Lack of Transparency

This past week I reflected on what is the biggest challenge we, TCM practitioners, face in this current US healthcare system. There are many to be sure. However, I have concluded that the lack of transparency of the field is a huge problem right now. What do I mean by transparency?

Any field that is truly transparent is one where all of the stakeholders are functioning on the same wavelength. They also share the same knowledge regarding all aspects in the field. In healthcare, the major stakeholders include the practitioners, the patients and the administrators. Unfortunately, these parties are nowhere near functioning in a coherent manner.

Why is this? For one, the language of Chinese Medicine presents a challenge. Our field uses clinical terms that no Western medical professional has even heard before. When I ask a typical Western clinician what I mean when I diagnose somebody as suffering from Liver Qi stagnation, he usually gets a little uncomfortable and automatically feels that this terminology has no scientific basis.

The result is that I have to spend a lot of my time educating the Western clinicians on the terminology that I work with. This takes a lot of valuable time. This is not a quick fix either. I have been continually educating these clinicians ever since I started my practice. Though I am seeing some improvement, we have a long road ahead if we are to be functioning on the aforementioned same wavelength.

Another issue we are facing is technical in nature. Coding is a big part of the US healthcare system. When a clinician bills, he has codes that represent the procedures he performed to the insurance company. They reimburse based on these codes. US insurance has only just begun to create such codes for TCM practitioners to use and bill.

The result is that this has only increases our ability to fully integrate into the US healthcare system…

The effects of the COVID virus is being felt in the healthcare community, in a big way. I’m sure that this is not a revelation to most of you. However, I’m also confident that most of you are not appreciating just how the manner in treating patients is being affected.

As I have explained before, what makes TCM so unique is the natural manner that a practitioner uses to both diagnose and treat. What I mean by natural is how TCM practitioner uses his own senses, such as touch and feel, as instruments to treat a patient. With the advent of policies such as wearing masks/face shields or the need now to perform temperature checks on every patient has definitely altered the pristine nature of the treatment. Yes, I am speaking from personal experience of my current treatment of patients.

However, as with any factor that causes such a change to society, there are avenues by which members of society can help to curb the intensity of these effects. Most of you appreciate that COVID is a virus and thus there are symptoms that are associated with it, as with any other virus like the flu. The Western medical community naturally looks to treat such a virus, like COVID, by finding artificial means.

What do I mean by artificial means? If you are keeping up with the Western medical establishment’s response, you should be realizing that they feel that a vaccine is the surest way to combat the virus. They push this vaccine without listing the ingredients in the vaccine and publishing any trials that this vaccine is going through. However, what is most pertinent to this blog is their lack of acknowledging the natural means that are effective in treating, at the very least, the symptoms of the virus.

In the next blog, I will address how certain TCM protocols are very effective in treating COVID symptoms…

Your wellness is our #1 priority!

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