Work to integrate county council and local teaching health board operations to improve services and reduce costs will continue despite obstacles to full merger.
Consultants KPMG were asked to investigate the business case for merging the two public organisations and reported back to the county council this week.
A merger of two could generate significant savings but there were major obstacles to overcome, the report has concluded.
Chief Executive, Jeremy Patterson told councillors that the report showed potential for savings of £6m-£14m but that there were significant barriers to full organisational merger. The findings however, should not prevent work continuing to integrate services and management to deliver these savings and service improvements.
“We will continue to look to integrate services as widely as possible to generate efficiency savings and streamline service delivery and we should not allow these obstacles to prevent this.” he said.
Mr Patterson said the report highlighted the health board’s £20m deficit, no redundancy policy, different decision making processes and staff modernisation issues as barriers which would have to be overcome to achieve full merger.
He told councillors he would be writing to the Welsh Assembly immediately to explain how the council and the teaching health board proposed to take the merger forward.
Andrew Cottom, Chief Executive of Powys teaching Health Board added; “We are firmly committed to further integration of health and social services. There are obstacles to overcome with regard to full merger and these remain subject of discussion but we are fully committed to the principles of a full merger.
The KPMG report will be considered at future board meetings of the county council and health board.
