| Welcome! I’m Dr. David Kailin, president of Convergent Medical Systems, Inc. We provide consulting services for quality management, with emphasis on the seven core purposes of healthcare. We also consult on federal regulatory standards and integrative medicine.
Our publishing unit, CMS Press, provides books and other media products. Point of pride: our title, Quality in Complementary & Alternative Medicine, is now listed on the bibliographies of three National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (NCCAOM) board examinations.
If you're looking for one of our articles with news principally related to federal regulations and standards, just click on the News Desk tab above.
Let me say a brief word about
federal regulations pertaining to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM): Boring. But you've got to master
the mundane stuff, in order to stay in the marketplace and provide the
creative healing work. It is best to get your clinic up to road speed
before the inspectors arrive...because they will be arriving. CAM once was marginalized enough to slide under the radar, but this is no longer the case. We do not accept new clients who are in the
midst of dealing with a regulatory enforcement action. Why? The work
takes twice as long, and the stress levels are horrendous. You can save yourself considerable time, effort and angst by reading Quality In Complementary & Alternative Medicine (CMS Press). Prevention:
its good medicine for patients, and also for professional
practices. Let's discuss it together.
Now we can move on to something really interesting: the concept of health services quality based on the seven core purposes. I’ll very briefly explain the significance and substance of the seven core purposes framework, and then guide you to some readings.
Assessments of quality implicitly or explicitly presume valued ends. The valued ends of health care seem obvious at first glance - to heal and comfort the sick. But health care is a complex social transaction involving many entities, including nature, society, healers, families, and patients. Each entity has fundamental and legitimate ends that are negotiated in the transaction.
The seven core purposes framework describes those intrinsic ends most succinctly as follows:
Ecological .......... biosystemic balance
Societal ............. good of the body politic
Spiritual ............. quest for meaning
Moral .................. attending to suffering
Augmentative .... enhancing capacities
Corporeal ........... bodily treatment
Economic ........... fair exchange
By asking how well we are fulfilling these core purposes (singly and conjointly), we can open distinctive opportunities for quality assessment and quality improvement. By better fulfilling the broader array of core purposes, we can add significant value and satisfaction, even while reducing cost.
A generation ago, George Engel’s bio-psycho-social framework brought a perspective wider than the biomedical model, and became the basis of education for family practice. The seven core purposes framework further expands our understanding of the goals and tasks of medicine.
The most accessible source briefly explaining the seven core purposes framework is Quality in Complementary & Alternative Medicine (D. Kailin, 2006, CMS Press). The original source is my doctoral dissertation: Quality Of Learning In Primary Care: A Social Systems Inquiry (D. Kailin, 2002, Oregon State University). I'm currently working on a full length book on the topic. Please contact us to arrange for a presentation at your institution.
Convergent Medical Systems, Inc.
P.O. Box 2115 Corvallis, OR 97339 USA
(541) 757 8601 (Pacific Time, 9-5, Mon-Fri)
David Kailin, Ph.D., M.P.H.
E-mail: kailin@convergentmedical.com
Copyright 2006, 2007 CMS, Inc., All Rights Reserved
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