Health committee  I think it requires a team effort to solve it. It's the teams that need to solve it, including administrators, with people watching from the public.

Health committee  Thank you for the question. We actually saved money in acute care by decreasing lengths of stay, and some of the in-hospital costs and spending more money at the front end in terms of optimizing patients, educating them, and preparing them for surgery. The case costs were about the same per case across the continuum, from time of presenting with hip and knee replacement all the way through, including rehabilitation and home care costs.

Health committee  We've been giving our information to similar groups in other provinces from the time of our announcement to the present day. We believe it should be shared and best practices should be emulated, and knowledge transmission is one of our key themes.

Health committee  I don't know yet. I would like to have better information before giving you a solid answer. It's a lot more predictable than we think, because we know the population demographics better than ever before. If we knew the costs of care and of the infrastructure required--that would be acute care and human resources--we could answer that more clearly.

Health committee  Mr. Chair, it's a great honour to be here. Thank you for the invitation. I'm here not to rehash all the problems in health care but to propose some potential solutions, with some preliminary evidence that it is possible. I brought copies of my presentation in both English and French, to be distributed to you.