Comment / Forging ahead

As we approach the annual conference, the feedback we receive on a daily basis from the service is that times are getting tougher.  The association will look to use the conference to reflect on where we go next in trying to adequately represent the views of members while at the same time being constructive, professional and even-handed. 

It would be all too easy for us to stride into the media armed with an inflammatory survey to gain a quick media hit. Instead we intend to think about how we can exert influence to be positive. Those of you who have been fortunate enough to hear

Sue Jacques speak in recent months will have seen the graph she often puts on the screen – the one that shows UK borrowing as the highest in percentage terms anywhere in Europe.

It’s quite clear the government’s strategy to reduce that debt is going to take much longer than originally thought and it appears it might be choking off growth in certain areas.  So against all that, even protecting the cash already spent on the NHS is going to be a big ask and we must work hard to do that – at the very least.

I recently attended an event in Washington DC with our American cousins, the US HFMA. They are saddled with an unenviable cost basis with massive over-capacity designed to satisfy US citizens’ insatiable desire to have things done for them instantly. 

The right wing of US politics sometimes likes to characterise the NHS as a system where rationing is rife (NICE) and waiting is endless. This is an unfair characterisation of sensible approaches to evaluation of clinically- and cost-effective drugs and massively improved waiting times (and neatly ignores some poor assessments of performance in the US despite the higher costs). But at a more detailed level, there is growing interest in how we achieve what we do within a relatively modest proportion of GDP.

This is not a one system versus the other competition. The real question is what we can learn from each other – something to which think-tanks on both sides of the Atlantic are now turning their minds. The HFMA has always realised there are lessons to be shared. We may have dismantled our formal exchange programme but we continue to explore how we can maintain a healthy exchange of views.

Looking ahead, I am delighted with how the association is doing.  The programmes we have lined up for next year are being developed at the moment, as are the new initiatives we have on membership, research and e-learning.  I am pleased we have been able to make such a great start with the Commissioning Faculty and I am hoping that we can sign up many of the new clinical commissioning groups as they come on stream.  I am also pleased our new Chair, NED and Lay Faculty will launch on 4 December followed by its inaugural chairs’ conference in January.

I will finish my column with a plug for the article Sue Jacques and I have written concerning the Royal Charter application, which is featured on page 25 of this magazine. The board has decided to apply for the Charter and in the article we explain the basis for that application.  In many ways, we believe the CHFMA will be just like the HFMA – but with added clout and prestige.