SALT LAKE COUNTY, Utah — You could say Tyehao Lu is an artist and a scientist.
His family has been practicing East Asian arts and medicine in Salt Lake for decades.
Acupuncture is his specialty.
“In 1983 my mother and my father helped push the law to start licensure here in Utah and he became one of the first licensed acupuncturist in Utah,” said Lu.
As he describes it, acupuncture is about the balance of the body.
It’s not just the needles that do all the work; its healing properties include herbs and a change of nutrition.
But getting to the level of expertise needed to perform this work takes its own type of balance, the right amount of training and testing.
And that “balance” is being threatened by House Bill 202.
It creates a shortcut to becoming a licensed acupuncturist, a concern for many who practice the profession.
“There could be public safety issues, there could be portability issues,” said Lu “And it’ll set the profession back because we want to keep educational standards high so that you can give the best service to become the best professional to people.”
So you want to be a licensed acupuncturist?
As it stands now, the National Certification Board for Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine requires a minimum 1,905 hours for an acupuncture-only master’s program, but that rises to 2,625 hours when you include herbal medicine.
To become licensed, you then have to take and pass the board exam.
“I think there are plenty of acupuncturists and Chinese medicine doctors here,” said acupuncturist Sharon Lockhart. “We could use more, but even when I’m ready to hire someone here in my clinic, it’s going to be someone who’s gone through the national board exam. This bill is asking for no oversight at all, anyone can teach anyone to do acupuncture.”
Lockhart has been practicing acupuncture in Layton since 2005.
She says House Bill 202’s requirements to practice in Utah aren’t enough and creates standards that are not verifiable.
As the bill is written now, an individual would only need 1,350 hours of instruction and would not need to pass the national exam.
“My biggest concern is patient safety. You can puncture a lung, pneumothorax is actually puncturing the lung. There are places in the back actually where you could puncture the lung. You can also puncture a nerve, you can damage someone’s nerve permanently,” said Lockhart. “If someone’s doing it that’s not qualified and it doesn’t work, then it leaves consumers thinking, ‘oh acupuncture doesn’t work’. No, perhaps they didn’t go to a qualified practitioner.”
Utah has no schools for east Asian medicine, something Lu says he wants to change and that he’s willing to work with universities here to create a program.
Until then, he says the standards are there for a reason.
“In nursing, all the nurses have to take the NCLEX exam and physicians have their exam and physical therapists have to take their national board exams,” said Lu. “It’s all the same thing.”
FOX 13 did reach out to the author of the bill, Rep. Kristen Chevrier for an interview.
We were told that they could not comment until it makes it to the Senate.
The bill did run in committee where it was stopped, but it will be taken up again.
