28 November 2008
By Tash Shifrin The NHS faces a ‘ticking timebomb’ with a potential shortage of finance directors across the service and skills gaps in primary care, the incoming chair of the Healthcare Financial Management Association has warned. Bill Shields, director of finance and commissioning at the South West Strategic Health Authority, will become HFMA chair at its annual conference on December 6. He aims to use his position to build ‘world-class finance’ in the NHS, he said in an interview with Public Finance. But he warned that the future supply of finance directors could be hit by a reluctance among deputies to take the top jobs. ‘A lot of evidence... suggests there are a number of people who have been in the NHS for some time, who may be successful deputy directors of finance, but don’t want to make the step up,’ he said. HFMA research had highlighted issues of pay and work-life balance as reasons why deputies were reluctant to seek promotion, Shields said. But he emphasised the importance of support and development to ensure finance directors succeeded – and were seen to succeed by their potential successors. The NHS must make sure senior finance staff move up into director posts, Shields said, warning: ‘If we don’t, we’ve got a sort of timebomb ticking.’ Shields also warned that gaps in finance capacity and skills in primary care would become ‘more pronounced’ with the introduction of the NHS’s World Class Commissioning programme, which is aimed at ensuring that primary care commissioners can shape local health services. ‘If a fundamental underlying principle is that primary care trusts should be the leaders of the health economy, then they need to have the best people, they need to have the best skills sets – and I don’t think anybody would say that’s the case,’ he said.
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