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The Patient Rights Coalition . . .
Where we are standing up for safe and high standards in the acupuncture profession,
to avoid an epidemic of meridian damage;
and the right for patients to have access to qualified
acupuncture health care when they need it
CURRENT ISSUE: Feedback on the unfair "Grandparenting" proposals
for traditional Chinese medical professionals was accepted by the
Transitional Council of the College of TCM Practitioners and Acupuncturists of Ontario
until Friday, April 23, 2010; we are still waiting to hear their conclusions on these issues.
More information on this is posted on the page about Grandparenting.
Acupuncture is one of the best professions for improving health.
Qualified meridian-based acupuncture (commonly referred to as TCM-based acupuncture) can cure over 50% of the ailments or diseases that cannot be cured or controlled from a Western medical viewpoint. It is the best health care profession to prevent or treat early stage cancers, colitis, Crohn’s disease, depression, diabetes (Type I and Type II), IBS, infertility, Lyme disease, lymphoma, Meniere’s disease, migraines, multiple sclerosis, osteoporosis, Rheumatoid arthritis, skin lupus, etc. Age-related conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease can even be helped.
Why are Ontarians not receiving this kind of acupuncture health care?
Our government is not providing opportunity for patients to receive help from this excellent health care profession. Instead, they are destroying the acupuncture profession with a discriminatory law. (Click here to see the current issues) This Home Page of our website gives a very brief description of the disaster of the acupuncture regulations. It seemed to begin as professional discrimination, but it has escalated into a greater and more complex issue. Other pages on our website give more detail of the issues, and how acupuncture regulations in Ontario must be amended to protect public safety by providing safe and effective acupuncture health care.
Legalized acupuncture-laymen have set barriers for qualified TCM-based acupuncturists
Unprofessional reports from the Health Professions Regulatory Advisory Council (HPRAC) misled Ontario MPP's into passing Bill 50 into law (Bill 50 became the TCM Act, 2006), which discriminates patient rights and TCM professionals. This law legalizes over 140,000 acupuncture-laymen to perform fake acupuncture (needle therapy), and disqualified well-trained TCM-based acupuncture professionals. This puts the public at great risk from the harm of fake acupuncture. (Please read the cases about meridian damage from acupuncture.)
These acupuncture-laymen include chiropodists, massage therapists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, nurses, dental surgeons, doctors of chiropractic, naturopathic doctors, and addiction-treatment personnel who have taken as little as a 2-day "5-needle" course. We recognize that they are qualified in their own professions, but they are NOT qualified to perform acupuncture, because they have not received training in meridian sciences (which includes training in meridian diagnosis, meridian safety, acuneedling skills, etc which are essential to performing acupuncture).
The consequences of downgrading the professional quality of acupuncture are two-fold:
a) thousands of patients are being used as guinea pigs of fake acupuncture (with no regard for patient rights). There is a risk of serious side effects; plus, patients lose their chance to be healed by qualified acupuncture practitioners.
b) the real acupuncture profession (based on meridian sciences and a meridian/TCM diagnosis) is being destroyed. This indicates the beginning of quackery in every profession in Ontario 's health care system, because other health care professionals are attempting to perform another profession with obviously inadequate training.
To stop these health care crimes in Ontario :
We started this website to inform Ontarians of how the public has been cheated out of receiving quality health care from acupuncture professionals, and people have been offered as guinea pigs to acupuncture-laymen. HPRAC has totally ignored public safety, which violates their own fundamental principle of "protecting the public from harm in the delivery of safe and effective health care services".
Ontario's TCM Act, 2006 legalizes over 140,000 acupuncture-laymen to perform acupuncture
The TCM Act, was supposed to regulate TCM professions. However, it actually exempts over 140,000 acupuncture-laymen from the law, and they are legally allowed to perform acupuncture without any safety standards, training requirements, or definition of acupuncture. Furthermore, the TCM Act does not give any clear authorization for Acupuncture professionals to perform acupuncture, and it gives a vague scope of practice.
How These Regulations Directly Affect Patients:
Acupuncture-Laymen have no idea of the health damage they will cause
Acupuncture is based on meridian sciences and TCM diagnosis. The health care groups mentioned above are not trained in meridian sciences, meridian diagnosis, acuneedling skills or meridian safety requirements. Inserting needles without these requirements can cause many side effects in patients. In addition, some of these health care groups do not even have the right to diagnose (acupuncture performed without a diagnosis is very dangerous), and do not have the authorization to perform Controlled Act 2 (which is a procedure performed on tissue below the dermis). It should be noted that the TCM Act does not even contain a definition for TCM or acupuncture, and it leaves it open for each Western health care profession to establish their own standard for acupuncture!
