May, 2008

The challenge of attending graduate school and starting a CA clinic while raising two young children has cultivated endless opportunities for me to let go, express gratitude, appreciate community, and step into the present moment.

I have been working on this urban / suburban gardening idea with a buddy of mine and came across these folks

Enjoy

http://www.communityrootsboulder.com/

So for anyone who hasn't been following the conversation over at Burton Kent's blog (http://www.acupunctureclinicmarketing.com/sanborn-maxim/#comments), it's gotten, um, "animated". Which I think is a good thing.

There is potentially a lot to say about all of it, but I want to use this post to focus on responding to a specific set of comments, and to reflect back on some of the issues that started this conversation in the first place.

First, to Jared: I'm sincerely glad you figured out what works for you in your practice. I think it's great that you love your patients and that you listened to them. The more people who get acupuncture, in whatever setting they get it, the better. And thank you for saying that you tried the community acupuncture model and it didn't work for you. People need to hear that.

I checked out the Acupuncturists Without Borders website
yesterday and I noticed that they are starting to focus more on giving free
treatments to veterans. There is a local
chapter in the Boston area (in Arlington) that I contacted to see if I could
do my part. I feel that this is
particularly relevant now because of a story I heard on NPR this morning where
an administrator VA hospital in Texas
sent out an email to her staff asking them to stop diagnosing PTSD, presumably
because of the cost of treating it. I am
convinced that Acupuncture is an effective, low cost solution to this problem. I am looking forward to getting involved and blogging about it!

I think a major drawback in my earlier (BA) practice was not having sufficient tools to help patients consistently from the initial visit.  Since learning from Dr. Richard Tan's 4 books ( I especially like "Acupuncture 1,2,3" , coming from a newbie to his style) and his online forum, I have surprisingly ceased to be amazed at the early improvements -- from the 1st visit, and now expect that so long as my diagnosis of the sick meridian(s) is/are correct and treat the clients accordingly, the results will be there.

This confidence in the effectiveness of the treatments makes a positive difference when talking to people about acupuncture.

I haven't had to bring up the topic of referrals with clients. Last week, after a client's 3rd treatment, she told me she had been talking to other parents at her son's school about acupuncture and that it really works. This was much appreciated, and she left with some flyers and bu cards.

Acupuncture Together is the name of my new clinic that opens next Tuesday, May 27th! Located in Cambridge, MA, I managed to get this clinic ready to go in less than 2 months - holy moly! The videos on this blog could be straight out of the TLC channel. When I left my last practice I had nothing except a big pile of furniture to keep (which was fortunate) and a lot of experience from already having started a practice, as well as my incredible gift of experience working at Manchester Acupuncture Studio for the last 7 months. I had to start over again from scratch, essentially, but this time with many more ideas and an ability to just surge ahead with my family backing me up and nothing else to really stop me.

Not long ago, an alert reader pointed out a conventional acupuncture marketing blog (www.acupunctureclinicmarketing.com) that had a link to CAN and to The Remedy. Wow, that’s interesting, I thought, and decided to check it out. In general I find marketing to be an intriguing topic, maybe because it reveals so much collective unconscious material with so little effort of examination:  new car = sex = power,  antibiotic spray = maternal love, allergy medication = a joyful life, etc. The revealed material might be appalling but it’s almost never boring. When it comes to  reading about acupuncture marketing, I usually learn something about how the acupuncture world sees itself and how it sees patients, which is almost always useful to me when I teach workshops.
 

Now this:

  http://www.adamkuby.com/Acupuncture.html

 is interesting.  Being an acupunk and an urban planner (I have TWO Master's degrees in science!) I'd love to know if there's any thought behind this statement:

"This project explores the junction between art, regional planning, the environment, asian medicine, and the health of a city." 

Anyone want to help me in understanding this? 

I went through the process of trying to lease a large space for 11-13 chairs again this year. I was after the same space as last year at this time.  Some things had changed.  My proposed business partner was different.  A massage/healing touch therapist is now renting space from me and sharing my office was coming along with us.  What was the same was my drive to get a big clinic, taking it on faith, and looking no farther, that a small clinic just wouldn’t do.

