We would agree that the accord and the guidance that might come with that would provide stimulus for some of the actions we need to take.
The issue you speak to about waiting times is another version of the wait-time issue we have in the country. The last place we want frail, older adults is in acute care. It's a dangerous place for a frail, older adult. One of the things we need to do is figure out how to keep them in their homes or in their residences or receiving primary care in the community, more so than in acute care, and when we send them to acute care, we want them to stay there as short a time as possible. If they fracture a hip, they need to get in and out.
The issue of the wait times—the wait for long-term care—is actually quite complex. It's not as simple as an A and B relationship: that if we build more nursing home beds, we will shorten emergency room crowding problems. It's not quite that straightforward. This individual moves through the system and touches a lot of parts of the system, so it's going to take a coordinated effort.
We know that seniors are particularly vulnerable at points of transition. The nursing home-emergency department transition, for example, is a very important transition that we need to look at. Any guidance we get that provides stimulus from activities that happen as the accords work through will help us, I think, with things like residential and continuing care acts that will provide a framework within which we can look at tying funds to key performance areas.