Since 1985 Coopemedicos has prescribed financial services to the medical providers of Costa Rica. The credit union’s critical care ensures that these practitioners can focus on patient health —not financial stress. Coopemedicos offers its members a full pharmacy of treatments for a myriad of monetary ills. Savings accounts, credit, loans and mutual funds maintain a […]

A local chemist has a clear picture of a community’’s health needs. In 2004, Brian Frith, the chemist in Charnwood, on Canberra’s northern fringe, compared notes with the organiser of the Neighbourhood Watch group, Roger Nicoll, and with Michael Pilbrow, the chair of his primary school’s Parents and Citizens Committee. All three were concerned that […]

In the mid-1960s, Brazil had a mercantile-based medical system that limited free choice and, for many doctors, stood in the way of their dreams of professional excellence and justice. Some medical professionals began to envision an alternative structure for health care: the cooperative. This was an unprecedented idea for the medical field in Brazil and […]

The streets surrounding the Coomsocial basic-care health clinics bustle with activity: buses and taxies pull up to curbs, trucks deliver supplies, merchants sell to throngs of customers. The clinics are a hub of all this activity. Taxi drivers, bus companies, food vendors, medical suppliers, and many other small businesses depend on the traffic of patients […]