The Vice-president of Medical Services for Southern Health-Sante Sud says he's not sure whether the creation of Shared Health Services Manitoba will result in job cuts in the region.

Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen announced Wednesday they are taking organizations like regional health authorities, CancerCare and Addictions Foundation of Manitoba and placing them under one umbrella so that experts from each organization can be used to better support the entire province.

Dr. Denis Fortier says the announcement is still very fresh and because it is so early in the game, he is not sure that all of the details have been ironed out.

Fortier admits he wasn't overly surprised when the announcement came out on Wednesday. He suggests this was probably the number one suggestion in the Peachey report, which was already issued more than one year ago.

According to Fortier, most patients and residents in the region probably will not notice a difference going forward. What will happen is that instead of the planning of clinical services being done regionally, it will become a provincial matter.

"We lose a little bit of our autonomy to plan for clinical services," thinks Fortier. "On the other hand, we are gaining a whole bunch of resources and expertise in trying to actually help us deliver some of those services into our region."

Fortier says over the next few months, clinical service groups will be put in place to examine all aspects of the health care system. This would be the case for things like general surgery and orthopaedics. They will also be tasked with mapping out workflows to make sure that wait times are reduced.

"That's really one of the big focuses in this," he says. "We know there's elevated wait times, how can we do this, not each region trying to figure things out themselves and doing things differently but how do we figure this out as a province?"

Meanwhile, prior to the creation of Shared Health Services Manitoba, Fortier was a council member for Provincial Medical Leadership Council (PMLC). This council was made up of Chief Medical Officers throughout the province and chaired by Dr. Brock Wright. Their task was to plan medical services within Manitoba in a coordinated fashion. This group is now becoming the Manitoba Clinical Leadership Council (MCLC). And, because Wright has been tasked with running Shared Health Services Manitoba, Fortier will be chairing MCLC.