Is COCSA Exiting the Cartel?

Statements at CCE Stakeholders Meeting Suggest Shift in Policy

In what is being regarded as one of the most significant events at the recent CCE Stakeholder’s meeting in Scottsdale Arizona, John LaMonica DC, the 2nd Vice-President of the Congress of Chiropractic State Organizations (COCSA) and Vice President of the New York Chiropractic Council (NYCC) expressed several concerns about the CCE held by COCSA.

Dr. LaMonica stated that COCSA was concerned about transparency of the CCE Board, representation on the Council and Site Teams and retaining a focus on subluxation. While these are significant coming from COCSA, the most significant concern raised by COCSA at the CCE meeting was for chiropractic to remain a drugless profession.

The CCE infuriated the conservative faction of the profession when it removed the phrase “without drugs and surgery” from its most recent revision of the Standards for accreditation and ignited the current educational crisis within chiropractic.

The reason that the comment from an executive at COCSA has drawn so much attention is that COCSA has made every effort to promote its stance in support of “States Rights” when it comes to the drug issue in chiropractic. This is the first time in recent history that COCSA has taken a public stand against the incorporation of drugs into the practice of chiropractic.  

LaMonica explained to the CCE leadership that the concerns regarding transparency, representation, drugs and subluxation were developed through a consensus process of the leadership in his organization. LaMonica explained that COCSA represented state associations whose combined membership represented about 35,000 DCs. 

According to Dr. Stephen Welsh, ICA Board Member, “The comments of Dr. LaMonica were significant in that they reinforced the concept that the concerns throughout the profession are NOT limited to a small minority group.”

Currently COCSA purports to represent the whole of state associations under their umbrella. Since they also include the conservative groups, then taken together COCSA is actually the largest trade organization representing chiropractors’ interests. However, it is believed that since the bulk of the ACA and broad scope associations have larger memberships within the states, that COCSA essentially represents their views.  This is demonstrated by COCSA’s steadfast adherence to the state’s rights doctrine regarding scope where they defend each state’s right to expand scope as they see fit. 

While the concerns expressed by COCSA leadership are welcome news by the conservative faction of the profession, whether or not it reflects the views of the actual membership of the organization is another story and in reality it is the only one that matters.

If the traditional, conservative faction of the profession would muster the will to exert its influence through COCSA this might be one viable way to affect the political structure within the profession. This could be accomplished by the conservative groups establishing a Special Interest Group (SIG) either within COCSA or outside of it if the controlling factions of COCSA disallow it. This SIG could then strategize on how best to recruit new members and collaborate with like minded groups such as the many EPOCH type groups that have sprung up around the country and other national and state organizations. They could also use this new formed power to address many of the state board issues facing the conservative, traditional faction such as the CCE mandate, drugs and other scope related issues. Such dialogue might lead to getting more conservative chiropractors onto the boards which is a recognized problem.

Prior to the July Stakeholders’ meeting, COCSA had publicly and formally expressed concerns regarding CCE’s lack of acceptance by the profession and requested a dialogue with the CCE about these issues. It is believed that the CCE, as it has with a number of opposition groups, rebuffed COCSA’s request and that it has not sought such a dialogue.

This is significant since the CCE was admonished by the Committee of the United States Department of Education charged with renewing its recognition for not demonstrating widespread acceptance of its policies. In a letter to the CCE, COCSA President, Dr. Kate Choida Rufolo-Dreher told the CCE that: "This is of particular interest to our membership as those added charges speak specifically to the concerns of many in the profession." 

COCSA has been linked to the Chiropractic Cartel, so it will be interesting to see if COCSA maintains their concern regarding drugs or over time softens their stance to keep in lockstep with the rest of the Cartel.