It is an interesting time for the NHS, faced on one hand with extreme economic pressures and on the other with exciting opportunities under the banner of QIPP (quality, innovation, productivity and prevention) to deliver better health outcomes.

Well, it won't be easy unless clinicians and finance managers find ways to proactively share their knowledge and skills to drive common goals - improving quality and efficiency by working together effectively. Finance directors cannot design clinical pathways, but they can help frontline clinicians to play that lead role by informing them of the financial implications of the changes they intend to make to improve quality of health services, including the impact of any variations of clinical practices. Therefore, both groups of professionals have to engage at all levels in an NHS organisation in a meaningful way.

The creation of such valuable engagement at a large scale within the NHS would pave the way to achieve QIPP objectives. However, we would also need to:

• Challenge conventional boundaries of silo working with new approaches of effective engagement
• Generate new ideas to streamline structures and data sharing, in order to make rational decisions together to deliver effective services (in terms of patient outcomes); and
• Use tools, such as patient level information and costing systems (PLICS), to create better understanding of cost and quality issues and showcase examples of good practice of joint-up working with measureable outcomes.

With the help of the HFMA I have recently initiated an online survey to get views of such engagement from acute trusts’ finance directors. And I hope, through this blog, our wider finance community feel inspired and come up with ideas to do things differently – but jointly with their clinical colleagues. I look forward to hearing your ideas, views and examples of good practice of effective engagement, which you think should be spread widely in the NHS.