Chinese Medicine Blog

How to book clients/patients?

Posted on September 28th, 2006 by Spence Pentland.
Categories: Acupuncture, General.

How many clients/patients do you see in a day?  How many is too many,…as a practitioner of Chinese medicine & or Acupuncture.  Obviously, an initial appointment should be longer, anywhere between half and hour to 1.5 hours.  This time is quite dependant on whether or not it is a complicated internal medicine issue, or just simply elbow pain.  Then, put a value on this time,…$1 per minute is a good place to start. 

Follow up appointments.  These are appointments that are after a solid diagnosis and treatment poan have been made.  It seems to me that it is unnecessary to go into deep communications every week with your client/patient, although some need this and this should be somewhat accomodated for.  Therefore, follow ups should be able to be done within half an hour.  This would include acupuncture, pulse and tongue, answering of general questions/concerns, and a quick check in on the 6 essentials (sleep, energy, emotions, bowels, urine, digestion), and a refill of herbal formula to get them either to their next appointment, or through the next couple weeks to a maximum of one month.

Re-evaluation appointments.  These should happen approximately once per month.  This is where you sit down again and go through all of the disease categories they originally presented with, and if necessary, a full head to toe re-evaluation.  This would also obviously include an acupuncture treatment and a refill of herbs.

Thoughts?

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