Mr. Chair, obviously our health and social service authorities take advantage of some of the shared services that are in place for the whole government, so Human Resources is one. We have some authorities that take advantage of the TSC services. Among the authorities within this system, we have actually been working with a consultant over the last several months. Working with our authorities, we actually generated a list of something like 60 possible functions where there might be an opportunity for savings or efficiencies or better service if they were shared. The consultants have talked to every authority. They have given us an initial report that has identified some areas where we actually already do have shared services formally or informally. For example, laboratory information services is operated on a system basis. Purchasing of medical equipment is done on a system basis.
There were then some recommendations for some other areas that seem to lend themselves to a shared service approach. A couple of the top ones are procurement. All the authorities are doing their own procurement. Another one is accounts payable and accounts receivable. We are actually working with the consultants now to do more of a business case to see what those might look like.
In addition to recommendations for areas where we should go to actual shared services, they have also flagged some areas where we should at least promote a more integrated approach. Bed management is one amongst our facilities. We are already doing that to some extent for our long-term care centres. Another one is risk management, where every authority is trying to establish and invent their own approaches to risk management and we could probably get a much more effective and more cost-effective approach by combining resources. That work is ongoing and we do expect a final report later in the summer.