Part-time FDs managing £40bn NHS budget
£40bn of taxpayers money earmarked for the National Health Service is being predominantly administered by part time finance directors, a new survey has revealed.
Link: Financial practices at NHS ‘patchy’
An NOP poll looked at 50 primary care trusts in England and found that two-thirds of finance directors were not full time employees, while almost half (four in 10) lacked an IT director.
Hudson, the recruitment firm which commissioned the survey, said such large budgets would require full-time FDs in the private sector, and compared their size to companies like Wessex Water, Costa Coffee and Lastminute.com.
Andrew McNeilis, Hudson’s European commercial director said modernising the NHS without experienced senior staff was almost impossible.
‘In our experience, in the private sector, the role of financial director managing budgets of this magnitude is almost invariably full-time.’
Sandra White, chair of the Institute of Healthcare Management, described the findings as worrying and said they could have implications for the performance of PCTs trying to fulfil their responsibilities.