Patients will not have access to qualified acupuncturists
Real meridian-based acupuncture practitioners will not have the chance to practice in hospitals, nursing homes or any medical facility where these other health care groups are practicing acupuncture. Patients' rights and choice of qualified practitioners are taken away by acupuncture-laymen through this discriminating law.
Many Insurance Companies do not Cover Services by Qualified Acupuncturists
Insurance companies cover the “acupuncture” services performed by other health care groups (laymen in acupuncture), but do not cover services from most meridian-based acupuncture professionals (including Acupuncture Doctors).
For example, federal government employees are only covered for acupuncture services performed by MD's; OPP's are only covered for acupuncture services by naturopaths; the Workmen's Compensation Board covers acupuncture-laymen but not meridian-based acupuncturists.
This jeopardizes public safety and takes away the rights of patients to choose a qualified meridian-based acupuncturist. If registration in the College of TCM Practitioners and Acupuncturists of Ontario is delayed another couple years, we can see that no insurance company will cover meridian-based acupuncture.
The Acupuncture Profession is being Destroyed by Unprofessionals Standards
Unfortunately HPRAC (Health Professions Regulatory Advisory Council) has released Reports that totally ignored public safety and professional standards. The March 2008 HPRAC Report (pages 24-31) ignores patient rights, and purposely downgrades the acupuncture profession to quackery with many false statements. It seems the whole purpose is to allow acupuncture-laymen to overtake the real profession of acupuncture.
This Report wrongly states that the health care groups, who were exempted from the TCM Act to perform acupuncture, are now “regulated”. For some reason, they twisted the word “exempted” to equal “regulated”. The Report also lies by saying that acupuncture has been in the scope of practice of these health care groups for decades. This is absolutely untrue. There are many false and misleading statements in the March 2008 HPRAC Report which are all contrasts to the truths in HPRAC’s original Report on acupuncture. Click here to read our input and recommendations, which we submitted in February 2009.
Acupuncture-Laymen Standards Interfere with Professional Standards and Safety
Furthermore, the 2008 Report recommends that these acupuncture-laymen should be on the Council of the College of TCM Practitioners and Acupuncturists, so that they can set inter-professional standards for acupuncture professionals. This unreasonable suggestion does not apply to any other profession. Professional acupuncture standards must be set by acupuncture professionals within the profession.
Appropriate Standards for Acupuncture Regulation
If the realities of the acupuncture profession were never presented, we may be able to excuse the current regulation as a product of ignorance. However, the original HPRAC Report on Acupuncture was issued in December 1996, and it contained the best recommendations for patients and the acupuncture profession. It stated that acupuncture should be regulated as a profession, so that Ontarians could benefit from professional services. However, the medical supremacy hated this Report because it indicated that the “anatomical acupuncture” they were performing is NOT true acupuncture (even though they were pirating the name of acupuncture).
Western Medical Professions began to get Involved in Professional Acupuncture Standards
Therefore, HPRAC issued further Reports in April 2001 and September 2006 to favour the Western medical professions, who were performing “anatomical acupuncture” according to their own standards. The Sept 2006 HPRAC Report was secretly released, and made public on November 18, 2008, almost two years after it was issued. (In January 2009, we submitted our input on HPRAC's 2006 Report)
In February 2009, a report was released called Entry-Level Occupational Competencies for Acupuncturists in Canada. We notice that it is missing some of the essential fundamentals of the acupuncture profession (such as meridian sciences), and includes Western medical training as requirements for acupuncturists (these have been unnecessary for acupuncture practitioners for thousands of years). Currently, the proposed training for acupuncturists includes 13 required Western medical subjects and 3 required subjects in Traditional Chinese Medicine. In other words, TCM-based professions are being dramatically diluted with Western medical training; this has been consistently proven to reduce the effectiveness and safety of treating patients, and it will destroy the acupuncture profession.
Supporting this cause may save you and your family...
The TCM Act, 2006 must be amended to protect public safety. Acupuncture must be regulated as a profession, completely separate from needle therapy / anatomical acupuncture (fake acupuncture). As patients, we demand that the acupuncture regulations are amended to retain it as a traditional meridian-based profession; this is the only way that we can benefit from comprehensive, high-quality acupuncture health care. Please spread this message to your friends to protect your patient rights.
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