British Columbia has always had some foresight in seeing things come down the pipe. For example, British Columbia developed a provincial working group that's been preparing for MD-SUMC since September 2022. It certainly took the extra time; it's been over a year now. That is a subcommittee of a different committee of the Ministry of Health, which took the expert panel recommendations and took the model practice standards into account and has now proposed new provincial safeguards with the creation of a case review committee for all MD-SUMC cases, for example.
Three of the regional health authorities are already ready to establish this case review committee. One of them is already running something very similar to that, and certainly all of them will be ready by March 2024. Both our regulatory authorities, the medical and nursing colleges, are making changes to the medical practice standards for the province based on the model practice standards and the working group's recommendations.
I think with all of that work having been done in the past year, the province feels ready to move forward. When did they say they were ready? I would say they're saying it now as they realize things are falling into place on time. Did we take advantage of the extra year? Absolutely, we did.