Displaying items by tag: Healthy Aging and Longevity

The cooperative organizational structure was chosen as the optimal vehicle for maintaining the focus of our organization. The International Cooperative Alliance currently serves as the international standard bearer for cooperatives. A cooperative is a member-owned, member-governed business that operates for the benefit of its members according to common principles agreed upon by the International cooperative community as well as its articles and bylaws. In a cooperative organization members pool resources to bring about economic results that are generally unobtainable by one person alone. Cooperatives are formed to help better market common products (Land-O-Lakes, Sunkist, etc) or to help leverage resources to purchase products (REI, Wedge etc.) or obtain services desired by a common group of individuals (Everspring Health). Everspring Health is the result of the intention to pursue the aforementioned objectives in the area of lifestyle, health and healing services.

Cooperatives are mission driven and are designed to offer greatest benefit to the individuals who use the services offered by the organization. This concept presents a unique member focus that we believe to be ideal in the pursuit of our mission for improving quality of life. Due to the nature of a cooperative we have the ability to develop a resource that enables us to invest in the refinement, expansion and long-term stability of our organization so that we can maintain our mission while still keeping the costs to our members in mind.

We believe that it is a sound investment to pay our employees and practitioners what they are worth based on experience and the investment they make towards the cultivation of our mission. We believe it is important to provide access to facilities and resources that do not hamstring and more importantly advance the service mission of the organization. What we don’t believe to be intuitive is seeking a means to make money for the sake of making money at the expense of peaceful and productive lifestyles. A cooperative structure provides us the means to distribute surplus revenue via patronage dividends or rebates to those member clients who choose to do their part in fulfilling the mission of our organization. We can function as an organization where everyone involved is validated for his or her time, effort and financial commitment, which seems to us to be naturally intuitive for leading healthy lives.

In a private or publicly owned company the owners may have no interest in the organization besides to earn a profit, which can distinctly change the perspective and intent of an organization. Everspring Health has been formed to offer health care in a way that is effective first and foremost but also affordable to those who utilize our services. As members of a cooperative we are uniquely positioned to ask of ourselves and of our fellow members to embrace a level of personal responsibility in our own health and wellness. We intend to integrate these standards into our program in way that is intended to inspire a new perspective in personal health and well-being. When everyone has a vested interest and sense of personal responsibility we believe that the investment and facilitation of improved health and well-being becomes a partnered effort.

"We never change things by fighting the existing reality.

To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

R. Buckminster Fuller

Everspring Health is a Minnesota based lifestyle, health and healing cooperative founded by healthcare practitioners who are determined to change the existing reality in healthcare. Focusing on the area of preventive, rehabilitative and quality of life services Everspring Health seeks to change the way we look at health and then change the way we approach healthcare.

Changing the landscape of healthcare requires that we begin by promoting wellness and enhancing quality of life as the core objective of healthcare and healthy living. Utilizing a cooperative business model it is our intent to develop a community resource where everyone involved seeks to do their part in the pursuit of greater health and a better life. Everspring Health is a simple, fundamental concept where healthcare becomes a partnered, integrated and personalized effort between practitioners and clients. Where practitioners become facilitators of lifestyle, health and healing programs and clients embrace the responsibility for their choices and intentions in the experiences they wish to create.

Our vision for Everspring Health is to renew the concept of everyday healthcare as one of personal health facilitation where the first line of healthcare is a proactive effort towards quality of life. It is important that healthcare resources serve as a first line of defense. However, the current standard of care focuses too much on a defensive posture attempting to "catch" disease as a means of preventing the worst outcomes.

The mission for primary healthcare resources must be the space where data informs customized strategies to support the need of the individual, to make sure everyone can be included in a better experience of their day and their world. When we define disease and the subsequent care in a way that forces an individual to meet the data, we build in inherent bias and limitations for our ability to support the individual. This is why you hear us talk about the fundamentals more than anything else.

The fundamentals of health are beneficial for everyone because they can meet people where they are while providing the objective structure to accomplish three objectives.

1. Help people create awareness of the quality of life they desire.
2. Help people understand how to process information to their benefit.
3. Finally, help people put awareness and information processing in play to achieve an outcome.

We feel strongly that an effort towards quality of life provides a more honest and genuine means of benchmarking progress and validating the needs of the client. Nobody wants to experience injury or disease and to spend all our time and effort on "catching" all possible outcomes of worst-case scenario is unrealistic and sets up everyone involved for some level of disappointment.

By focusing on personalized service and better quality of life even if a disease is still present as partners we can seek the best options for improving peace and productivity. We can pursue a genuine experience for the individual and still pursue the best possible outcome with regards to any condition being addressed. By seeking this path as partners this perspective empowers the client and practitioner by pursuing a productive goal and by providing a realistic means of measuring progress. This is just one example of the Everspring Health mindset – a vision continuously renewed and further cultivated on a daily basis.

As practitioners we believe we have a responsibility to ourselves, to our clients as well as to the system of which we are apart. Health and wellness is in need of a more appropriate perspective; one that is client centered, where quality of life is a top priority and where effective intuitive protocols take precedent over habitual diagnostics and generalized treatment strategies. We don’t want to be the best for the system, for our peers or for some extrinsic reality; we want to be the best for the individual – each individual, every individual - who walks in our door. The Everspring Health mission merged with our model is long over due and we are asking our clients to join with us so that together we can help cultivate a new era in health and healing that benefits all involved.