Welcome to Community Supported
Acupuncture

Welcome to your clinic. We in the Mt Scott /Arleta area are blessed with a
vibrant community. I am hoping that this clinic will become one of its
resources: a place where you can hold a meeting, pick up your CSA order,
meet your neighbours and get treated.

Helping to Close the Home-Work Loop

Here in Mt Scott we have a beautiful park and Community Center to anchor
a diverse and vibrant community. I would like for you to be able to walk
down to get a treatment or grab one at the end of our workday and know
that there will be a treatment chair open. We are on the ground floor and
are wheelchair accessible with ADA bathrooms.
As we are all working to make our personal loops smaller, buying less and
using less of the world’s resources; I hope that this clinic will become a part
of your loop. We are located just up from the corner of SE Foster and 72nd
where the #14 bus stops every 15 minutes, and just 3 minutes walk from
the Mt Scott Community Center

Getting In to the Clinic when You need to Get In

   We want this clinic to be a place that you think of as a convenient
affordable health care option that suits your busy life. I want you to be able
to get in on the day that you hurt and be back out within your time frame,
feeling a lot better.
  Acupuncture can do that .We will undertake to make this a place where
you can get your headache treated effectively on the day that you have the
headache at a price equivalent to a co-pay at your doctors office.

The American Health Care System Needs Some Help

     Community Supported Acupuncture can be part of the solution.
  Something happened to American health care in the last 30 years. Most
of us feel that the system that we prided ourselves on
has somehow got away from us.
We feel at the mercy of insurance companies in their demands for co-pays,
having to negotiate for every health care service and
burdened by the sheer cost of it all out of our pocketbooks.

In the almost 20 years I have been in the United States working in health
care settings the one thing that I have observed is that most Americans feel
themselves to be about one major medical catastrophe away from serious
financial stress. A lot of us don’t get basic health care,
even with insurance, as it is often too much out of our weekly budget.

I want you to be able to pay what you can afford on the way in, move back
to your favorite comfy chair and know that you can relax there for as long
as you need to without these worries as part of the experience.

Acupuncture’s Results should be Predictable…
                                                        ...Predictably Good

  Somewhere in the last 30 years Acupuncture practice in the West has also
lost the plot. When you go to an Acupuncturist that person should be able
to give you a pretty good idea as to whether acupuncture can help your
condition, how many treatments it will take to get a good improvement and
what type of treatment schedule will get you those results.

Acupuncture is a practice dating back thousands of years and was one of
the main tools for primary care in China between 1941 and 1980, when
China began to move towards a market economy. During this period there
were innumerable studies done using acupuncture alone, building on
thousands of years of protocols for best practice.

To us studying acupuncture in the West some of the results were quite
fantastical but the consistent theme of these studies was lots of treatments
spaced very close together for a consistently better than 70% subjective or
objective improvement of symptoms in many conditions.

When Acupuncture became more widely used in the West in the last 30
years treatments were priced in a way that only some people could afford.  I
don’t know why this was as in Asia acupuncture is conducted in group
settings allowing the acupuncturist to charge a lower rate and the patient to
make the treatment schedule recommended.


Acupuncture does not have to be done in a private room
with the acupuncturist’s undivided attention to get good
results...

It has to be done regularly to get good results.

Acupuncture does not need the use of herbs to work well either. Using
acupuncture protocols designed to be used without the use of herbs means
that herbs are not needed for many treatments.

   This practice of using herbs came about in the West in part because
most patients could not make the commitment to the course of treatment
needed to get good results. Even the patients who could afford
acupuncture at $60-$200 per treatment balked at the recommended
treatment frequency at that rate. Acupuncturists opted to treat patients
once a week or once a month and supplement with the use of herbs.

Some Acupuncturists in the West treat thinking that acupuncture doesn’t
work very well because their patients have not been able to afford the
regular treatments in a short period of time, indicated for most conditions
and the acupuncturists themselves have not seen the results possible with
regular treatments.

By targeting conditions that acupuncture uniquely treats well this clinic will
undertake to use herbs only where they are indicated as supplemental
treatment. There are many conditions that acupuncture treats very well on
its own and your acupuncturist should be able to tell you if your condition is
one of them.

A Group Setting Works Better for Healing

Acupuncture works better when conducted in a group setting. Treating in
solitary private rooms is not the way acupuncture has ever been practiced
in Asia. Acupuncturists in Asia have learnt over generations that it is
frequency of treatment that ensures consistent good results and that they
can only afford to provide that frequency if they treat communally.

The experience in Asia and in the original Community Supported
Acupuncture clinic, Working Class Acupuncture, in the United States
shows that most patients prefer to be treated in a group setting when given
the choice.  They find individual treatment in a room to be a little lonely and
that the questioning that the acupuncturist often conducts in this one on
one setting can be a little too comprehensive in its detail.
The group setting allows the patient to bring in a friend or family member
for moral support and after a few treatments patients find that they like the
short intake and application of needles that allows them to get to the
relaxation and relief that they have come in for.

We are, for the most part, not doctors and not counsellors

Your acupuncturist should be able to tell you if you need to see a doctor for
your condition or if a visit to another health care professional would be
more helpful than acupuncture. We are not doctors. Acupuncture does not
treat everything but it treats many things very well.

When I was working in a hospital what we found was that there were
conditions that acupuncture was the best of all options available in a
hospital. For instance, a doctor would send a patient to us because they
had seen it help other patients with that condition or had evidence based
research that acupuncture was a very good choice:e.g for morning
sickness or the pain of Shingles.
In other conditions acupuncture could help to supplement the treatments by
specialists and other health care professionals. Acupuncture is brilliant
because it offers predictable good results that can stand-alone or can
supplement the treatment provided by your doctor.

What We Need from You

Most acupuncturists see 1-2 patients an hour and charge $60-$200  for the
treatment. They spend a long time going over medical histories and
asking you questions in great detail.
The only way that we at Pins and Needles can make acupuncture
affordable and still make a living ourselves is to streamline our treatments
by seeing multiple patients in an hour. We have returned to the
traditional approach. We don’t ask you lots of questions but rely on pulse
diagnosis and point palpation to decide the best way to treat you.

We know it is the needles that are doing the work and that we are just
those putting them in.

Pins and Needles is not primary care medicine. It can provide a wonderful
complement to Western medicine but is not a substitute for it.  If you feel
that your problem may be more serious, a malignant growth, a serious
infection or an injury that will not heal then you
need to see a primary care physician (MD, ND, DO)

We will provide you with some excellent, affordable referrals to see a
professional who will be able to talk to about your medical history or
diagnose your condition.
We cannot diagnose and treat something that is really serious.

We can provide complementary care for conditions that require a doctor’s
attention. For instance we can treat you for the side effects of
chemotherapy but your physician is your primary care provider for this type
of condition.

Pins and Needles does not receive grants, state or federal money or
insurance reimbursement. We exist because patients pay for their
treatments. We are a sustainable, community business model.

Acupuncture is a Process

If you don’t come in often enough or long enough acupuncture will probably
not work for you. It is rare to be able to resolve a problem in one treatment.

Your acupuncturist will suggest something like “we would like to see you
once a week for the next 6 weeks” or “we would like to see you 3 times this
week “. The purpose of the sliding scale is to allow you to come in often
enough to see the results that we know are possible.