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By JESSE ROBICHAUD
Canadaeast News Service

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Today is a landmark day for health care in New Brunswick as two regional health authorities, a health council and a shared services agency become legal entities.

But for the group that Health Minister Mike Murphy has repeated is the focus of the health reforms - the patients - the day will pass just like any other.

"At this stage of the game, Sept. 1, Sept. 2, for all front-line health-care delivery, there is no change there whatsoever," said Donald Peters, the CEO of Regional Health Authority B, which covers hospitals in southern New Brunswick, including Fredericton and Oromocto.

"Patients will still be treated; it will be the same clerks there, the same doctors, the same nurses."

Murphy has said the reforms, which reduce the number of regional health authorities from eight to two, were motivated by a need to control swelling health-care budgets and restructure the system in a more sustainable way.

But he has also said that a new "seamless" system will standardize health-care services and provide new services across the province.

And with the executive teams and boards of trustees selected for both health authorities, as well as the newly created New Brunswick Health Council and shared services agency, Peters said the next phase of work will take place behind the scenes.

But while the action will be happening away from hospitals and medical centres, Peters said the changes are focused on eventually bringing the highest standards of services to every area of the province.

"The focus of the whole transition process is really on the administrative and the non-clinical side of things," said Peters.

"Our next major step as an executive team is that we have a huge organization, over 12,000 staff, and now what we have to do is take four independent organizations that are now one and start drilling down into them and find out just how services are delivered in all the regions."

Once an initial inventory and audit can be performed on existing programs, Peters said services will be evaluated to determine what's working best. The techniques and practices that make it through the process will emerge as the new standards across the province. "Our work really is in the next four to six months to find out all the best practices, who is doing things out there we can learn from, how can we take the best and distribute it across the region," he said.

"How can we further bring this to a seamless system that will eventually cover both A and B."

Peters said two long-term objectives will be pursued throughout the restructuring.

The first objective is to provide a network of health-care services throughout RHA B, which is located in Miramichi and regroups the former South-East Regional Health Authority, as well the Saint John, Fredericton and Miramichi-area health authorities.

And the second objective is to extend that level of standardization in order to provide one seamless health-care system across the province.

Peters said he and the CEO of Regional Health Authority A, Andree Robichaud, have worked closely together and he expects the co-operation between both health authorities to increase.

Murphy has said the new structure will put an end to competition between health authorities.

But Peters said that level of standardization and co-operation doesn't mean a hospital or health centre will lose its local identity and ownership.

"What we have said from day one is that I am not there to take away identity and history and culture out of the four organizations that have existed there before," said Peters.

"The identification mechanisms are still there, the (hospital) foundations are still there. The mandates haven't changed."

Peters said there will be zones within each health authority that will correspond to previous health authorities in order to maintain direct links between the community and their health institutions.

"It will be one region comprised of four zones, and in each of those four zones we want to maintain local input, local decision making, local culture, local identity. We are not there to rob that from the community," he said.

Peters said the names of the regional health authorities will eventually be changed, just as the South-East Regional Health Authority and the Beausejour Regional Health Authority chose their own names.

While the offices of RHA B are renovated in Miramichi over the next three to four months, Peters and his executive team will work out of temporary offices in Fredericton.

But despite the temporary facilities, Peters couldn't be happier with the executive team he has assembled.