News / Finance leaders show united front on development

The finance leaders of the main national NHS bodies are committed to creating an integrated development strategy for finance staff, the HFMA annual conference was told.

A Finance Leadership Council has been set up bringing together finance directors from NHS England, the Department of Health, Monitor, the NHS Trust Development Authority and Health Education England together with the HFMA.

The strategy plan responds to concerns that the division of responsibilities and new structures following the Health and Social Care Act changes could lead to a similar fragmentation in finance staff development.

With no obvious single head of the NHS finance profession, the bodies have come together to ensure they continue to support the development of NHS finance staff as a single function, rather than as separate sector specific functions.

There is a recognition that NHS finance teams have a major role to play in supporting the delivery of transformed health services and new patient pathways. However new skills, with a greater focus on value-based decision making, will be needed for finance teams to realise their full potential.

Speaking at a panel discussion involving all the national bodies, Paul Baumann, chief financial officer of NHS England said: 'All the people around this table are committed to transforming our function and helping it to deliver added value.'  Mr Baumann said that over the next six months, the national bodies would work together, and with the service, to define the finance function of the future. This would explore the key capabilities, the areas where finance needed to focus on and the career model and development needed to support this.

Mr Baumann added that the transformation would not be overnight, suggesting it would take 'a matter of years' to achieve.

Bob Alexander, finance director at the NHS TDA acknowledged that the new system created risks for the function and that the function's togetherness had helped the NHS meet challenges in the past. 'We are all agreed on not allowing this fragmentation [to happen in the finance function],' he said.

The finance leaders said that finance managers moving between different parts of the NHS provided benefits for the service as a whole, helping managers to see different perspectives and understand the broader implications of their decisions. However Mr Baumann suggested that too little use was made of secondments to help managers gain rapid learning and experience of different services and organisations.

The work to develop a finance development strategy – known as Future focused finance – is being co-ordinated by Mark Orchard, finance director of NHS England’s Wessex Area Team [email protected] .