Why don't more acupuncturists take insurance?

Why don’t more acupuncturists take insurance?

From my many discussions, acupuncturists don’t take insurance for many reasons. The top reasons are insurance doesn’t cover acupuncture and dealing with insurance companies is a pain.

Insurance doesn’t cover acupuncture

As evidence shows, the insurance industry is covering more complementary medicine like acupuncture every year, not the less. As more insurance covers acupuncture, more and more people will be getting acupuncture because the payment model will be something patients are used to. As this happens, accepting insurance will become a necessity for acupuncturists.

Insurance companies are a pain

The current state of dealing with insurance companies for acupuncturists is less than ideal and very time consuming.

First you have to enroll with a specific insurance company. This turns out to be a painful process that makes you want to pull your eye balls out of their sockets. The process involves several phone calls and asking a magic set of questions to successfully enroll.

Then, for each patient, you have to check for coverage. Again, this involves another painful process of calling and checking the patient’s plan and coverage for acupuncture.

After the treatment, to file the claim, you have to complete the CMS-1500 making sure all the boxes are filled in, all the while staring at a horrendous piece of paper with red lines!

And then you wait, payment can take up to 30 days!

Making this easier

Many tools in the market help acupuncturists with the painful process of accepting insurance. While, they were built with the technology at the time and worked well when they were built, technology has advanced to make the insurance process even easier.

We are currently developing insurance billing into Jasmine with this new technology. If you’re an acupuncturist interested in insurance billing and would like to be the first to be notified and to use the new insurance billing features, please sign up below!

Questions? Let me know in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you.

Minto Tsai
Founder

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