Comment / Thinking ahead

As I’m writing this, on Thursday night, I’m pretty sure that many of you will be sorting out your Covid-19 cost returns, as you put 2019/20 accounts to bed. You will be trying to make sure that you get appropriately recompensed for the costs of stepping up your organisation’s response to the pandemic.

This is making a lot of people feel anxious. I’m sorry about that, as I know that you will want to be getting your head in the game of ‘what next?’, and not poring over endless assurance returns.

However, we are the stewards of the public purse and, I guess, a certain amount of governance and control should be expected. And while I’m in this space, we should spare a thought for the businesses and suppliers that we rely on. Many are experiencing uneven cash flows and more uncertainty than we are.  These are truly hard times for many people.

If you want a bit of general reading, and cheering up at how amazing our NHS is, I strongly recommend the NHS Providers publication Confronting coronavirus, the story so far.  It’s got some really interesting insights into how we have coped to date. And it explores the emerging tensions as we think about how we approach maximising patient and taxpayer benefit for both Covid and non-Covid patients.

How are we going to meet the pent-up demand for those not currently accessing services? How are we going to keep some of the brilliant new ways of working and system integration?  How are we going to ensure that community and social services can cope with the increasingly complex patients that they will need to see?  So many questions, and our skills in analysis, strong governance and decision making must help our systems get to some answers quickly.

One final thing that may help in getting to the answers. I’ve been blown away again by stories of finance colleagues spending time in the service, doing shifts on wards and in clinical support services, re-engaging with the business and really getting underneath what’s going on.  This is brilliant and we can’t do enough of it, now and in the future.  Business partnering at its best.

Good luck with those returns, stay well, and stay close to the service.