Thanks very much for the question about collaboration.
I would like to expand a little bit upon the really unique, and I believe creative, work that has been funded under the primary health care transition fund. In Ontario, for example, we received approximately $2 million to fund three integration projects. I was a principal investigator for the one that received about $700,000 to fund integration in a hospital setting. It was not just about chiropractors. The ministry actually funded us to look at how an integrated model of care would work in a department of family and community medicine. We also received funding for the same type of study in a community health centre, as well as in family health teams in Ontario.
This covered all three sectors of how services are delivered in Canada. All of these integration projects actually were featured at the primary health care summit that the health ministry put on. They were three of 60 projects that were presented at that national level, receiving that recognition.
We learned very clearly from the establishment of that model that when services are delivered across a team, and that team has eliminated the hierarchical structure such that team members are actually equal players, with their roles appreciated and respected, then patients greatly benefit from the delivery of services.
As well, we did an ethnographic type of study that looked qualitatively at the attitudes and perspectives of the other health care providers, and we saw a major shift in those perspectives over a two-year period with the inclusion of chiropractic services.
At the end of our study, we also did a physician satisfaction survey. We have approximately 45 physicians in our department, and they were 100% supportive of the continuation of chiropractic services. Several of them commented--it's been published in two papers--that they felt it significantly affected their ability to manage their patients appropriately.