Member to member / Working together helps clinical-financial collaboration

Sanjay Agrawal, consultant at University Hospital Leicester NHS Trust, is the first clinician on the HFMA’s board of trustees. After spending a couple of years as a post-graduate doctor trainee in the UK, he moved to the US to continue his studies. He spent nine years in the States altogether before coming back to the UK in 2002 after his daughter was born. We spoke to him about his new role and how he’s building bridges between doctors and finance professionals.

Why did you get involved with the HFMA?

I’ve worked with and for a lot of professional organisations, but the HFMA strikes me as an organisation that’s high quality and high value – it’s something finance professionals should be proud of. I first became aware of the HFMA in 2012. I’d been doing some work around finance training for clinicians with a finance colleague at University Hospitals of Leicester, when I was asked to describe that work in an HFMA East Midlands branch event. This was my first contact with the HFMA. Subsequently I was invited to take part in some consultations around Future-Focused Finance and its development. Over time I visited the HFMA at 110 Rochester Row several times and became very familiar with the HFMA and the people who work at HFMA. I felt I became part of the family.

 What do clinicians and finance professionals have in common and what are the key differences you see on a day-to-day basis?

Whether you are a front-line clinician or whether you are in finance, we all have the same common purpose and that is to look after patients. Whether you’re doing it directly with a patient in the room or whether you’re planning for services and making sure we have all the equipment and the facilities we need; whether you’re doing the planning for population, or the commissioning of the services, it’s a common purpose – and that’s healthcare.

People get used to their own vocational work – you’re not going to find too many finance people in an operating theatre and not too many clinical people in an accounting meetings. But primarily the people are all the same and we have a common purpose.

Both clinicians and finance professionals also often both end up in leadership positions - I heard a statistic that a quarter of all chief executive officers have a finance background. We both have to go through significant training for our professional memberships and qualifications. I think we have more things in common than differences.

Do you find that you see things from a different perspective than the other HFMA trustees because of your background?

If we are thinking about resources for members, how we could add value to membership or how we attract new members, I can speak up to for clinicians and can describe what would be important to consider. Clinicians know very little about finance in the NHS and so there is a massive population of clinicians who work for the NHS that the HFMA can help.

There are some assumptions about clinical training and what clinicians do day-to-day. People probably think of them as a very homogenous group when in fact they are quite disparate with different needs depending on the stage of their career and the clinical background they have - I can help the board think about that and cater for different membership needs.

How does being an HFMA member support you in your role?

I learn a lot from the finance team in terms of strategic thinking, all the different components of the NHS and the newer developments such as the STPs and tackling unwarranted variation. I can then bring this valuable insight back to clinical colleagues.

What can we do to build more bridges between clinicians and finance professionals in the NHS?

Keep going. There’s never going to be a single thing one person can do and only have to do it once. Clinicians and finance have a relationship that is a bit like a marriage, you need to keep on working at it, it’s not a one-off thing. Seeing each other, being in the same environment, talking to each other, getting to know each other as people – it’s the people element that will make everybody realise that we are the same, we just have different roles in the team.

Working together on quality improvement projects is a really useful way of getting clinicians and finance people together and I’ve seen good examples of this happening around the country. Working together on a project with a common goal can help clinical-financial collaboration and sustain these relationships.

What piece of advice do you have for people who are starting their NHS career now?

Get to know the whole team. The whole team includes clinicians, finance, management and administration teams as well as many others. Get to know them and you’ll get the best out of  your career and have some fun along the way. The same people will pop up later on in your career and it’s always great to have friends in different NHS organisations.