Policy for therapeutic acupuncture in an academic health center: a model for standard policy development

Acupuncture as a therapeutic modality offers multiple applications. Its effectiveness coupled with its general acceptance by conventional health care professionals makes it one of the first complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) modalities to be incorporated in an integrative approach to care. However, few centers that offer acupuncture have written standard policies to regulate its use. This lack of standard policies may impede provision of quality care, serve as a barrier to cross-institutional data collection and clinical application of that data, and may put health care professionals and institutions at risk when credentialing or malpractice liability has not been clearly addressed. Here we present a policy for acupuncture, created by a diverse group of health care professionals at the University of Michigan Health System. It may function as a generalizable template for standard policy development by institutions incorporating acupuncture.