Self-assessment

We are well into the swing of the HFMA autumn programme and, as the president says, it’s been great to see so many of you at local and national events. The service is moving at a frenetic pace so it’s gratifying so many of you can spare the time to look after your development.

Over the past year, the HFMA has been looking at itself to ensure it is in the best shape to serve you, our members. Thanks to the efforts of our former chair, Chris Calkin, we were able to do a lot of work on the internal structure earlier in the year, with his review looking at how the organisation develops into a bigger operation. 

This involved thinking through how we can communicate better and establish our own internal management structure. Our vice president Bill Gregory, who becomes president in December, led a commercial review to identify growth areas for the association. This looked at areas where we could develop our services.

We’ve done quite a bit of work on communications and how we can get our message out. We recently held a workshop with eminent journalist David Walker to discuss the best ways to promote our policy and technical work. Our social media presence has been ramped up considerably and our member app and events app are both key to our strategy to become a more paperless organisation. 

Don’t expect the association to start being very active in the media. We value the influence you have ‘inside the tent’ to promote HFMA messages. We believe our voice is being heard and our policy work is having a big impact.

The final bit of work we’ve been doing is on our own governance, run by HFMA fellow and former head of internal audit at the Houses of Parliament Paul Dillon Robinson. At the time of writing, his review had not yet been published, but the general view was that the organisation is well run with proper checks and balances. 

We are, however, committed to being the best we can be, so we’ll be taking his advice to make any changes we need to make.
So it has been a busy year but we are not interested in marking time. The qualification continues to grow from strength to strength and I’m looking forward to our graduation celebration on the Wednesday night of the annual conference. We have 30 or so diplomas to give out and well over 100 currently studying. Interest in the qualification is high and there are still opportunities to access the NHS Improvement/NHS England bursary fund, which reduces the cost of the diploma and the higher diploma.

You may have seen the finalised programme for the annual conference, which we published towards the end of September. I believe it is one of the more eye-catching programmes of recent years and we’ll be announcing our punchy closing speaker soon. But don’t leave it too late to book – numbers are high as usual, but let us know you’re coming in good time so we can allocate you a room and plan your attendance.

If you’re a finance director, this is the event. But it is also the stand out event for all NHS finance professionals, giving unrivalled opportunities for networking and sharing ideas.