Unfortunately, we know that smaller problems become larger problems. People have been waiting for a variety of different care. It could be primary mental health and psychiatric services. It could also extend to cancer screenings, of course, such as colonoscopies and mammograms. It also extends to procedures and surgeries that people have been waiting for: hip or knee replacement surgery, cataract surgery or cancer removal surgery. It runs the gamut of our health care system.
What we have found over the past 21 months within this pandemic is that we have seen an escalation, unfortunately, in terms of late presentations of pathology, which means advanced stages of disease and of course perhaps the worst prognoses. When we think about a system-level perspective, this actually costs more to deal with.
We know that the pandemic has had a significant impact on the ability not only to provide service but to provide service in a timely way. It is now our task as a country to think about the future.