biopsy to surgery. We did not use the time from core biopsy to surgery for this study as the core biopsies were often arranged by the surgeon's office in the TS (either for before or after the patient consultation date) and was therefore not felt to reflect the diagnostic process that was the purpose of the RABC and this study. Similarly, because the patients were placed on a single, combined surgical wait list, the time to surgery was not felt to reflect the differences of the two diagnostic systems, yet the improvement in diagnostic time for cancer patients in the RABC results in a significant decrease in time from presentation to surgery in the RABC compared to the TS. Because the common event between the two diagnostic systemsthe surgeon's private offices, so a retrospective design was necessary to compare wait times with the two diagnostic processes. Another limitation was determining the presentation date. For the patients seen in the RABC, the date of referral from the FP is recorded and this was used as the start date for the problem. In the surgeon's office, the date of referral does not correspond to the beginning of the diagnostic workup as the patients have much of the diagnostic workup by the family physician. The surgeon's recording of when the problem began was used as the start date, but some patients may have had the problem for some time before seeing the FP and for these patients the time from start to seeing the surgeon may seem longer due