News / Commission alters health check

The Healthcare Commission has announced changes to the financial management element of its annual health check for 2008/09.

The commission said its use of resources rating for all types of trust had been renamed 'the quality of financial management'.

While the assessment for non-foundation and foundation trusts would remain largely the same, there would be changes for primary care trusts.
The Healthcare Commission uses the information gathered by the Audit Commission to assess PCT and non-foundation trusts' quality of financial management.  For trusts this will continue to be based on the Auditors' Local Evaluation (ALE) while PCTs will move to a new cross-public sector use of resources framework.

The new framework assesses PCTs across three elements. These are: managing finances, governing the business and managing resources.
However, the commission will base the quality of financial management assessment soley on the managing finances element. The two other themes will be used in other areas of the Commission's assessment, including corporate governance, use of data, data quality and asset management. These areas relate to auditors' statutory duties to satisfy themselves that PCTs have proper arrangements for securing economy, effectiveness and efficiency.

The Healthcare Commission commented: 'We continue to value all of the Audit Commission's assessment, and wherever possible will use evidence from the remaining two themes for other aspects of our standards-based assessment. We believe this will reduce the risk of trusts being penalised twice for the same issue in the ratings.'