Blogs

Congratulations to Mark Songhurst at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust for winning the Future-Focused Finance award at HFMA Annual Conference 2018!

I know there is another brilliant blog on the recent excellent digital finance lab looking at the future of NHS finance but I wanted to add my thoughts on the day and talk about the work Chelsea and Westminster is undertaking. I apologise for any duplication (a cardinal sin in Finance!). 

I had the pleasure to attend the above session with colleagues from across most sectors of NHS Finance (commissioners, providers, CSU’s, all represented). On the journey down I was thinking about what to expect; analytics, science, robots……the future. I was not left disappointed.

Feel free to download some of the speaker's presentations that took place on 16th July at the South West Regional Value Maker Event from this very web page.

The *Fabulous Finance Team* at North Staffs Combined has enabled them to go from strength to strength; in terms of their commitment to improving finance skills and financial awareness at the Trust.   With the support of the Director of Finance, who signed the FFF FD declaration on her first day at the Trust in March 2016, the team have created a developmental

Spreadsheets to bedsheets is a concept that was launched at Stockport NHS FT in 2016 whereby they asked all the staff in the Finance & Procurement Department to commit to getting out of the department and seeing something or someone else in the hospital or committee.   This was undertaken in the form of a “pledge”. 

The Four Strengths have been produced by Future-Focused Finance and are designed to help NHS finance teams develop the skills they need for the challenges ahead. They have been created to be simple, memorable and time-saving – giving NHS finance departments a consistent, universal language to support not just appraisals, but the whole development process. 

“You can’t plait a turd but you can sprinkle glitter on it…” said the voice of Roy Lilley, nhsManagers.net [1] ever so controversial commentator.  His enigmatic banter was littered with references to stabbing, Hitler, sex, drugs & rock‘n’roll.  I did record his talk at my recent event but it was so full of ‘bleeps’ that I better [1] https://ihm.org.uk/roy-lilley-nhsmanagers/

Patient Level Costing has played an evolving role in improving services at the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. However, with an increasing focus on identifying and eliminating waste and inefficiency, the Costing team believed they were not harnessing the full potential of what could be achieved from the various information streams they have access to, as well as other external sources of