Lyn Tallentire and Jules Harrhy, Deputy Directors of Finance at MLCSU

We are extremely pleased to announce that we won the Finance Team of the Year award at yesterday’s Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) West Midlands Branch Annual Conference.

This award recognises the contribution that our Finance Team has made in the last twelve months to promoting and improving teamwork, innovation, collaboration, transformation and governance in the NHS finance community.

Tony Matthews, Director of Finance and Commerce at the Midlands and Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit, said:

“I am delighted that our Finance Team has been recognised by the HFMA and to win such a prestigious award as HFMA West Midlands Finance Team of the Year.

“To have been recognised by the HFMA in the West Midlands in amongst the many other brilliant NHS finance departments and to have been singled out is fabulous and recognition of the hard work and dedication the team displays each and every day for the NHS clients we support.”

In a year with many challenges, the team kept their high spirits and committed dedication to improving their staff, processes, performance and sharing best practice with the wider NHS. Some of our key achievements include:

• Achieved Level 3 Future Focused Finance Towards Excellence Accreditation, which recognises the very highest culture of learning and development.
• Saved around 120 hours per month of transactional staff time by investing in robotic process automation
• Reduced year-end planning preparation time by 50% and the time for uploading budgets to the ledger by 75% using a new data warehouse and a bulk upload tool
• Mobilised staff to work from home within 48 hours of COVID-19
• Provided significant health and wellbeing support to staff. This best practice was shared with other NHS organisations for which we have been shortlisted for another award
• Improved staff engagement, upskilled existing staff and developed new services ready for working across systems through our bespoke ‘Future Finance’ initiative
• Launched a programme called STAR (Super Taskforce for Aspirational Results) which engages junior staff with the development of the department
• Helped patients to be seen sooner after speeding up the process of paying doctors for a mental health patient pathway.

Across the NHS, the team has also:

• Redesigned the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) financial reporting
• Redesigned the financial reporting for the NHS England and Improvement Learning Disabilities and Autism programme.

With over 200 delegates at the event, two awards were presented by the West Midlands Branch of HFMA, which promotes the highest standards and innovation in financial management and governance across the UK health economy through its local and national networks. It is a huge honour to be recognised by this award – well done to our colleagues!