Health committee  Yes, I said that earlier identification would mean the services could be set up in the community. As you said, there needs to be better integration of palliative care when a patient is receiving curative care and they are diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Health committee  All I can tell you is that, according to our data, patients who received medical assistance to die had also received palliative care. So one doesn't preclude the other. They are two different concepts and two different choices at the end of life.

Health committee  At the time of our report, we cited some information from the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer survey of medical schools, which did, indeed, find there were potentially some training gaps. While 90% of medical curricula had lectures related to palliative care, just 12% of stud

Health committee  It's a really interesting question. We took the costing piece out of the scope of our report because it was a more complicated question and we needed more time to work on it, but it's something we could potentially look at, for sure, in terms of analyzing those costs. We know, ge

Health committee  Yes, I think the example that Mr. Saulnier is speaking to is highlighted in our report as well. There's the Canadian Foundation of Health Care Improvement, which has highlighted some of the most exciting, innovative practices out there, and this one of offering emergency medical

Health committee  What we have agreed on with the provinces and territories, as part of the common statement of principles, is that we're working with them to develop 12 indicators to measure progress on all the shared health priorities, not just palliative care. There is one indicator that we're

Health committee  That being said, we're still going to continue to work on measures—

Health committee  It's a great question. I think there's a bit of a gap in research. We need to understand more about the countries that are doing better and what they are doing better. For example, when we look at our measure of primary care physician preparedness, the countries that did the be

Health committee  Is the question for me or for Health Canada?

Health committee  Okay. Making recommendations is not part of the Institute's mandate.

Health committee  However, our data does point to areas where improvements could be made. With this in mind, we could look more specifically at the early identification of patients in need of palliative care and the early introduction of such care. This would greatly improve the situation of end-o

Health committee  Actually, this index was not created by the Institute, but by researchers at the Economist Intelligence Unit. The researchers used available data and developed a series of indicators to rank countries in terms of palliative care. They looked at whether countries had a national po

Health committee  A number of the countries that stood out had placed a great deal of emphasis on a national strategy. Canada is a more decentralized country in terms of care delivery. Having a national strategy earned those countries many points.

Health committee  International comparison is always a challenge. Again, this is a report from the Economist Intelligence Unit. I am not very familiar with the methodology that was used, but it provides a starting point.

Health committee  Yes. Once again, on the total number, we know there are a lot of different types of health professionals who can work in palliative care. For ideal palliative care, you would see a very interdisciplinary team bringing in many different types of health professionals. With the da