
Ransom of a ransomware attack can be crippling to include monetary, permanent closures of especially smaller organizations like our offices. They delete files, they even patient procedures and testing can be canceled, so what can you, as an individual office or provider do to help these things or prevent these things from happening?
A. Participate and complete any required training. B, ensure your network security is in place. C have your IT administrator or your computer person contact information easily accessible, or is it all the above? Yeah it’s definitely all the above. Each of us. Each of those things we have to do, they play a critical role in patient care and patient safety.
Remember, cybersecurity it is patient safety and together we can protect our practices and the patient data we are entrusted to secure. So how can ransomware impact us as providers? This is a big one. This is massive. Monetary impacts the amount of money we’ll have to pay, one to resolve these things.
Two, maybe the fines and penalties that could come as a result of it. If we don’t have our HIPAA policies and procedures in place impact to our organization. Sometimes depending on the type of breaches that happen or the amount of breach that’s affected, we have to report these things publicly.
To disclose to the public that we had a breach in our office. So it really can affect our reputation. It can close our organization or close our offices, especially smaller ones. Deleted files, or you completely have lost them. Delayed patient canceled care. When systems shut down, it can potentially cripple your networks and forcing manual transactions where possible, and it really can cause havoc in our offices.
So these are reasons why you wanna make sure you protect your patient’s health information. So what’s the best defense? Usually the best defense is a good offense. Most ransom attacks are sent in phishing campaign emails. We just did a, we did a class on this. We did a video on this. One of the last times that we did for this.
Regarding phishing and phishing campaign emails, so make sure you watch that if you haven’t. Staying alert when any email asks you to enter your credentials. You have to be extremely careful when emails are sent, making sure you know exactly where they’re sent from, or at least you know it’s a trusted source.
The next one here, installing updates. Whenever you’re prompted to do you have to do these things. ’cause if you don’t and you have a breach, guess what? You’re in trouble and you’re liable. Does your practice have an incident response plan? According to hipaa, and according to all the rules, we have to have an incident response plan.
Meaning if something happens, this is exactly what we do. Do you have training you should be aware of to understand your practice’s security policy? Is there training that you have because you have to have training. This is all part of the HIPAA policies and procedures. You have to have training, you have to be able to document that training as well.
And also, if these things happen, do you have an emergency contact list in order to help resolve these things in order to help get the files back if needed? Some of the resources, a lot of people like to see where the resources come from. They come from the Office of Civil Rights, and if you didn’t know, so the Office of Civil Rights or the OCR, they’re basically the police of hipaa.
These are the folks we don’t want knocking on our doors if something happens. So what are some next steps? What are some things that you can do? One of the things that we talked about is you can download this HIPAA compliance checklist. Click the QR code. You’ll get it that way. Go through these questions, go through these statements and these bullet points.
If you can’t answer, if you can’t say that you’re doing each and every single one of them, not just nine outta 10, for example, you have to do each and every one of them to become HIPAA compliant. So make sure you go through this. If not, we certainly can help you with that. If you have any questions, we are more than happy.
To answer your questions. If you’d like to schedule a demo or just get started with it, just a couple things you can do here. You can scan that QRR code or you can schedule demo. Just go like it says right here to go do fearless provider.com/demo. If you wanna just get started, go to www.fearlessacupuncturist.com.
Or you can contact myself at Dr. perry@betterhipaablueprint.com. You can also talk contact Dr. Julie as well at Dr. julie@betterhipaablueprint.com. I want to thank everybody for attending this program and want to give a big thanks to the American Acupuncture Council for Sponsors. Again, this is Perry Barnhill with the Fearless Acupuncturists and everybody have an amazing day.
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