Within our contracting process we follow the rules of agreement on internal trade. We follow any provincial rules that govern competitive bidding. Certainly, in the past, I think it was quoted by the minister in B.C. that pricing has been a very big part of the focus of going to market and using competitive bidding to get pricing for hospitals that is fair, competitive, and within the rules and regulations. We have been using this process for years. It has only been recently, when we noticed an awful lot of shortages two to three years ago, that we recognized this traditional process with the full focus on price was no longer satisfactory.
In our contracting process we are obliged to post what we call our weighting criteria, which is what's important to us and how decisions are made. In this round of contracts we introduced a new section in our weighting criteria, which was assurance of supply. We reduced the importance of price. We reduced the importance of product quality and safety. We introduced, which is up to a 20% factor, a focus on drug shortage and a supplier's ability to supply the product in the marketplace. We did change our focus away from just price and quality to include this other significant aspect, which is actually getting the drug to the patient. It doesn't matter how safe, efficacious, and cheap it is; if the patient can't access it, it's of very little value.