Alumni story / HFMA Awards 2016 - embracing the digital age

Part of the pre-launch work involves checking that all of the prospective judges for each category are all happy to be involved, followed by the awards judge bingo exercise of finding a suitable date for the panel to attend interviews with the short listed candidates. 

All of the award categories and questions are reviewed by the appropriate HFMA committees and any major changes need to be approved by HFMA’s Board of Trustees so there is always plenty to do before you even get to launching and marketing the awards.

This year we have taken a couple of bold steps in order to hopefully make things a bit easier for everyone to get involved.  The most significant of these is the use of some new online award submission software which, as the name suggests, allows entrants to fill out all of the award entry details online. 

At any point entrants can select, edit and submit their award entries via an easy to set up and use web platform.  This should have benefits for everyone involved as it makes it easier to submit entries but it also makes life a lot easier for the judges and for the awards programme organiser.

This brings us neatly onto the second peak period which is the week before the submission deadline.  I think it is well engrained into the healthcare finance psyche that when presented with a deadline, submission of anything at any time more than a couple of hours ahead of the cut off is most un-natural behaviour.  However, I hope this year, that with the introduction of the capacity to edit award entries even after they have been submitted at any time prior to the 30^th September, we will get a few more award entries coming in gradually between now and the end of September.

Based on my own experiences of the HFMA awards and following feedback from many different judging panels over the last few years, I have also put together a list of award entry hints and tips to assist with the process of submitting an entry and to hopefully improve your chances of being shortlisted (although I can offer no guarantees).  Competition for the top four spots in each category is often very fierce and paying attention to a few small details can often make the difference between being shortlisted or not.

The HFMA awards offer a great opportunity to showcase what your organisation is doing well and feedback from previous entrants suggests that even the act of entering the awards can be a real boost for morale and a recognition of hard work so I would encourage you to get involved and try out our new award software to be in with a chance of winning a national healthcare finance award.

Ben Renshaw

HFMA Awards Manager