There's a tremendous amount to learn about how to provide health care from the Japanese experience at serving people who are underserved. For instance, cooperatives in Japan started because people in the fisheries industry didn't have access to health care service delivery and they formed these cooperatives to make sure that people had access to that kind of delivery.
In Canada, in particular, the focus tends to be on access to physician services. In the cooperative model we've tended to focus on interdisciplinary approaches to health care. For instance, we've really engaged nurse practitioners as often being the first point of contact and the ongoing point of health service delivery for people, particularly those with chronic diseases. We think there are other disciplines that need to be active parts of the health care, particularly in primary health care, that can give people access to the health care they need.
We're also finding in the work that we do in health promotion and disease prevention that the engagement of nurses, health educators, and dieticians can have people more actively participate in supporting their own health so they don't need to have as much access to physician services.
We don't think in Saskatchewan, for instance, we'll ever be in a situation where there will be enough doctors to serve everybody who wants to have access to a doctor. So we need to bring into play other health-care professions to make sure that people get the quality of health care they need.