To enable it to recover from a historic deficit, Kettering General Hospital NHS Trust had to embark on an ambitious cost improvement programme. To achieve this, the Trust has improved the ownership of budget management and financial performance across all levels of the organisation, enabling it to deliver the significant savings required and move to surplus and financial balance.
Progress against these planned savings has had to be regularly monitored and reported, to enable their successful attainment. In order to achieve this, budgetholders receive timely and accurate monthly reports and are robustly challenged if they do not achieve their targets.
In addition, all budgetholders have a named finance staff contact so that liaison can be two way. The Trust participates in a detailed budgetholder survey on an annual basis, and ensures questions are suitably tailored to identify perceived areas for improvement from budgetholders.
The Trust’s Performance, Finance and Resources Committee scrutinises both the Finance Report and the Performance Report to the Board. There is detailed challenge on key variances to the Director of Finance and Service Directors, seeking confirmation as to what corrective action will be taken to address any adverse variances. The Committee meets in advance of the Board meeting, where further detailed challenge is evident.
Both the Finance and Performance (Health of the Trust) reports use a dashboard-type ‘traffic-light’ approach which quickly highlights any financial or performance risks. In 2006/07 the Audit Commission reviewed the Trust’s financial reporting to the Board, comparing (at that time) current reporting formats with best practice taken from foundation trusts.
The Trust quickly adopted some of the ideas put forward, but during 2007/08 they moved beyond the examples provided to produce their own notable practice, utilising a mixture of traffic lights, charts and tables to highlight all the key financial messages to the Board in a concise four-page report, enabling the Trust Board to quickly focus on key risks and messages.