This is an excellent piece about community acupuncture from Acutakehealth.com. It features an interview with my mentor Lisa Rohleder, co-founder of the community acupuncture movement. A good read if you want to learn more about this style of acupuncture and why it is growing in popularity. – Linda Phelps, LAc/EAMP
Back in 2006, John Weeks, editor of The Integrator Blog, called the community acupuncture model “one of the most exciting recent developments in the business of integrated care.” 
His conclusion was based on discussions with Lisa Rohleder (far right, joined by business partners Skip Van Meter and Lupine Hudson), founder of Working Class Acupuncture in Portland, OR, and author of The Remedy and Acupuncture Is Like Noodles. Rohleder has become the public voice of the community acupuncture movement, which she believes has the power to create major change in healthcare.
AcuTake: The community model, with slide-scale fees between $15 and $40, makes acupuncture financially accessible. But is community acupuncture, where people are treated in a group setting and receive less one-on-one attention, as clinically effective as private practice?
Rohleder: I have been an acupuncturist for 16 years, and as far as I can tell, all forms of acupuncture work equally well—community acupuncture, private acupuncture, and all the various traditions and styles of practice…What makes community acupuncture most effective is its accessibility.
Acupuncture works beautifully for lots of conditions, but it rarely works fast. That is the trade off you get for something that is so gentle and non-toxic. There are plenty of instances of dramatic outcomes from acupuncture, but you should not go into it expecting that. A more realistic expectation is that it will work gradually over time. With that in mind, you really want to think about not just how to get an acupuncture treatment but how to get a complete course of treatment.
A lot of people can scrape together $75 for one treatment, but not $750 for a course of 10 treatments. Under the conventional private-practice model, even if people can come up with enough money to get acupuncture for a while, the minute they are barely better enough to stop, they do. Maintenance treatments, the ones that take place after the original condition has subsided, are what prevent the same problems from coming back. Acupuncture is preventative, but only when administered regularly.
Do all conditions require ongoing treatments?
No, but a lot of the people who can benefit most from acupuncture are those whose jobs are a big factor is whatever condition they’re suffering from. For example, baristas with wrist pain, construction workers with back pain, hairdressers with wrist and neck pain, teachers with high stress. In these situations, the condition might get better after a few treatments, but because daily circumstances and environment directly contribute to the ailment, the odds are high that it’ll come back. Community acupuncture helps people maintain themselves so they can keep doing their jobs.
Are there certain ailments for which community acupuncture is especially appropriate?
The accessibility of community acupuncture makes it beneficial for all kinds of problems. If it’s an acute issue, such as a sprained ankle, multiple treatments within a short period of time are recommended. Because community acupuncture is affordable, it’s realistic that the patient can come in five days in a row. For chronic problems, it’s no contest—community acupuncture is better. Acupuncture does not reverse chronic illness; it helps manage the condition and alleviate side effects from medications. When treating chronic conditions with acupuncture, there is not necessarily a beginning and end point. It’s more about maintenance. With community acupuncture, patients can make acupuncture an ongoing part of their overall healthcare plan.
In addition to accessibility, community acupuncture can be more beneficial in cases where illness or pain has an isolating effect. Certain kinds of chronic pain, for example, can cause people to feel very alone. The community setting, because it includes other patients, encourages people to interact with their conditions in ways that are not possible in a one-on-one private-practice setting. Being treated with other people can be healing.
What about conditions that are typically thought of as more private, such as depression or perhaps pain in certain parts of the body?
The feedback we’ve gotten is that community acupuncture is infinitely more private than any hospital setting, and more than most doctors’ offices. For pain conditions, we do not need to directly access the painful parts of the body. Most pain conditions can be treated distally, with points below the elbows and knees. Regarding patients who seek acupuncture for mental health issues, we don’t need to engage in a lengthy, intimate discussion in order to help them. We see acupuncture as something that is not verbal. If you are talking a lot during acupuncture, you’re missing the point.
Extensive verbal interaction does not have anything inherently to do with acupuncture. People can get that kind of one-on-one interaction from another type of practitioner, such as a psychotherapist. I don’t dispute the value of that kind of interaction, but if someone wants that, there are other modalities that are more appropriate.
