Comment / Difficult times

HFMA chief executive Mark Knight highlights to association’s agenda supporting and highlighting best practice in finance teams

You’d have to have been on a desert island for the past six months to be unaware of the increasingly dire state of NHS finances. I know there is considerable anxiety about the very real prospect of the service as a whole being in deficit at the end of the year. With all the other pressures – not least the £22bn challenge and the government’s desire to do new stuff such as seven-day working – the challenges are daunting.

The ‘leave no stone unturned’ letters from the Trust Development Authority and Monitor were understandably not well received by the service. Monitor’s call to ensure vacancies are filled ‘only where essential’ is unlikely to have provided a light bulb moment for any finance director.

But the letters do at least signal some form of official recognition of exactly how challenging things are. We all want high-quality healthcare, but at any price? I hope the net result will be greater financial grip and even closer working between clinicians, finance managers and others to deliver real value – the best possible healthcare within available resources. As our president says, we are ‘stronger together’.

Our recent NHS financial temperature check confirmed the widespread deficit forecasts. We have continued to represent finance directors’ views and concerns in meetings with officials and policy and technical director Paul Briddock is busy supporting the media’s understanding of current pressures. We are committed to acting and talking responsibly and believe that being in the system gives us greater access to the relevant powers and gets us listened to.

We are all anticipating the spending review, with its core components likely to dictate debate at our annual conference in December.  It is an event that seems to grow in importance each year – as evidenced in the continuing growth in numbers. More than 500 have already booked and remaining spaces are going quickly. Alastair Campbell is set to be our closing speaker, talking to us about leadership – no doubt with a few references to his time at Number 10.

Our wider events programme remains busy with old favourites including the charitable funds conference and new ones such as an integration event with CIPFA. This latter, with the leading local government finance representative body, will explore the opportunities for health and social care to work more closely.

We still have our awards programme running and this time groups of staff can nominate their finance director or deputy. Future-focused finance is also running its own award – see our website for details.  

All in all, we have a busy autumn term. We continue to strengthen our membership offer and Alison Cracknell, now our full-time national branches manager, will lead efforts on this.

In addition, former chairman Chris Calkin is doing a nationwide tour to gather feedback about the association from branch leaders. All these initiatives will help an already good HFMA become even better.