News / New focus on ‘fair’ organisations

NHS organisations with a fair score in their key financial assessment face new scrutiny from the Department of Health and strategic health authorities, David Flory told the HFMA conference.

The Department’s director general of finance praised PCTs and trusts for their overall performance in their auditors’ local evaluation (trusts) and use of resources (PCTs) in 2008/09, which feed into the annual health check assessment.

‘Overall use of resources scores last year reflected improvements in the financial position and financial management across the service,’ he said. ‘That is something collectively you can be terrifically proud of.’

But he said there were still 40% of organisations no better than fair (one level above weak) and 30% of that had never been better than fair. ‘It is too blunt to say “fair is the new weak”,’ he said. ‘But as we have fewer and fewer weak organisations, it begs the question why.’

He said it was unclear whether the problem was down to lack of ambition or constraints. But he said the Department would work with SHAs to ‘ensure everybody was on a journey of improvement’.