Business Skills Series

Summary

The English NHS budget for 2024/25 is £165 billion or to show that in full £165,000,000,000 and if you divide that budget by the population of England (56 million people) that represents, an average cost per person of £2,946.

However, despite this huge sum, NHS resources are under significant pressure, because of large post covid waiting lists, lower NHS productivity, an aging population, shortages of staff, long running industrial action and challenges resulting from pressures on Local Authority social care budgets.

The result is the NHS needs to constantly improve how it operationally performs, it needs to make wise decisions, it needs to use the money it has better, and it needs to produce excellent business cases to ensure that the investments, that are approved, meet these challenges.

To help HR professionals, the London Branch of HPMA has developed a programme of workshops to improve business skills and four of these workshops are below.

These can be taken all together, singularly or in any combination you wish, and the workshops will cover the following.

• Continuous Improvement Methods (15th May 2024) – We all want to improve ourselves, and the NHS needs to improve to survive, but have you ever been confused by the language of continuous improvement? Words and names like Lean, Six Sigma, PDSA, Kaizan, 7 Wastes, Value, Value stream mapping, 5 Why’s and Virginia Mason Institute come up when people talk about continuous improvement, so this workshop is aimed at giving you an overview of what they mean. Clearly you will not be an expert on everything after just one morning, but you will have an overview and understanding of how to properly engage and participate in a local continuous improvement programme.

• Using data and analysis to provide insights & make decisions (14th August 2024) – This workshop will look at (a) how we make decisions and the different types of problems we face we face in both our home and work lives (b) the role of information in decision making (c) types of data, including hard and soft data (d) how to present data and information well, with the aim of influencing people (e) understanding the importance (and pitfalls) of performance indicators, targets and benchmarking and (f) ethical considerations of using data and information in the modern world of social media, “fake news” and disinformation.
  

• Financial acumen for HR professionals (17th December 2024) – A practical overview of NHS finance, explaining terms that will help non-finance professionals gain a better understanding of the important role of financial data and information. This will cover (a) what finance departments actually do (b) a high-level overview of NHS finance (c) the three main financial statements that make up annual accounts (d) a “hands-on” practical example, where you will produce your own set of financial accounts based everyday personal finances (e) explaining key NHS costing terms like Healthcare Resource Groups (HRG’s), Patients Level Information and Costing System (PLICS), Management Accounting/Reporting and Value and (f) future financial challenges of system working i.e. Integrated Care Systems

• Developing business cases (6th March 2025) – Whilst we may not all be as talented writers as JK Rowling, the ability to produce effective business case is a skill that if you can learn will greatly increase your career prospects. The objective of this workshop is to help NHS HR professionals improve their business case skills and will include (a) the importance of identifying the real problem to solve i.e. framing the decision (b) developing and capturing a shared vision for what a good outcome would look and feel like for stakeholders (c) how would you measure this good outcome (d) the art of constructing logical options i.e. decision trees (e) tools to helping us compare options (f) the art of writing clear, logical, concise plain English (g) an overview of large scale NHS (Treasury) business case guidance (the five case model) and (h) finally how to improve your influencing skills, thereby facilitating more effective business case development

Location – online over Zoom.

Time – all workshops 9.30am to 1pm.

Target audience – Middle and senior HR professionals.

Numbers in each event – As they are over Zoom this is unlimited.

Pre-work – this will not be required.

Facilitator

Paul Miller

Paul has over 40 years’ experience in the NHS and has over nine years coaching experience and during this time he has coached over 20 senior NHS leaders.

He is a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA), a Fellow of the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) and holds a MBA from Cardiff University, specialising in Lean and Supply Chain Management.

Since 1994 and to the present day, he has held wide variety of Board level posts in both Wales and England. This has including sixteen years a Director of Finance, five years as a Chief Executive and three years as a Director of Strategy. He has also worked in a wide variety of health organisations, including Acute, Mental Health, Specialised Services, Public Health, and the Welsh Assembly Government.

Following retirement in January 2018 Paul became a Non-Executive Director in Salisbury NHS FT (March 2018), before starting as Non-Executive Director in the newly created Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire Integrated Care Board in July 2022. In addition to his Non-Executive roles, he is also an Affiliate with the Jersey Audit Office, provides a wide variety of consultancy and training and finally Paul is a tutor for the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) Academy teaching “tools to support decision making”.

Date: Please book onto each session you would like to attend

Time: All sessions open at 09:20 for a prompt 09:30 start - 12:30 close

Location: Online

By booking on this event, you are indicating that have read and agree to our event booking terms and conditions.

Please note the cancellation fee will apply of £100. We required 5 working days notice to cancel your place on an event. These events are in demand and to not fill them due to late cancellations is a waste of resource, please let us know in good time if your plans change.

Attending our workshop will enroll you to the HPMA London Academy mailing list and please be aware we make take photos to advertise our programme. If you do not wish to be added to the list or, to have your image used, please contact [email protected]

Host or Publisher HPMA Academy London