feraethew oliebh odes Loo ote

ns

January 30, 1968
CONFERENCE-WORKSHOP on Regional Medical Programs

The Conference-Workshop on Regional Medical Programs held
at the Washington Hilton on January 17-19, 1968 under the
sponsorship of the Program Coordinators in cooperation with
the Division of Regional Medical Programs was, by virtually
every measure, asuccess. This success, in turn, came as a result
of the content of the meeting which reflected both issues and
activities of the Programs as presented by those involved in
them. To make the information in this meeting and the material
developed at it as widely available as possible at the earliest
possible time...

. Attached is the SUMMARY of the Conference-
Workshop as developed and presented by
Dr. Lowell T. Coggeshall, Vice President
Emeritus of the University of Chicago,
at the closing Plenary Session on Friday,
January 19.

- Complete PROCEEDINGS of the Conference-
Workshop are now being developed and will
be published and distributed within the
next few months.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE
Public Health Service ¢ National Institutes of Health ¢ Bethesda, Maryland 20014

 
 

to find Margaret Sovie from Syracuse reporting on continuing education
in nursing, using the teaching facilities of a university hospital
nursing service. Again, as throughout the Program, we find a resort

to electronic communications techniques, television, the telephone, and
so on. The medical and nursing professions are Capitulating quite
brightly and gracefully, it appears, to the offerings of the visual and
audio communications industries. Yet I am enchanted to learn, although
not from a formal paper, that a network of small rural hospitals in

a western area of North Carolina called the "state of Franklin" plans
to resort to carrier pigeons to transport laboratory specimens back

and forth. The pigeons can carry the load. But for transplantable
hearts, I assume, it will be necessary to employ falcons. Actually,

a pigeon homing on a hospital laboratory serving smaller institutions,
to me expresses the very essence of regionalization.

on the familiar subject of continuing medical education. I am pleased @

We find another kind of innovation involving geography and logistics
in the Program of the Mountain States Regional Medical Program, operated
by an organization called WICHE (pronounced 'Whichy")--the Western
Interstate Commission on Higher Education. Here is a Region covering all
or part of four states--Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Nevada---an area
of 440,000 square miles with only 2,100 physicians, 15,000 other health
professional, and no homing institution, that is, no university medical
center. Yet, I am told, this Program has one of the most active and
enthusiastic organizations and has found a cordial reception in the
medical centers serving it from outside of the Mountain States Region. ©

Much emphasis has been placed on the need for innovation in the
Regional Medical Program, but it is not all innovation, of course.
Many of the principles of good health care that do require innovation
for wider and more effective delivery are deeply rooted in the traditions
of medicine as well as community organizations. We find frequent
reference to the importance of "concern" and "involvement" and at one
point Willard A. Krehl wraps the matter up by stating: ''The important
objective is concern involvement."

Speaking of the "educational package," William G. Cooper says:
"One of the major overall objectives of Regional Medical Programs is
to enhance the learning of all members of the health care team in order
that they in turn will be able to provide medical care for their citizenry.
The "learner"' in this case may be the doctor, the nurse, the medical
technologist, the physiotherapist, other members of the team or indeed

the patient himself."