Might I add a quick point to that? With the recent H1N1 outbreak in the city of Ottawa, when there was a huge surge at all the emergencies, the CHEO, Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, with usually 150 emergency visits a day, went to 350, resulting in having to cancel out-patient clinics, having to cancel surgeries and so forth. We activated flu assessment centres, which were the CHCs and a couple of other sites, and within five to six working days we saw those levels in emergency departments start to drop. This is to show there's good collaboration between primary care settings, like CHCs, and the hospital settings in terms of managing some emergency volumes.
On November 18th, 2009. See this statement in context.