Putting value centre stage

The reorganisation of NHS England and NHS Improvement to act as one body brings the NHS one step closer to having a system where real integration can happen. The HFMA is looking forward to working with the new management teams across the country, especially new chief financial officer Julian Kelly. 

Constant change has been a feature of my 19 years in and around the service and it hasn’t always been welcome. But the new structure will make a lot more sense once accompanied by primary legislation, which should remove some of the structural obstacles to system working.

As healthcare finance professionals, we need to take a leading role in creating real value for the NHS following the financial settlement.  Investment falls short of where many people argue it needs to be and yet we need to view the settlement in the context of wider spending decisions across the public services. Many continue to face significant reductions.

It is against this backdrop that the HFMA Healthcare Costing for Value Institute’s work comes into sharp focus. We recently held our largest costing conference, with over 240 ‘costers’ in the room; in May we turn to the value side of the equation with a first ‘value summit’. 

Value the opportunity is our president Bill Gregory’s theme this year, so it should be no surprise that he will chair the event. The institute is also involved in other initiatives, such as Future-Focused Finance’s best possible value decision-making framework. I hope you’ve seen something about this – if not, your organisation may not have signed up for membership.  I encourage them to do that – it’s extraordinarily good value (to coin a phrase).

Our qualification work continues and once again a healthy cohort of students have passed their assignments. We had planned to become an Ofqual awarding body but we’ve decided our current assessment strategy is suitable at level 7 to enable students to move to an MBA. 

Our overriding goal is to become an apprenticeship provider and we hope our level 7 qualification will be supportable using the levy, probably following the senior leaders’ standard. 

From January 2020 we will offer AAT, ACCA and CIMA level 4 apprenticeships, with the added value of some tailored level 4 content. If you are interested or want to know more, please contact me at [email protected].

Our summer conference will feature a session with author and former Labour government spokesman Alastair Campbell (pictured), and we should also hear from Mr Kelly.

For our annual conference in December, BBC Europe editor Katya Adler will be speaking. Even if Brexit has progressed by then, she should give a fascinating insight into European politics. New NHS chief people officer Prerana Issar has also agreed to speak on the Friday and Lord Carter will talk all things value. With our usual set of ‘short talks’ and networking, it promises to be a superb event.