As the negotiations with the landlord through the RE agent started to feel bad (too hard to put this together – it should flow smoothly if it’s right) we all started to become more honest with ourselves and each other.

“…physicians should not rely on their own excellence, neither should they strive with their whole heart for material goods. On the contrary, they should develop an attitude of good will. If they move on the right path, concealed from the eyes of their contemporaries, they will receive great happiness as a reward without asking for it. The wealth of others should not be the reason to prescribe expensive and precious drugs, and thus make the access to help more difficult and underscore one’s own merits and abilities. Such conduct has to be regarded as contrary to the teaching of magnanimity. The object is help.”
-Sun Si Miao

I was in New York City earlier this week and when I went to the Metropolitian Museum of Art I discovered that they have a sliding scale.  I must have looked surprised when the woman told me because she said "That's just the way we do it here."  This sliding scale idea must be really catching on! 

It is only because of the sliding scale at my clinic that I can look a patient in the eye and tell them to come three times per week without feeling guilty about charging them more than most people can afford.  I was recently trying to explain the sliding scale to an acupuncturist with a boutique clinic and she said "But people would just always pay on the lowest end of the scale!"  That's not the reality though, especially when you help them get better!

Lately I have been a total slacker blogger by asking others to write stuff for me to post. And so I am at it again. This month I asked my fabulous business partner Pam Chang to write about her experiences of opening a new CA clinic as a newly licensed practitioner. Some of you know Pam's great article in Yes! magazine, but she is a pretty quiet person and doesn't usually post on CAN. I thought it was time folks got to know her better.

Just a few little numbers before I let Pam take the stage: we have been open for almost 8 weeks. We have given a total of 221 treatments. We made a profit in our first full month (April) and were able to pay ourselves a little bit. We are having a great time! - tatyana

ok, here's Pam's post:

On Opening Sarana Community Acupuncture
by Pamela O’Malley Chang, April 2008

After reading Nora's excellent post on Myth-busting for May Day, I started searching the Internet for a link that I wanted to add to the comments. It was from a site called "Payday", written by and for people working jobs such as baristas, food servers, etc, and it was titled: "Things you will hear if you try to talk about class". I think there were 25 things, and one of those things that was included three separate times in the list was "Why are you so angry?"  Since it applies to Nora's observation of how resistant people can be to talking about class at all, and since it has definitely been my experience that when I talk about class, I tend to get asked that exact question -- or its variation, as instruction, "you shouldn't be so angry" -- I really wanted to include the link! But I can't find it.

However, I did find this:

I thought it might be useful to talk about speaking since
this is something most of us need to do as part of our marketing plans. Most
people fear public speaking more than death itself. I have to admit I have an
active dislike for it. I just joined a group called Local Business Network that
meets twice a month. It is a networking group that actively seeks to get its
members referrals and part of your obligation as a member is to get up and
speak to your chapter members (about 15 to 20 people) and give a 60-second
presentation of you and your business. I hate to admit it, but I still get
palpitations as people are going around the room and it’s getting closer to my
turn to talk. I don’t usually hear what the 3 or 4 people are saying who go
before me because I am busy anticipating my own flummoxing and awkwardness. The
more meetings I go to, though, the less time I seem to be wasting being anxious

I want to talk a little bit, in honor of International Workers’ Day, about class and classism. I notice that every now and then, in the posts or in blog responses, that protests are raised in response to the idea of using class analysis as a lens. I’m actually really curious about the discomfort and distaste some people feel in response to the term “classism.” Since an analysis of classism was a major driving factor in the formation of the elegant solution that is laid out in “The Remedy,” I think it’s useful to revisit from time to time.

So today is the day that we give free acupuncture all day long in honor of International Workers' Day! I am delighted to report that all six of WCA's acupunks graciously agreed to work today (including Moses and Christine, who normally have Thursdays off) and as of last night, we had 98 patients scheduled for acupuncture today!  We're pretty confident that 2 more will probably drop in, and so we will reach our goal of treating 100 patients in a day for the first time ever!