Welcome to the Eastern Branch

Dear Members,

The branch has an exciting Programme of events for the coming months.

 Towards a more commercial NHS event on 5th June 2009 which will feature Steve Clarke as a Keynote Speaker and the commercial team at the SHA and a VAT event on the 2nd July 2009 which is being presented for us by Senior Managers at Deloitte LLP.

We are also holding our Annual Conference on the 1st October at Chilford Hall Vineyard and have great pleasure in announcing that David Flory will be our Keynote Speaker at the event.

Please consider the possibility of sending a selection of your staff on these events.  Thanks to the support of FSD, the two-for-one offers will continue for the foreseeable future. And of course, CPD certificates are available at the end of every course. HFMA branch activities remain an effective and efficient (dare I say cheap?) way of keeping the skills of your staff up to date, and your Institute's demands satiated.

On the subject of future courses, if you have any suggestions for future events, please let us know.  You can contact the branch executive (if they don't contact you first) by phone or by e-mail. Alternatively, face to face at events or through the surveys that run at the end of every course.

Please do get involved in HFMA.  We need to encourage membership of HFMA, to ensure that HFMA represents finance staff across the whole of the patch.  And do get involved; it might just pay.  In the next few weeks we will be announcing an award; a bursary scheme offering a free place on the US/UK exchange to a member from our branch whom we feel has contributed most to the success of the branch.  The decision for this year has been made…but next year could it be you?

Keith Wood

Chair  - Eastern Branch of HFMA

Director of Finance at West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust and Chair of the HFMA'S Financial Management and Research Committee