The Acupuncture Poll question for November 2002 was:
"What percentage of your practice consists of cash-paying patients who are not covered by insurance?"
Results:
These results are based upon 179 responses. As this is a voluntary, non-scientific survey, caution should be used in generalizing the results. Here is a sample of the comments made by those who took the survey and how they voted:
0-25%: I treat auto accident and HMO patients only, working in a large multispecialty clinic, and see an average of 80-90 patients a week. My referrals from the MDs in our clinic are increasing every week due to the growing interest in acupuncture/herbal medicine in the elderly population.
26-50%: Less than half of patients can't get any reimbursement for acupuncture mostly due to Medicare guidelines. Patients with coverage are more likely to continue care after initial symptoms are resolved.
For more information on the Acupuncture Poll, contact Acupuncture Today at editorial@acupuncturetoday.com.
Chronic pain afflicts over 20% of the adult population. Sadly, most MDs have essentially no education in treating pain, beyond offering a few toxic medications. Then they tend to steer people with pain away from those health practitioners who are trained. This puts the acupuncture community on the front lines for addressing this epidemic.
When the body is going through a stressful event, the sympathetic system is activated. This activation will help the body with a life-threatening situation. If this state is activated for prolonged periods of time, it starts to consume energy. These traumatic events that generate stressors in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) will eventually become internalized.
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One of the things that makes acupuncture so difficult to measure is that the medicine actually does contain some esoteric aspects. There have been numerous studies that demonstrate the neurochemical reasoning behind why acupuncture points stimulate the autonomic nervous system to enact change However, not all the benefits of TCM can easily be measured by randomized, controlled trials. But does that make them fundamentally and definitively untrue?
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