The merger formalises years of collaboration between the two organisations and aims to cut 44 duplicated services.
One example of a single service that is already up and running is the mental health liaison team, to help deal with a large increase in people in crisis turning up at the emergency department.
Lead nurse Ben Ford said: “They would be seen by someone from my team, they would have a psycho-social assessment.
“More importantly, as we merge, they can access some of the other services we have got.
“We have got Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) services in the BRI…we have also got the ability to refer on to Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership Trust,” he added.
Kane said aligning the trusts would also benefit staff through shared contracts and more flexible working.
“It means for our 28,000 staff… we will be making sure there is fair pay, parity, far more opportunity to work right across our range of vacancies… we now allow people to just passport between all parts of the trust, so we’re saving actually quite a lot of training hours and therefore, that’s a great productivity saving for us.”