Health-care innovation in the face of adversity

In early 2001, Don Copeman was faced with a situation that would break any parent’s heart. In that year, the future founder of the renowned Copeman Healthcare Centre in Vancouver learned that his first-born son Max, then a year-and-a-half old, was suffering from the onset of autism, but the young boy’s diagnosis had been missed on the front lines of the health-care system. The unfortunate oversights involved caused a huge delay in treatment for Copeman’s son at a tender age. Copeman received a call two years after a second opinion diagnosis of autism for Max’s formal assessment within the public health system. Now 11 years old, Max is completely without speech and has severe learning disabilities.

“Needless to say that my wife and I wondered often what might have happened had Max had more timely access to the proper expertise in the primary health-care system,” says Copeman. “We still do.”

Around the same time, Copeman’s father began struggling with a rare cancer and faced many challenges in his diagnosis and treatment. While this was going on, Copeman’s younger brother became seriously ill as a result of a mismanaged wound infection.

These personal experiences led quickly to the creation of the first Copeman Healthcare centre in Vancouver. “I had spent my entire career in health care at that point in my life,” says Copeman. “With my experience in both public and private health-care delivery and with a successful parallel career in medical computer technology behind me, my wife and I knew that we were in a unique position to make some changes and point the world in a different direction for primary health care.”

The result was Canada’s first team-based, multi-disciplinary centre for primary health care, focusing on the diagnosis, treatment and management of disease while using the same medical experts to develop groundbreaking programs of prevention. The first centre opened in Vancouver in November 2005, followed by a twin clinic in Calgary in September 2008. Another centre in Edmonton is projected to reach completion toward the middle of 2011, says Copeman.

As a successful businessman, Copeman admits he was fortunate to have the resources and drive to ultimately overcome his family’s struggle. However, he is quick to add that very many people in Canada are not so lucky. “Canada is full of these stories,” says Copeman. “We have reached a point in the evolution of our health-care system where major change has to be implemented, both in terms of how effective we are in the prevention and early detection of disease, and how we finance health care.” Copeman is a strong advocate for health-care reform and feels that Canada must return to the roots of the development of Medicare if it is going to be sustainable. “We have to become more efficient and effective while ensuring that no family ever encounters catastrophic financial loss through injury or illness,” he adds. “Countless families are ruined everyday because of poorly funded programs like those for autism, stroke and brain injury rehabilitation, advanced medications and treatments, and many others. We need to rethink what we are covering under Medicare and provide people with more options.”

After working in the health-care industry for virtually his entire life — beginning as a consultant to the public health system in the 1980s — Copeman hypothesized a more sustainable health-care system could be improved upon with a major refocus on primary health care and prevention — something Tommy Douglas himself was advocating as early as the late ‘50s.
 

One-on-One Patient Care
A general practitioner may refer you to specialists whose wait lists may extend for months. In contrast, a visit to any one of the Copeman facilities offers expert physicians with advanced technologies who work in conjunction with dieticians, kinesiologists, specialized nurses, neuropsychologists, physiotherapists, psychologists and others. With the team approach to individual health, each client experiences the convenience of having all their health concerns being answered in one place. A personal health “assistant” organizes appointments, referrals, proactive tests and other activities so that clients don’t have to  be concerned with the details. “In the end we offer  the two most important  things in medicine”, says Copeman. “Access to medical expertise — and all the time you need and deserve.”

An annual fee covers the costs not subsidized by the provincial government so that patients can receive strong, highly co-ordinated health care that includes specialized professionals that are not covered by Medicare. The centre also offers many other individual services and programs that do not require an annual fee.
 

Brain Matters
The centre breaks health down into three main aspects: physical care, psychological care and brain care. While most other clinics focus on the body, he realized early that his centres would not be able to truly complete someone’s care without removing a number of emotional and psychological health barriers. This inclusion of integrated mind-body wellness was an early defining characteristic of the Copeman Healthcare Centre. “A lot of people know what they do is bad, but they have real emotional and stress factors in their lives that are an impediment to optimal health,” he says. “We are very good at removing them.”

One of the largest emerging fields within health care is brain health, according to Copeman. He feels that brain health today is where heart health was 20 years ago. “We are facing an epidemic of dementing conditions such as Alzheimer’s and now we know we can prevent or delay the onset of such diseases,” he says. “Because the brain is a very special organ with very special needs, it necessitates us looking at the brain and its health in a focused way.”  

Copeman Healthcare now defines “wellness” as a state where the health and acquired resilience of the body, mind and brain provide a person with optimal quality of life and longevity. And he thinks this will become the way that most of the world looks at wellness in the years to come.
 

The Copeman Method
“Simply put, we are pioneering new ways of practising medicine in Canada that will help sustain our valued public health system by avoiding the more expensive downstream costs of hospital and emergency care through prevention and early management of disease,” says Copeman. “Providers in other countries are already looking at what we are doing with great interest.”

What really started it all? According to Copeman, “Apart from the immediate personal problems that my family experienced, I really got frightened about my children’s future. In the next 15 years we are going to lose a lot more doctors to retirement. There are not nearly enough young doctors to replace them and no other solutions in sight. Having the resources and experience to initiate change, I felt a social obligation to do something.”

When it comes to the actual methods of delivering primary health care that achieve the best results, Copeman lays out five pillars of expertise: expert physicians; teams of specialized professionals to support them; true collaboration; matching patients with their assigned team; and advanced computer technologies. He says that when you provide this type of environment and combine it with an “unhurried” approach, you get outcomes that are on a whole new level of achievement.

Copeman adds that service is also an important ingredient. “When people feel respected, cared for and supported, it helps tremendously in their motivation and overall psychological wellbeing,” he says. “In the end though we have a simple rule — treat everyone like they are your own loved one.”  •

 

The Seven Cornerstones
Don Copeman shares his essentials of health care with Lifestyle readers

From the moment you walk into a Copeman Healthcare Centre, you get an immediate impression that you are going to be treated in a very different way. Here, Copeman shares what he believes are the seven cornerstones of highly effective primary health care.

1) Expert Physicians — A term coined by Copeman, it refers to doctors who have special experience, aptitude or interest in disease conditions important to people in mid-life, when disease starts to take hold. Examples include cardiology, oncology, gynecology, neurology, urology and general mid-life health for men and women. When you are organized this way, the need for specialist involvement is minimized.

2) Collaboration — All of the professionals within a facility need to work together on developing a patient’s health plan or a complex diagnosis. A patient becomes a patient of the clinic — and not of a specific doctor.

3) Team-Based — Family doctors need specialized assistance and expertise to tackle certain health and wellness issues. Registered dietitians, kinesiologists, psychologists, neuropsychologist, physiotherapists and other specialized clinicians need to be on staff to provide this support.

4) Personalization – In order to make expertise most relevant to each patient, they should be thoroughly assessed for health risks based on their genetics, history, lifestyle and other factors. They should be assigned a professional team that best fits their profile.

5) Information Technology — Strong computer technologies are needed to make a collaborative model work in a streamlined and cost-effective manner.

6) Unhurried Medicine — Patient rosters must be limited to ensure that each professional has the time to really get to the bottom of a health issue.

7) Care — You simply need to treat every person like you would treat a loved one.