You’ll find this throughout the CAM/holistic professional community, particularly early in practice: the massage therapist trades a session for an adjustment from the chiropractor. The acupuncturist swaps time with the naturopath, who in turn trades a visit with a web designer. The homeopath exchanges treatments with the landscaping guy who cuts the grass in front of her office.
At first blush there’s nothing inherently wrong with this beyond the obvious tax-dodging implications. And for the practitioners just starting out who are time-rich and cash-poor, it allows them to get their hands on things they need.
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January 25, 2007 – 10:34 am
Reader E. writes:
“I was wondering how you handle when people start to ask for free advice. I am starting out my practice and want to come out of the gates honoring my abilities and not giving things away for free. I don’t mind a general question here and there, but when someone keeps asking very detailed, specific questions where my education and experience really comes into play – I want to set that boundary.”
This is a common practice challenge, particularly for startups. Early in your practice, you may not yet have the confidence, experience and poise to deal with the patients who constantly ask for free advice. I’ve written before on pro-bono work, but this is a bit different. How do you deal with those clients who seem to have a knack for getting you to cough up free advice?
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December 13, 2006 – 4:54 pm
The Integrator Blog has an update on the Working Class Acupuncture story, including several interviews and comments. Worth a look - there’s a larger picture here that goes beyond acupuncture.
Link
November 27, 2006 – 3:27 pm
John Weeks’ The Integrator Blog featured an interesting article on Working Class Acupuncture, a Portland, Oregon clinic built on the concept of making acupuncture more affordable.
As Lisa Rohleder, LAc, began trying to make sense of the business of professional acupuncture, she witnessed two distinct phenomena. First, she observed that a huge percentage of the working poor and even the middle class of people in the United States cannot afford to pay for acupuncture treatment when individual appointments cost $65-$200. Second, Rohleder observed that over 50% of graduates of acupuncture schools abandon practice without ever figuring out how to make a living at it.
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If the post on why you should raise your CAM practice rates has convinced you that the time is right, here are a few tips on how to make it painless for you and your patients.
Plan It
So here’s the dilemma: Inflation’s always there, and as a result of it (and other good reasons) you want to be raising rates. But you don’t want to do it too frequently. Plan at least two rate hikes in advance – the current one, and the next one. That’ll help you plan the amount of the rate hike, and also help with some of the next steps below.
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Few business decisions is more feared, ignored and avoided than raising prices. But while we’ve all hoped the issue would go away, it hasn’t. So, on the count of three, we’ll all (including me) pull our heads out of the sand, and face the day.
Here are a few reasons you should be raising your prices:
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The Mackinac Centre for Public Policy has an interesting piece on the “myth” that free public health care empowers the poor. I’m not here to debate the public versus private issue (not today, at least) but it does raise some interesting questions.
They claim that paying for health care is more empowering, since it forces the system in question to treat you as a customer to be satisfied, and therefore leads to a higher level of service.
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