Thank you, Madam Chair.
I think the whole idea of collecting data and having a clearing-house is key to what you're saying, Dr. Sutherland.
I know that the whole HHR efficiency piece has not been tested at all.
Those are two big issues that were there in the 2004 model from the accord in which people were going to look at this and focus on it. For instance there are community care models—just to follow up on what Dr. Carrie was saying—and I know in places like Calgary they were using the multidisciplinary model of different HHR people to do appropriate care. As pilot projects, these community care groups were being rewarded based on the number of people they were able to keep out of hospital. So in fact they were freeing up beds in hospitals by doing this community...and mixing it with home care nursing. They were able to keep tabs on people and keep them well, keep them from getting so acutely ill they had to go to hospital, and using the appropriate caregiver.
Because they were given an incentive and rewarded at the end for the number of patients they kept out of hospital there was that incentive model.
The clinic I visited in Calgary had shown that they had a 25% drop in hospitalization rates. Do we have that information for any other such models that were started with the 2004 accord? Do you know about those? Have you been following them?