Membership, the Journal, and Our Future…
By Louis A. Kazal, Jr., MD, FAAFP, AAMA Board of Directors
I am part of research team funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to look at the impact of the 2020 Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) decision to pay for acupuncture to treat chronic low back pain (cLBP). In the U.S., medical expenditures on neck and back pain and related disability exceed the cost of cardiovascular disease and cancer care combined. Acupuncture is listed as a first line treatment before medication or other interventions per evidence-based practice guidelines for non-radicular low back pain.[1] Based on these guidelines, the vast majority of Americans do not receive evidence-based treatment for low back pain, including at academic health centers (AHC), where evidence should win the day over profit.
Medicare reimburses acupuncture for cLBP only when performed by physicians or physician assistants, nurse practitioners and clinical nurse specialists who have a masters or doctoral level degree in acupuncture, a state license to practice acupuncture, and are supervised by a physician acupuncturist. Community acupuncturists are not able to bill Medicare, and thus were not included.
We should encourage colleagues, medical students, and residents to get trained in acupuncture. We should be aggressive and relentless in this effort.
Consider the size of the physician acupuncture workforce compared to the number of community acupuncturists in the U.S. The exact number of physician acupuncturists is not known but estimated to be around 5,000 [2], [3] vs. 33,364 [4] community acupuncturists. Thus, the burden is on us, the physician acupuncturists, to provide this evidence-based care and take advantage of this moment — a moment when the federal government recognizes the place acupuncture should play in the routine care of patients with cLBP. By doing so, we will have propelled acupuncture into the realm of conventional medicine. We can help foster this along, but we need a more sizeable workforce. We should encourage colleagues, medical students, and residents to get trained in acupuncture. We should be aggressive and relentless in this effort. Medical schools and AHCs should be challenged to teach acupuncture and provide better low back pain care.
Without the American Academy of Medical Acupuncture (AAMA), how do physician acupuncturists respond to this and other needs? Being a member of the AAMA allows your voice to be heard to help make the U.S. healthcare system a better one. What other organization can lead the way to make medical acupuncture a routine part of standard care? We need the AAMA, bolstered by an expanded membership with more voices, so together we can magnify our impact.
A critical part of the AAMA’s influence is through our journal, Medical Acupuncture, which is free with membership. The journal not only serves to advance the research base for acupuncture, creating the evidence used to make the case for healthcare system change, but also provides a wonderful forum for physician acupuncturists to share ideas, observations, and the art of acupuncture. There are not many print journals of its quality remaining, and few with such limited advertising. Medical Acupuncture is also a good recruiting tool to interest medical students, residents, and physicians alike. I am happy it has not gone the way of online only; I like holding it in my hands and “owning” it, and I love leaving the printed version laying around for others to see. Our cover really shows off well! But for a printed version to continue, we need new members and everyone to pay their dues.
I hope that in a future issue of Medical Acupuncture, you will be reading about meaningful findings from our Medicare study, and put them to use in terms of health policy and advocacy for system change.
References
- Qaseem A, Wilt TJ, McLean RM, Forciea MA; Clinical Guidelines Committee of the American College of Physicians. Noninvasive Treatments for Acute, Subacute, and Chronic Low Back Pain: A Clinical Practice Guideline From the American College of Physicians. Ann Intern Med. 2017;166(7):514-530. doi:10.7326/M16-2367.
- About the American Academy of Medical Acupuncture, https://medicalacupuncture.org/about/ (2026, accessed July 7, 2026).
- Liou KT, Korenstein D and Mao JJ. Medicare Coverage of Acupuncture for Chronic Low Back Pain: Does It Move the Needle on the Opioid Crisis? Journal of general internal medicine 2021; 36: 527-529. DOI: 10.1007/s11606-020-05871-6.
- Fan Y, He D, Sangraula A, Alemi SF, Matecki A. Distribution of licensed acupuncturists and educational institutions in the United States at the start of 2023, during the late stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Integrative Medicine. 2024; 22 (4): 379-384. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joim.2024.06.002.
