Comment / Face time

By Sue Jacques

While communications technology is breathtaking, meeting in person and networking remain vital to the success of partnership working.

I came home from work the other night just in time to catch the news that Twitter co-founder Biz Stone had warned that spending hours on the micro-blogging site is unhealthy. Earlier in the week a colleague from a local public sector organisation proudly announced that she was the proud virtual grandmother of a beautiful baby girl in Edinburgh and showed me a video stream of her granddaughter. These two unrelated events caused me to reflect on the power of the technologies that connect us and the importance of relationships in partnership-working.

As humans, social interaction is necessary to our physical and mental wellbeing. For 61 years the HFMA has provided a focus  for healthcare finance professionals to influence, debate and respond to NHS policy, ensuring resources are optimally deployed for the benefit of patients. The association is a respected organisation and the network it provides is the envy of many other NHS professionals.

The HFMA is also progressive. Over recent years it has capitalised on technologies to bring you, our members, a more extensive and easily accessible content, largely through our website. More recently it has begun to embrace social media, bringing you increased and more accessible support through its programme of webinars and discussion forums on LinkedIn. These media are allowing us to accelerate our learning and strengthen our relationships in ways we couldn’t have conceived of a decade ago. So, if you haven’t taken advantage yet, why not give it a try? 

But we don’t live in a virtual world and to nurture the relationships that are so important to the partnership agenda it is essential that from time to time we meet… in person.

I recently attended both the Yorkshire and Humber and North West HFMA branch annual conferences. Both had exciting programmes covering a huge range of issues thanks to organisers Sarah Hogan and Kim McNaught respectively – both of whom had certainly ‘Made a difference’ – my theme for the year. The quality of the debate and opportunity for networking was phenomenal and underlined the important role of local branches in getting us together and allowing us to develop those strong relationships that will underpin effective partnership working in these financially challenged times.

Even Monitor has acknowledged that some of the emergent difficulties in foundation trusts cannot be addressed in isolation, but require an economy-wide response. Imagine how difficult that would be to broker if you didn’t have good relationships with your counterparts in those organisations.

So at both a national and local level the HFMA is critical to supporting and promoting the networking and relationship-building on which effective partnerships can be built.

My aim through my year is to highlight finance professionals who are ‘Making a difference’ and my visits to the branch conferences mean I am spoilt for choice. Given my focus this month on relationships and partnership-working I’d like to highlight the work Sheffield commissioners have led with providers across the city to manage emergency activity, and for NHS Oldham’s work in conjunction with Pennine Acute to better manage elective care. Both initiatives focused on optimising efficiency and reducing variation while improving the patient experience. So three cheers for Steve Sutcliffe and Dr Hugh Sturges (NHS Oldham), and Julia Newton and Dr Tim Moorhead (NHS Sheffield) and their teams. Job well done.