Starter for 10
01 March 2023
Our recent writing on financial and economic matters ranges from the launch of a board assurance prompt for finance committees, to debating the role of integrated payment mechanisms in improving population health, and an introduction to Judge Professor Mervyn King’s concept of ‘coronanomics’, which describes the challenge facing governments of protecting citizens’ health while not damaging the economy.
In March 2023, senior consultant Joanna Watson reassesses her 2017 briefing, reflecting on what’s changed and what hasn’t.
Published in May 2021, this board assurance prompt offered a high-level summary of some of the principal challenges facing finance committees and aimed to improve the understanding of NHS chairs and NEDs of the key issues caused by the pandemic.
Part of our 2020 series exploring some of the big issues facing ICSs, this session focused on payment mechanisms. Public policy economist Jacque Mallender said: “The way the NHS financial system currently works is simply not aligned with place or outcomes-based care.”
Another event in our ICS series, in November 2020 we looked at the economics of population health, reflecting on the fact that every pound spent on public health generates a return to the health and social care economy that's worth around £15.
In July 2020, principal consultant Peter Allanson wrote: “NHS debt and capital funding involve numbers so large that they usually qualify as ‘someone else’s problem’ – and that perhaps encapsulates the current issue for trusts: that important decisions are increasingly being determined centrally.”
In May 2021, Peter Allanson wrote: “NHS trusts are not required to set up finance committees but it’s a brave chair who does not seek the reassurance of experts that their finances are in good shape.”
In this, one of our COVID-100 bulletins dating from April 2020, we asked whether NHS boards really need a finance committee. ‘Finance is an enabler of other things – service delivery – and not an end in itself’, we wrote.
In June 2021, economist and GGI Faculty member Jacque Mallender argues that targeted use of provider payment mechanisms can help to deliver improved population health and integrated care.
In May 2020, GGI advisory board member Judge Professor Mervyn King coined the term ‘coronanomics’ to describe the dual challenge facing governments of protecting citizens’ physical health while not damaging countries’ economic health.
