For Sale: Community Acupuncture Starter Kit

If you’ve been reading the posts and blogs on this site, you know by now that no acupuncturist is an island, that trying to do it all alone is a sure path to burnout and that we need each other. Furthermore, with Community Acupuncture fees as low as they are, most offices need more than one working acupuncturist to offset operating expenses and make the business viable.

If you have a Community Acupuncture clinic (like I do) and you don’t have a business partner, you’re going to be looking to hire one or more acupuncturists to work in your clinic. There are at least three Community Acupuncture clinics in New England in this position right now. We don’t have big budgets. We can’t offer anybody $40,000 a year to start and a 401K. (Then again, nobody offered us that, either). We can’t offer a full time position. (Need I mention the years it took to make my current job full time?). So what can we offer?

A starter kit: Everything you need to know to do Community Acupuncture. The lucky folks who decide to come and work for us can expect to gain the following:

1) Experience. Lots of experience, treating lots of patients, most of whom are willing to follow through on a treatment plan.

2) Training in distal point treatment styles. Once you’ve been treating 50-60 people a week for six to twelve months, you’ve developed at least a few distal point treatment systems that work, and can be implemented quickly. Whether it’s Dr. Tan, Master Tung, Jingei Pulse taking or Miriam Lee, we have boatloads of treatment ideas that we’ve found effective to share with you

3)Structure. A close up look at clinic structure, as it evolves and grows. Clinics that were early adopters of the Community Acupuncture model are now hiring office managers, designing volunteer programs, finding ways to build alliances with various groups in our communities, and generally building practices that can offer the acupuncturists enough support to stay fresh, focused and happy. Think you might want your own Community Acupuncture clinic some day? Structure might be a valuable thing to learn about first hand.

4) Room to grow. These jobs may start out very part time, just a couple of days a week, but it’s unlikely they’ll stay that way. Treat some people, get them feeling better, they’ll send in their family, friends and co-workers. Affordable acupuncture grows fast. If that weren’t true, we wouldn’t be hiring.

5) Sisterhood. This one is my favorite, though it may not be for everyone. Learn in one of our clinics, and when you’re ready, start a sister clinic in a neighborhood across town or 10+ miles in any direction. People know people, across town and across the county. Two clinics grow each other’s numbers exponentially. They also offer lots of opportunities to collaborate —- on marketing, hiring, you name it. While your new clinic is getting up to speed, treat two days a week in mine. When your new clinic is ready to hire help, hire someone jointly with your previous clinic. Share a human resources coordinator with one or more other clinics, or an office manager. Run ads that feature all the Community Acupuncture clinics in the area. Give out each other’s promotional material. Avoid the impulse to “go it alone”. You get the idea.

As compelling as these starter kits sound, they will require something. At the moment, they require an acupuncturist (you?) to take a chance on part time employment. They probably require them to relocate, as only so many of us can practice in towns with acupuncture schools. They might temporarily require a non-acupuncture part time job to pay living expenses. They may initially pay less than you desire.

To me, that still looks like a bargain. It is my hope that it will look that way to enough of you, the acupuncturists not yet working for or running Community Acupuncture clinics, for us to have a sustainable revolution on our hands.