I speak from a physician's perspective, but we see a number of examples in the country that we need to build off. I think there are a few things in common, so I'll just mention two very quickly.
You all know about the hip-and-knee study out of Alberta. How did they move from many weeks to a matter of a number of weeks to move people through the system?
I think you all know about the breast cancer study out of Mount Sinai in Toronto. Again, it's the same thing.
We should look at a couple of those studies and at what made the difference. We see a number of themes. I don't have them in front of me, but one theme is that both of those models had, for want of a better word, a “facilitator” to make the whole system work. There is some literature around the use of facilitators, triage officers, or managers, whatever you want to call them, who are the people who just take the individual patient through the system.
I'm giving you just one example because we have very limited time. I think this is the kind of strategy we should look at because the evidence is pretty powerful.
On the primary care side, which is an area I practice in when I have a moment to practice, we are developing advanced access systems. We are trying to encourage family physicians to change their whole model of booking so that the bookings are not based on coming back in four months for high blood pressure. The bookings are based on same day and 24- and 48-hour calls to the physician.
We have a number of things going on and we need to pull them together. We've done a lot of pilots and we're doing a lot of things, but we're not putting it together. I must say that we're probably duplicating it across the country, and we wouldn't need to if we could roll it out.