By Mark Smulian | 7 August 2013
Senior NHS finance staff should be ‘visible to the front line’ after scandals such as Mid Staffordshire hospital, the Healthcare Financial Management Association has said.
It has issued guidance to its 4,000 members reminding finance staff about their professional responsibilities and that their actions contribute to the provision of high-quality, safe patient care.
A second set of guidance for existing and aspiring chief finance officers describes the skills they need to play their role in ensuring the success of an NHS organisation.
HFMA president Tony Whitfield said: ‘It is becoming increasingly challenging to give safe care to patients within the resources available.
‘Alongside other health professionals, NHS finance staff have a role to play in helping to ensure that the failures that occurred at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust do not happen again.’
Whitfield, who is also finance director and deputy chief executive at Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, said chief finance officers must be prepared to ‘regularly walk the wards, taking time to talk to staff and patients and judging first-hand frontline services’.
He said NHS finance staff should not be subject to pressure from government or regulators or governing bodies ‘to create a financial position that is not deliverable or does not put the interests of patients first’.
