Explainer / Bringing it all together: financial strategies that address health inequalities

Financial strategies should set out how finance will support organisations to achieve their goals, including on health inequalities. There are three main ways in which finance can help:

• Moving the money: allocating resources to the services which are best placed to help address health inequalities.
• Understanding the data: using financial and non-financial data to understand health inequalities and population health.
• Showing it’s the right thing to do: demonstrating the return on investment of specific interventions and including health inequalities in business cases.

This explainer sums up the HFMA’s work on health inequalities and explores how organisations can use financial strategies to address health inequalities. When finance teams are working at their best, they can increase value and have a significant impact on patient access, outcomes and experience.