NHS restructuring offers opportunity to make health service accounting more robust.

The National Assembly for Wales’ Audit Committee has called on the Welsh Assembly Government to put NHS finances at the centre of its re-organisation plans.

The Committee says that although the financial position of the NHS in Wales has improved over the past year, the forthcoming reorganisation represents a great opportunity to further improve financial management.

Key recommendations from the Audit Committee’s report into NHS financial management are for the Welsh Assembly Government to:

• Ensure all NHS financial managers have been subject to the new financial competency framework training programme.

• Ensure all service modernisation plans include realistic estimates of the costs of existing services as well as the emerging costs of new developments.

• Ensure senior appointments to new NHS bodies can improve financial leadership.

• Recognise that financial recovery of some NHS bodies may take more than one year to minimise the impact on patients.

“The financial management of the NHS in Wales has shown an improvement in comparison with the previous year,’’ says Committee Chair David Melding AM.  But a part of this was achieved by the movement of some significant sums of funding at the end of the year and brokerage between local NHS bodies.

A lot of work still needs to be done.   The Committee feels that the forthcoming reorganisation of the NHS provides a great opportunity to improve financial management by using existing capacity more effectively and ensuring the new organisation has the highest calibre financial leadership.”