A healthy community through health system partnerships: the approach of Markham Stouffville Hospital.

The structure of the Canadian healthcare system, particularly in Ontario, has remained remarkably stable over the past 25 years. No other private sector industry employing hundreds of thousands of people, spending tens of billions of dollars annually and serving millions of consumers every day has survived for 30 years without the need to reinvent itself in quite fundamental ways. How then has the healthcare sector in Canada avoided the pressure to "reinvent itself?"