Designs on the future

If the NHS is to meet the ambitions set out in the NHS long-term plan, it will have to change dramatically over the coming decade. New models of care will be required that harness new digital technologies. Care will need to be more personalised to meet the specific needs of different parts of the population.

It will have to make good on the promise to rebalance its activities in favour of more prevention – reaching people before they get ill or before their condition deteriorates into a more complex problem.

And if it is going to meet these challenges, it will need a finance function at the top of its game. That’s the conclusion of a report from the HFMA, Future-Focused Finance and PwC. NHS finance: designing our future sets out a vision for a future NHS finance function and seeks finance practitioners’ views on this vision.

It is a valuable and necessary exercise. We can’t just expect to have the right number of clinicians to meet future demands unless we plan for it. That means understanding how care will be delivered in future, the different roles that doctors, nurses and therapists will fulfil and the skills they will need. That’s why the NHS produced its interim people plan earlier this year.

Well, it’s exactly the same for NHS finance. Without planning for the future, there is no guarantee that the function would have the right skills and be working in the right way to meet the demands of the NHS in 10 years’ time and beyond.  If we don’t think about these issues now, the function may never achieve its potential.

The report is clear that finance has a lot to offer. It already contributes in a major way to the success of the NHS. But the function arguably has an even bigger role going forward as the service focuses increasingly on the delivery of value and starts exploring the potential of approaches such as population health management.

There is a lot to think through. Technology is set to revolutionise the NHS – from genomics to virtual consultations and the use of big data to target support at different parts of the population. But it will also transform finance departments.

First the function must explore the best ways to harness this technology. How can it make use of robotic process automation to take on high-volume, low-complexity manual tasks? What role could blockchain play in improving the efficiency of payments and reconciliations?

Then it must think about the additional skills and attributes needed by finance staff to work in this new environment. Greater automation should free-up finance staff time to take on more business partnering roles, spending more time on data analysis and supporting clinical teams and less on data gathering and manual processing.

This implies a major staff development exercise. Individuals will have to take responsibility for developing the skills to prosper in this new world. Organisations and national bodies must provide the right opportunities for that development.

The function will also have to ensure it retains its existing talent – people who have specifically chosen to work in NHS finance to make a difference to people’s lives. In addition, it has to be able to attract the best people from other sectors. And to maximise its effectiveness, it will need to focus on diversity and inclusion.

The NHS faces significant challenges over the coming years, but it will also be an exciting place to work, and finance professionals have a major part to play in enhancing care for patients and the value delivered for taxpayers. Designing our future is just a start in trying to understand how the NHS finance function needs to adapt – the aim is now to consult widely with the function and get its feedback and enhance or refine the vision. But it’s a good start.