Acupuncture Protocols and Traditions

A protocol is a saved point prescription with its billing lines attached. Applying one is usually most of the charting for a visit.

Build a protocol

1. In ChartPro admin, click Acupuncture, then Protocols.
2. Click New protocol and give it a name — practices usually name them after the pattern they treat, such as Liver Qi Stagnation.
3. Add points, and set the side and technique you normally use for each.
4. Add the billing lines the treatment should suggest.
5. Tick Active when it is ready to use.

A protocol is a copy, not a link. Applying it takes a snapshot of the points and prices as they are at that moment, so editing the protocol later never changes a treatment that has already been charted.

Traditions

Each protocol carries a Tradition — TCM, Japanese meridian therapy, Five Element, Tung’s points, Balance method, auricular, or Western and dry needling. It is a label, not a restriction: it tells your practitioners which school a prescription comes from so they are not offered point combinations that do not match how they were trained.

The tradition on the protocol is copied onto the treatment when it is applied, and appears in the note.

Both an e-stim and a non-e-stim billing line

You can safely put both a 97810 line and a 97813 line on the same protocol. You do not have to know in advance whether electrical stimulation will be used: only one of them can ever earn a unit, and the other is switched off automatically with a note saying why. Neither ends up on a claim by accident.

A point that has been retired

If a point is deactivated in the catalog after a protocol was built, applying that protocol adds everything else and tells you which point was skipped, by name. Either reinstate the point in Point catalog or edit the protocol.

Applying the same protocol twice

Nothing is duplicated. Points already on the treatment at the same side are reported as already charted rather than added again, and the billing lines are not repeated.