Veterans Affairs committee  When members have been injured or become ill, whether they've come and reported it or somebody in the system has noticed it and asked them to have an assessment, their caregivers will usually take some time to evaluate their condition and try to see whether or not there is going to be much of a shift in those members' condition.

Veterans Affairs committee  It is more acute on the mental health side. We have a shortage of mental health providers, yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  I would say that we do not have any members of the Canadian Forces who don't have a family physician. We're able to provide for everybody in that regard. For us to undertake additional care, we're only staffed to manage our current cadre of military members and those reservists for whom we do provide care.

Veterans Affairs committee  We do know we have challenges both recruiting uniformed physicians and hiring civilian physicians to work within our clinics. I suspect we would have difficulty filling additional physician positions.

Veterans Affairs committee  As you can well imagine, trying to keep up with what's going on in the world of mental health care is not an easy challenge today. There are a lot of people spending a lot of time and energy researching mental health care and we're learning tremendously. We recognize these advances.

Veterans Affairs committee  I think that the greatest advances and greatest potential we have right now is where we're looking at more personalized health care. In the past, mental health care has been a little bit a case of, well, “We'll try this medication with the patient and see if it works, and if it doesn't then we'll try another medication.”

Veterans Affairs committee  It's quite incredible, isn't it?

Veterans Affairs committee  Due to the nature of our operations at the present time, sir, we do not have a detachment in Landstuhl, but our medical personnel in Geilenkirchen are tasked to go to Landstuhl when we have casualties there, in order to help them manage and coordinate that care and the transfer back to Canada.

Veterans Affairs committee  CROMIS is a mental health outcome measurement system. It's actually a system that Veterans Affairs Canada has been using in their OSI clinics. We recognize it as a valuable tool for us to be able to track the care of mental health patients. As for what this does, patients present, and for each of their care appointments they fill in a questionnaire.

Veterans Affairs committee  When they come for their appointment, sir, they have an iPad and they answer the questionnaire. When they go in with their clinician, the clinician reviews the results with them and looks at their position on the plot.

Veterans Affairs committee  We are still in the research phases with respect to using the CAREN system for PTSD. We have another virtual reality system that we're using for PTSD that's more portable and office-based. We are working with our allies. The Israeli defence force in particular has some skills with respect to CAREN and its use for mental health treatment.

Veterans Affairs committee  That's right, sir.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you very much for that. I will extend those congratulations.

Veterans Affairs committee  We have in the military a process primarily run by the directorate of medical policy, whereby we assign employment limitations based on the nature of an illness or injury of a member. We in the health services do not make a decision as to whether or not somebody meets the universality of service standard.

Veterans Affairs committee  I think that for complex cases right now the average time we're looking at is about three years. For non-complex cases, we may not see a three-year transition period. It may be more like two years.