Top 10 Ways Chinese Medicine Can Help You, Part 2 by Brian B. Carter, MS, LAc

* It is supposed to be altruistic (selflessly concerned for others), but

* It is also a business (and thus vulnerable to selfish greed).

We could think of this as the yin and yang of the medical business.

Insurance Coverage for Acupuncture and Herbs

Some alternative medicine practitioners are happy to stay outside of the managed care system. It's valuable enough to patients to pay out of their own pockets. Increasingly, acupuncture is covered by insurance, HMO's and worker's compensation boards... sometimes the full cost of the treatment is covered and sometimes it isn't. Herbal medicine usually isn't covered... but patients are used to buying herbs and vitamins without reimbursement.

Lundberg suggests that:

* Proven preventive care should be financed by the government,

* Proven catastrophic care covered by insurance, and

* Everything else paid for out-of-pocket.

Grossing Gross Amounts of Money - Acupuncture Salaries

Regardless of who pays, acupuncturists can expect an annual gross salary of between $40,000 and$1,000,000. I just heard about a hospital position for an acupuncturist in Iowa that was paying $159 per hour (their medical doctor rate).

My wife made $100,000 her first year out of school. One acupuncturist here in San Diego grosses near $1,000,000 annually with worker's compensation cases only.

Right now in California, work-comp reimburses $120 per acupuncture treatment. Some acupuncturists see 4 patients per hour...

Let's do some quick math on an example. If you averaged $80 per treatment (which is achievable), saw 2 patients per hour, and worked 8 hours per day, 4 days per week (leaving a day or two to do paperwork), 48 weeks per year you could gross $245,760. If you spend 40% of your gross on overhead, you earn $147,456 before taxes.

What Makes for Making Money

How much you earn depends, as in all businesses, upon your resourcefulness, initiative, marketing savvy, and - most importantly - the quality of your service. As in all service businesses, you must be good at what you do.

The Freedom to Give

Making all that money frees us to be altruistic. A lot of volunteer care is given by acupuncturists. During "9/11,", New York students from the Pacific Institute of Chinese Medicine treated the firefighters. Likewise, students in San Diego from the Pacific College of Chinese Medicine treat Viet Nam veterans every year at a special gathering. Of dozens of services, the acupuncture is among the top 3 requested. You can take on a number of low or no-fee cases in your own practice. It's up to you.

#11 - There are so many options

It's a varied profession.

In California, acupuncturists are physicians and can be a patient's primary care practitioner - they are professionals on par with MD's, chiropractors, and psychologists. As an acupuncturist...

* You could work with an MD, DO, DC, psychologist, psychiatrist, or massage therapist.

* You can work in a high-class office wearing a suit. You could practice at home wearing your slippers.

* You could do all acupuncture, or all herbs, or both.

* You could treat just sports injuries, or workers compensation, or acupuncture face-lifts, or gynecology, or psychiatry, or do it all!

* There is room for new schools all over the U.S. - there are still states without any Chinese Medicine schools.

* You could practice in California (where 1/3 of us practice), or you could have an 'insta-practice' in many places all over the U.S. that don't have access to Chinese Medicine.

* You could teach or be a clinic supervisor at an established school.

* You could see loads of patients, or spend 2 hours with each one. One herbalist in China sees 80 patients per day. You have to be good to get herbs right- to get them right and see that many patients per day, you have to be stellar!

* You could create a business selling products to the 20,000 or so acupuncturists in the U.S. (even more internationally).

* You can write books and teach continuing education seminars.

There are so many options!

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BIO:

Acupuncturist, herbalist, and medical professor Brian B. Carter founded the alternative health megasite The Pulse of Oriental Medicine (http://www.PulseMed.org/). He is the author of the book "Powerful Body, Peaceful Mind: How to Heal Yourself with Foods, Herbs, and Acupressure" (November, 2004). Brian speaks on radio across the country, and has been quoted and interviewed by Real Simple, Glamour, and ESPN magazines.

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