I think it's fraught with possibility. Again, even if we decide to bring the two departments closer together to make one an agency or dependent on the other, I think it's irrelevant. It's still going to come down to who holds which responsibility and who is actually implementing these programs and services. I don't see any harm in bringing them closer together.
I think if we could find a way that we could get beyond the information-sharing problem we continue to have.... We have to wait for files to be digitized and the authority given for the file to be transferred. Bringing the entities closer could start to eliminate some of these mechanical pieces that have been causing problems for years. We've talked about file transfer. It's been one of the agonizing, ongoing beefs we've had over the last 15 or 20 years.
There are synergies in bringing the two of them close together. My only caution would be that we don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. We want to make sure that at the end of the day, no matter what the entity looks like, there is one belly button to push and someone is responsible for what's going to happen to this transitioning member from the time we found out he or she was ill or injured until the time of release.