News / Financial grip key to NHS recovery from pandemic

Mr Bond (pictured), chief finance officer for Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust, told the conference that the Covid pandemic had had a long-lasting impact on the NHS – with many of the challenges common to the US. ‘Productivity and efficiency remain major challenges for the system,’ he said, highlighting the more than seven million people on the NHS waiting list and long waits in accident and emergency departments.

He added that funding, which looked reasonable on the face of it, ‘doesn’t take into account the reductions in productivity over the last three years’. He said that lower output was often despite increases in staffing levels with the reasons for the fall in productivity often complex.

‘Our challenge in the UK is to cut out the huge inefficiencies that have built up and get back to financial grip,’ he told the conference. Mr Bond explained the theme for his year in office – Strength in numbers. ‘It is about the chief finance officer taking control of the organisation and ensuring rigorous financial discipline occurs throughout it,’ he said.

Like the United States, the UK faced a ‘chronic shortage of workforce’, competing with hospitality and retail employers for staff at the more junior levels. And there were problems with shortages in capital funding both to maintain estates and to take full advantage of technology

‘However, there is one thing we can have a say in and that is the finances,’ he said, ‘by ensuring that all of those in the system are properly educated and aware of the basics of financial control.’ This meant using resources efficiently, planning, budgeting and managing costs.

NHS England chief finance officer Peter Ridley last week told the UK HFMA summer series event that there were signs that the NHS was moving back to pre-pandemic processes around efficiency – restoring its ‘operational muscle memory’. With the current year expected to be more challenging than 2022/23, he said that that the increased ‘day-to-day momentum around efficiencies’ would be essential.

In Nashville this week, Dennis Dahlen (pictured right with Mr Bond) was installed as the US association’s new national chair, taking over from outgoing chair Aaron Crane. Mr Dahlen is chief financial officer at the Mayo Clinic. The conference also said goodbye to Joe Pfifer who is stepping down as the US HFMA chief executive. He is replaced by Ann Jordan.