Health committee  Absolutely. This was the recurring theme that we heard in all the presentations. I think Dr. Lewanczuk emphasized teams to better help and support resource physicians, in both primary care and speciality care, with lower-cost people doing a lot of the work.

Health committee  I don't have accurate numbers, but anecdotally, yes, they made more money. They had an incentive to do this, because they certainly had the time available to do it. We're also tracking to see what impact it's had on the rest of their practice to make sure that no one else is at

Health committee  This was $20 million new money that the province dedicated for this purpose, over and above the existing health region budget.

Health committee  It could have been done without the incremental funding, but to be honest, receiving the incremental funding provided an incentive to the regions to commit time and resources to make this happen.

Health committee  No, these were the same doctors and the same nurses.

Health committee  Well, we're collecting accurate case costs, actually, and the prosthesis cost is about one-quarter of the case cost.

Health committee  The institute did the entire evaluation of this whole process, and the institute is a separate philanthropic body that writes grants to get the money to do this work.

Health committee  One of the keys was that we had to become an affiliate of all the custodians of the information in order to give the institute permission to contact people on behalf of the physicians. Not just anybody can call. These are designates of the physicians calling patients, and they wo

Health committee  Yes, the institute has its own staff of research associates, some of whom are nurses and physiotherapists who were doing this calling.

Health committee  Yes.

Health committee  Sure. The money was divided between the three health regions that participated in the project: Edmonton, Calgary, and Red Deer. Each received a proportionate amount to deliver 1,200 new joint replacements. They were to be delivered in the way that the region and its physicians t

Health committee  Yes. I believe this method is transferable, but I want to emphasize that we haven't even transferred it to all the surgeons in the province of Alberta yet. It was a pilot that started with 13 surgeons that achieved those results, and there are a number more who we're engaging now

Health committee  This was entirely publicly funded. There were no incremental costs beyond the normal system of care; there were no incremental costs. This was entirely covered by the new funding I mentioned. I believe there is some limit on the number of physiotherapy visits that people get pos

Health committee  In Alberta, everything was covered. There were no incremental costs beyond the normal health care system. And patients were randomized into the system, so that in fact two-thirds of the people we treated were in the low socio-economic group, and their cost of care was entirely co

Health committee  Sure. I'd like to comment on that. I agree that safety and prevention is a key strategy with infection, because we know a large number of them would be preventable. Again, I believe that with the right information, a lot more of that is predictable, to risk manage patients more