Focus on finance offers professional rewards for trust team
Members of our high-flying finance team are in the running for national recognition at the healthcare finance profession’s annual awards ceremony this year.
Our group chief finance officer, Hardev Virdee, is shortlisted for the prestigious title of Finance Director of the Year by the Healthcare Financial Management Association.
And the costing team, led by assistant director Dr Gerald Enuezie, is nominated for their pioneering work in developing an interactive dashboard to address health inequalities.
This links the patient level data we hold to the 2021 Census, the Government’s own measure of deprivation by postcode, and a raft of information on social, economic and environmental statistics collated by the Consumer Data Research Centre.
It is the latest in a series of reporting platforms that map the costs of services and treatments against demographic data like ethnicity, age, gender and deprivation.
The Health Analytics Dashboard on Qlik Sense uses a technical breakthrough to transform our understanding of the trust’s operational and financial performance.
It means services at one hospital can benchmark their performance against a similar service at another, all in the context of patient choice and population health needs.
The pathology department successfully used this technique to examine demand for tests across the group and the results inspired the Good Testing programme that is ensuring greater consistency and better care.
By aggregating internal and external data, the team has also created an innovative heatmap showing the distance patients have travelled to use trust services.
“Clinicians can use this tool to help shape their services by targeting certain cohorts of the population, analysing GP referrals or mapping the impact of patient choice,” said Gerald, who recently achieved a doctorate in business administration.
“For example, it has highlighted that patients are not necessarily going to their closest A&E department. The opening of the Queen Elizabeth line means that the A&E at The Royal London is far more accessible than before, and we are exploring whether this has contributed to us seeing more patients at the site.”
Winners of this year’s awards will be announced at a special ceremony in London on 7 December as part of the HFMA annual conference.