Comment / Changing pace

I’m delighted our first 16 students for the HFMA qualification began studying in May. The qualification represents a new chapter for us as an organisation and is the culmination of a two-year development project that the association has invested substantial sums in. 

This has had an impact on the association’s finances, but the board believes it is an important step forward. Our next development will be the creation of further qualifications to cater for other groups within the service.  

Our new qualification is at level seven – in other words, it is a postgraduate qualification. The further opportunities we are looking at would be at levels three and possibly four.  

All these initiatives are only going to succeed if senior finance professionals want them to and, while the qualification isn’t cheap, it is still hugely competitive compared with what else is in the market. And at the lower levels, there is the added incentive that we may be able to tap into the apprenticeship levy.

I also want to thank you for the comments I received on our new strategy document. The revised strategy will now be presented to the board in July for adoption and a first budget has already been crafted around it. We are also reorganising ourselves internally to prepare ourselves for the next phase of our development.

The introduction of a new app will offer you better access to our content and we are improving other ways of communication with you. We hope these will be in place by the end of the year. Our association is changing, but we’re not moving away from one of our core principles – influencing the agenda. That remains a key role for HFMA alongside our education and technical work.

I’ve just returned from the US HFMA conference, which as usual was staggering in size and scale. One of the key features of the trip was a great two-day session we held with colleagues from the US and Australia. Australia represents a kind of bridge between the free market system of the US and our system. It was useful to share experiences of our different systems and hear also what’s going on in South America.  
Since the demise of our UK/US Exchange programme in 2009, we have kept in touch by visiting each other’s conferences. However, I have always felt that the three ‘HFMAs’ could do a lot more to connect members across the associations. We are looking at how we can realise this ambition using online technology.  

We face many of the same challenges around addressing clinical variation and managing cost growth in the face of rising demand, ageing populations and increasing levels of chronic conditions.  

Moves to accountable care systems, better costing, payment approaches that encourage collaboration and integration, and managing services to maximise value (measured in outcomes and cost) are areas where we are all trying to learn more about what works.

Back in the UK, as we gather together for our first summer Convergence conference, supporting system solutions to current challenges, I can only reflect that the association is changing fast. I need your help to continue to develop these many new initiatives and I know you will give that help willingly.