HFMA 2019

A number of senior civil servants were unable to make presentations due to pre-election sensitivity. However, the country’s voting intentions and the different offers on the table from the various political parties were still prominent in discussions inside and outside the main conference room.

Jennifer Dixon, chief executive of thinktank The Health Foundation, provided a helpful reminder of the main parties’ key promises on health – focusing in on funding for the NHS and all-important social care. However, she also made a more general argument for whichever government emerged to take a longer-term view of the resources needed to deliver services sustainably and to the required standard. She trailed plans by the foundation to establish a centre that would develop careful supply and demand projections for the service going forward.

She added that there did appear to be consensus that staffing now represented the central challenge. This was a theme picked up by Mark Britnell, global chairman and senior partner for KPMG in the UK. Solving the global workforce crisis in healthcare, he said, would mean harnessing technology, devising new models of care and using staff in different ways.

Finance staff will themselves need to adapt to new roles in future as technology also changes the ways their departments operate. A new report from Future-Focused Finance, the HFMA and PwC – launched at the conference – imagines a future where the NHS is seen as the best place to work for finance staff, where diversity helps to drive innovation and where finance staff are widely recognised for their contribution to delivering good patient outcomes.

Introducing the document – Designing our future: better decisions, better health – Simon Worthington, director of finance at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and a member of the Finance Leadership Council, said it was an attempt to think about what the function needed to start, stop or do differently. A panel session discussed the need for finance staff to think creatively, and ways to improve staff mobility across different parts of the system.

Bringing the conference back to the election and the Brexit issue that was so fundamental to it, BBC Europe editor Katya Adler reflected on the political landscape during 2019.

However, a stand-out moment for many delegates was the appearance of Jax Kennedy and her amazing assistance dog, Kingston, on the main stage. Kingston, funded from a personal health budget, helps Jax manage her physical disabilities and has transformed her life. Kingston is estimated to have saved the NHS nearly £1m over the last few years and was a major hit with the conference audience.

The conference also hosted the annual HFMA awards, recognising the best in NHS finance and governance. Eight awards were presented, with Karen Geoghegan, chief finance officer at Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust and Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, named HFMA Finance Director of the Year.