| 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 health care.
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Now let me offer you something really interesting: the concept of health services quality based on seven core purposes. I’ll very briefly explain the significance and substance of the seven core purposes framework.
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.
Convergent Medical Systems, Inc.
P.O. Box 2115 Corvallis, OR 97339 USA
(541) 752 3542 (Pacific Time, 9-5, Mon-Fri)
David Kailin, Ph.D., M.P.H.
E-mail: kailin@convergentmedical.com
Copyright 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 CMS, Inc., All Rights Reserved
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