For a second, I thought you were talking about the clinic that I bought (but the numbers don't quite match up). The clinic I bought had 7 acupuncturists and 3 receptionists, pre-pandemic. It was open 7 days a week and doing up to 900 treatments per month. The owner was making $140K per year, working 2 days per week. When I bought it in 2021, there was just one acupuncturist working there (the owner). So, the effect of the pandemic and the coming acupocalypse are starkly on display in my little corner of the Community Acupuncture world. We're back up to about 6 days (9 shifts) per week and around 400 treatments per month. As the owner, I work about 60-70% of all the needling hours and do almost everything else by myself, of course. Anyway, just wanted to chime in that the scenario you described above is completely realistic to my experience. Preach!
As the proprietor of what you would probably call a "boutique practice" my circumstances are different in many ways, and I do feel at a loss when I think about the continuity of my practice. I'm months away from 30 years in practice, and days away from turning 60, and I've got little hope that I'll find someone to serve my clients when I decide to step back - and that's even if I give my practice away. The artist analogy you used in a previous post applies - a different artist could take over my studio space, but would my clients like the art? That may be less of a hurdle for community practices, where clients are more used to a variety of artists. Patients want acupuncture, acupuncturists want to do acupuncture - it should not be so difficult!
One of the things that used to drive me up the wall about OCOM is when they would justify the debt students take on as an *investment* that they could recoup later in their careers when they sold their practices. They even wrote a sort of white paper about this and distributed it to people who balked at the price tag of an entry level degree -- I saw that paper in the context of someone's Defense to Repayment application. I don't think the acupuncture profession has ever had a realistic conversation about succession planning and a lot of people are in exactly the position you describe, as solo practitioners.
For a second, I thought you were talking about the clinic that I bought (but the numbers don't quite match up). The clinic I bought had 7 acupuncturists and 3 receptionists, pre-pandemic. It was open 7 days a week and doing up to 900 treatments per month. The owner was making $140K per year, working 2 days per week. When I bought it in 2021, there was just one acupuncturist working there (the owner). So, the effect of the pandemic and the coming acupocalypse are starkly on display in my little corner of the Community Acupuncture world. We're back up to about 6 days (9 shifts) per week and around 400 treatments per month. As the owner, I work about 60-70% of all the needling hours and do almost everything else by myself, of course. Anyway, just wanted to chime in that the scenario you described above is completely realistic to my experience. Preach!
Thank you -- and thank you for sharing your numbers! We need all the reality checks we can get :)
As the proprietor of what you would probably call a "boutique practice" my circumstances are different in many ways, and I do feel at a loss when I think about the continuity of my practice. I'm months away from 30 years in practice, and days away from turning 60, and I've got little hope that I'll find someone to serve my clients when I decide to step back - and that's even if I give my practice away. The artist analogy you used in a previous post applies - a different artist could take over my studio space, but would my clients like the art? That may be less of a hurdle for community practices, where clients are more used to a variety of artists. Patients want acupuncture, acupuncturists want to do acupuncture - it should not be so difficult!
One of the things that used to drive me up the wall about OCOM is when they would justify the debt students take on as an *investment* that they could recoup later in their careers when they sold their practices. They even wrote a sort of white paper about this and distributed it to people who balked at the price tag of an entry level degree -- I saw that paper in the context of someone's Defense to Repayment application. I don't think the acupuncture profession has ever had a realistic conversation about succession planning and a lot of people are in exactly the position you describe, as solo practitioners.