Founding Integrative Medicine Centers of Excellence: One Strategy for Chiropractic Medicine to Build Higher Cultural Authority

Abstract

Chiropractic physicians are seeking a higher level of cultural authority within their communities and the United States health care system. This commentary suggests an innovative strategy that might expedite the attainment of professional authority while improving the training of chiropractic students and faculty. The authors propose the founding of integrative medicine centers of excellence by colleges of chiropractic that will employ clinical faculties comprised of allopathic, chiropractic, osteopathic, and naturopathic physicians. Initially, the health care facilities should offer primary care through an integrative medicine model. It is anticipated that these centers of excellence will require both government and private funding in order to develop research programs, provide high-quality patient care, and improve the medical training for students with residents programs.

Assessing the change in attitudes, knowledge, and perspectives of medical students towards chiropractic after an educational intervention*

“…21 Organizations and authors have identified the lack of integration with mainstream health care as a major challenge for the chiropractic profession and have suggested strategies to overcome this barrier. [21][22][23] Proposed strategies included chiropractors focusing on public health initiatives, chiropractic educational reform, interdisciplinary training, and interprofessional collaboration. [21][22][23] One potential barrier to the integration of chiropractic into mainstream health care has been the negative perceptions of physicians towards chiropractic.…”

“…[21][22][23] Proposed strategies included chiropractors focusing on public health initiatives, chiropractic educational reform, interdisciplinary training, and interprofessional collaboration. [21][22][23] One potential barrier to the integration of chiropractic into mainstream health care has been the negative perceptions of physicians towards chiropractic. [24][25][26] This barrier may be more evident among physicians who attend to the same patient population as chiropractors, including family physicians and orthopedic surgeons.…”

Do Centers of Excellence Reduce Health Care Costs? Evidence From the US Veterans Health Administration Centers for Epilepsy

“…In many respects, the theory behind these centers aligns with the expectations and overarching concepts of lean process thinking: standardization, eliminating excess, and process improvement (Joosten, Bongers, & Janssen, ; Lehman & Suozzi, ; Young & McClean, ). In the worldwide debate over health care, no one wants quality to suffer in order to meet demand and contain costs.…”

Do Centers of Excellence excel in patient outcomes?: Evidence from U.S. Veterans Health Administration Centers for Epilepsy

“…In many respects, the theory of CoE is aligned with the expectation of lean process thinking theory. The overarching concepts of lean process thinking are standardization, eliminating excess, and process improvement (Lehman & Suozzi, 2008;Young & McClean, 2008;Joosten et al, 2009). …”