During the pandemic, we were in some ways fortunate to create stronger collaborations provincially and nationally with partners in other facilities. They were undergoing the same challenges with shortages of pharmaceuticals, shortages of personal protective equipment and those types of things. We saw the opportunities grow for partnerships and collaborations. We were certainly grateful to be able to share some of our pandemic preparedness plans on a provincial scale.
The coordination between some provinces is much more seamless, given that some provinces are by nature smaller and all fall under a single health authority. In larger provinces, like Ontario and B.C., it is more challenging to coordinate some of those efforts.
Postpandemic, we also had some growth with monitoring antimicrobial usage across Canada. I am mindful of our academic centres. Our acute-care teaching hospitals have the bandwidth to support research in some of the mandatory data reporting that comes along with pathogen and antimicrobial usage reporting.
However, we are challenged that we still have gaps in our smaller community hospitals and long-term care facilities, and with our primary care and community usage. Yes, absolutely, some of it is in the acute-care hospital space, but a large part of the antimicrobial prescribing is outside the four walls of a hospital.