Acupunks: Numbers and Earnings, Part 1

A couple days ago Lupine emailed me a link to a web-page that talked about what to expect if you wanted to become an acupuncturist. It included how many acupuncturists there are and expected income, both for a first year acupunk and five years out.

Needless to say we were surprised by some of the claims in part because they were different than what we were aware of from Acupuncture Today and Acufinder.com and in part because, well, they seemed preposterous. So I decided to look at the claimed numbers of the three sites and see what they actually meant.

Okay. Here's the first site that Lupine ran across:

http://www.healthcare-trainingcenter.com/jobs-acupuncturist.asp

So these folks say there are 10,512 acupunks nationwide (US) and they do between 9-12 million treatments yearly. This (the numbers of acupunks) differs than what Acupuncture Today uses when they try to attract advertisers: 16,105.

http://www.acupuncturetoday.com/list/info/aculocatorzip/

The nice thing about AT is that they break down their numbers by state. But how correct are they?

I also went to acufinder.com:

http://www.acufinder.com/Acupuncture+Faqs

There I found out that there are about 18,000 acupunks though only about 12,000 are "actively in practice". I also found there that a first year acupunk can expect to make $45K, a fifth year 100K, and $200-300K is not unrealistic for an acupunk with 10 years under their belt.

Well huh. Let's try to make sense of this information, shall we?

Before we do let me say that I did try to get in touch with the first two organizations above but I have yet to get a reply from either. I will keep trying and when I do hear I will post an update on a new blog. I haven't yet tried with acufinder but Lisa is telling me that that should not be much of a problem based on her experiences; she has found them responsive. (I can hear Lupine saying now, "But Skip, people [u]like[/u] Lisa. You on the other hand..." Okay I'm digressing.)

So let's take the first link, the Health Training-Center.com one. What I found after surfing for a half hour was that their numbers are actually from a 1993 FDA study and a WHO study. I don't have a link to either study but here's a link to an NIH report citing the studies:

http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/nov97/od-05.htm

Here's the relevant part:

"According to the World Health Organization, there are approximately 10,000 acupuncture specialists in the U.S., and an estimated 3,000 practicing acupuncturists are physicians. In 1993 the Food and Drug Administration reported that Americans were spending $500 million per year and making approximately 9 to 12 million patient visits for acupuncture treatments." (Well 1993 is ancient history in the US acupuncture world. Might as well have the citation be the freakin' Nei Jing...)

So back in '93 we see 10,512 acupunks, 9-12 million office visits, $500 million made. (Not sure if that's before or after taxes and expenses. My guess is before.) Another way to put this is that those 10,512 acupunks saw on average between 856-1142 offices visits yearly (17-23/week). With $500M collectively made in a year, that breaks down to charging between $41.67- $55.55 per visit.

At that rate the average yearly income of all acupunks was around $47,564.68- again before expenses I think.

Now if you are like me (and you haven't fallen asleep yet with this post) then you are thinking that talking about averages with acupunks is kinda silly given how great the spread is in income from punk to punk. We all know that first year acupunks have a hard time getting off the ground and we know of a few 'punks who make $200K+. Once you think of it just one of those $200K people can balance out over 4 $0 income punks to get that $47K average income figure. To go further with number of treatments, I, Skip, see over 856 patients (the low end of the average number of patients seen in a year) in 9 weeks so the few of us who see mega numbers of patients skew that average as well. To go further in the difficulty in using averages here, read again John Scott's article from last year in AT:

http://www.acupuncturetoday.com/mpacms/at/article.php?id=30400

John Scott, the head of Golden Flower Herbs, has been around forever. I think his numbers are on the conservative side, especially with student debt. I have also heard that the 50% 5-year failure rate might be as high as 80%, but as he implies there are no studies about this. (Why would anyone fund such a study?) Remember though the acufinder numbers of 18,000 licensed acupunks but only 12,000 actively practicing? In other words only 2/3rds of licensed 'punks are in business. I am guessing that a disproportionate number of those out of business folks are newly graduated.

At this point it would be nice to see yearly numbers of licensed acupunks but I have yet to find them from either acufinder or AT. If I do they will be in part 2 of this post.

A final couple of numbers before I go. The first of these numbers has been said by by a head of another herbal company based on talking to 'punks around the country. He thinks that the average acupunk sees around 12-14 patients a week. That's a bit lower than what the '93 averages. This might be a good guess on his part if you think of all those out of business or nearly out of business practitioners. On the other hand he talks to acupunks who aren't sure how to use his formulas which is more likely to happen to newbies rather than the $200K crowd.

The final figure is $90K. This figure was tossed out by the head of a prominent eastern acu college as to what his school's grads make on average. Do I want to partake in his Kool-aid? It would be nice to see some data behind that claim. Is he talking about all his grads or just the ones practicing?

As I say, this is just part one. For part two I want to get to the bottom of some of these claims. Until then if you could what do these numbers here say to you? Is there anything you want to know about that I haven't covered?