New England Conference = New Revolutionaries

Some remarkable Lic. Acupuncturists here in the Northeast are gearing up to launch Community Acupuncture (C.A.) clinics. I know this because I had the great pleasure to work with 20 of them at our first ever two day East Coast conference and training Nov 10 &11, here on Cape Cod.

So what was it like? Thrilling, moving, supportive, inspiring, amazing. Cris Montiero, Andrew Wegman and I met while attending our first Community Acupuncture conference just over a year ago in Portland. Now here we were offering our own version. In the 12 months between, we’d each launched or grown our Community practice, rented space (or enlarged it), hired staff and volunteers, given and received tons of on-line support, and basically lived and breathed this movement, sometimes trying the patience of our partners and spouses with endless, C.A.-focused conversations. Most importantly, we had given, between us, thousands of community-style acupuncture treatments. We knew this business plan worked, and we were ready to help this new group of acupuncture revolutionaries figure out how to make it work for them.

We’ve gotten a number of cards and emails in the days since, letting us know how much folks learned, how much they enjoyed it, and how grateful they are that we offered this training. But most surprising to me was what I learned. Firstly, that I know what I’m doing (and apparently, can describe it for hours on end with hardly the need to draw a breath). Secondly, that the feelings that drove me to find, and adopt, this new practice style, are very common. Foremost among them is frustration with a system that sets us up to struggle, and perhaps fail, not because people can’t benefit from our skills, or because no one “values” our medicine, but because we were never given a model for success: a model that creates access to these skills for the majority of people in our communities. Right up there with frustration is isolation, because nobody is talking about what’s really going on in their practice. If you are struggling to stay in practice and everyone around you is silent, it is easy to assume they’re all doing fine, and that somehow you are deficient, or lacking in some key acupuncture or business skill. Alongside all this is a need to be useful, to be busy. We didn’t spend three plus years studying acupuncture because we wanted to treat 10 or 12 people a week.

It is thrilling to see new folks grapple with the possibilities of Community Acupuncture. It is rewarding to hear the way many of these folks have managed to make a difference within existing systems, and how many of them are changing institutions and structures from the inside out. And it was moving to see and feel them “take” to having actual community with their colleagues, based on mutual respect and desire for mutual success as C.A. practitioners. Andy, Cris and I told them that if they felt encouraged by the support they’d gotten during the weekend, they needed only to tap into this network to feel that same support, all year long. We hope all of you will second that, and reach out to our newest enthusiasts as you did to us.

On an absolutely related note, I have now been mucking around in this practice model long enough to figure out the obvious. Making a C.A. practice work financially is all about volume, and volume requires that maximum number of folks can access your clinic. Access, in many ways, = affordable. So I’ve just launched a 3 month “experiment” that I hope and expect will be permanent, that of expanding our clinic’s sliding scale. The old version was $25-$40—the new version will be $15 to $40. What I realize now that I have another acupuncturist working with me is that costs for running the clinic are almost the same whether we treat 40 people a week between us or 100 people a week. We are about to hit our two year anniversary as a C.A. clinic. In some parts of the country, folks who started three to six months ago are treating more people than we are. While it may not be helpful to compare little West Dennis, Massachusetts with the wider, C.A. world , when I talk to these folks directly, I find that the $15 and $20 treatments are making it happen for them, boosting their numbers considerably. I will report back on my experiment here, for those of you who are feeling like you can’t “afford” to set your sliding scale this broadly. It may well be that what works better for patients also works better, financially, for me.