Coop Info: Patient and Physician Participation

Our Book about Cooperatives id a PDF and contains the information we have learned about development of Medical Cooperatives. The button below will enable you to download a copy of it. There are questions for providers of care and potential members who want to form their own local cooperatives on this page: Cooperative Participation Questions

Primary Health Care Provider

1.     If someone is sick or injured and asks you to help them and it is within your knowledge and skill would you, do it unconditionally?

2.     If people in a neighborhood that helped each other as volunteers in a small group paid you to take care of people that you see unconditionally but the donors were not your patients would that kind of support be acceptable?

3.     Do you have other physicians or medical professionals that you know and trust to care for patients who may have problems beyond your knowledge of skill set?

4.     Does your work require a special license?

5.     Do you provide your patient with a copy of their medical records?

6.     How many patients do you encounter per working day?

7.     How many unique patients do you see per year?

8.     How many patient files have you accumulated over the last 5 years?

9.     What was your collected gross income from your practice in the last two years?

10. How much gross income do you need?

11. How many patients do you want to see each day?

12. How many days do you want to work per year?

Patient Member

1.     Do you want to be a part of a small group of families and Individuals that help each other in your neighborhood?

2.     If someone in your group asks you to help them and you have the knowledge and skill to do it would you agree to do it under the assumption that if you asked them, they would help you?

3.     Do you agree that help is often physical and personal and sometime financial?

4.     Are these areas of help in which people can give mutual support: Food, Shelter, Transportation, Health Care?

5.     If mutually helping people who are your family, friends, and neighbors can improve each person’s life, would being a member of a local cooperative in which you had an equal position be something you would want to do?

6.     Would you be an active participant in the training and duties involved in seeing that everyone in your group got whatever mutual help they might need?

7.     Are you able to participate with other adults to discover what your group wants and needs and then manage the ways in which that will be attempted.

8.     Can you stay within a group of people and tolerate both good and bad outcomes and be present to fix or celebrate in either case?

Creating a Local Cooperative with Human Capital

1.     If any group of people are going to help and serve one another for the purpose of their survival and welfare, they must be able bodied and self-sustained from some income source. It could be their own business or compensation from their labor for others or from income from their own capital.

2.     The lowest level initial goal for any member should be to reduce the expenses paid from their income by purchasing power and mutual aid within the corporative which they will own and direct.

3.     The most obvious areas of opportunity are Food, Shelter, Transportation, Energy and Health Care.  These types of expenses consume about 80% of the income of most people regardless of class.

4.     If the statements in 1 to 3 are true, then the effort begins with about five adults, in which at least three have the following skill sets:

a.      Home economics

b.     Recruiting and relationship building

c.      Medical and health care

5.     These five adults must bring together at least ten families, including their own, who are living in area not more than two miles in diameter.

6.     The first five people must know and trust each other and have the will to do something that is good for them and for any other person who could join them.

7.     The group must meet each week for at least an hour or two to build both knowledge and trust of one another. There is no advanced agenda, only purpose and the desire to achieve cooperation when the wants and needs of each person are revealed to the members.

8.     Once the group reaches 10 families the benefits of cooperation will be available to each one of them. The infrastructure for those benefits are available with help for other existing cooperatives but made to fit the wants and needs of the Local Group and their local governance.

We are available to meet any group of five people that can affirm the actions listed in 1-4 above. We will meet with the five who have chosen to form such a cooperative in the home of any one of them they have decided was to be the initial host.

We need only seven days of notice to be there for the beginning and to help you organize and perform as you have intended. There are financial requirements or obligations to us. We have been a 501c3 medical cooperative since 1994 in Texas and serve about 1500 people in small groups. Our web site is called tbt.org.

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