In April 2022 the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) produced a briefing Improving NHS financial sustainability: are you getting the basics, right? The briefing included a detailed checklist for organisations to use as a self-assessment tool.
NHS England (NHSE) issued guidance that required organisations to commission from their internal auditors a review of the completed self-assessment. The NHSE guidance specified the process to be undertaken locally. It also set out the scope and the timing of the internal audit review.
The attached Insight includes the anonymised results of the NHSE directed internal audit review undertaken against the HFMA’s checklist. The results are based on final reports issued to 360 Assurance and MIAA clients.
We have reviewed 17 NHS provider Board Assurance Frameworks, theming both the strategic objectives and the identified risks in order to identify the most prevalent themes, as well as those areas with the highest average risk score.
Click on the image below to access the report.
We are pleased to provide our Divisional Governance Self-Assessment Matrix and Group/Committee Administration Checklist which we hope you will find useful. This was developed using national guidance as a base and evolved through discussion at a workshop in June, with representatives from 13 of our provider clients in attendance.
The tool can be used to undertake your own self-assessment, benchmarking across divisions. You might choose specific rows of the matrix to focus on rather than assessing against every row or use to support deep dives.
If you have any feedback or comments please do not hesitate to contact us. Click on the image to open the matrix.
360 Assurance is a member of the NHS Counter Fraud Managers’ Group (CFMG). In response to the rise in risk and the quantity of scams being seen across the country, it was agreed that we would collect information from CFMG partners nationwide and produce a briefing paper, aimed at Directors of Finance. These were made available via the website where they did not contain sensitive information. Click on the image below for the last edition produced in February 2021 or on the post title to access earlier editions.
We worked with Audit Yorkshire and MIAA to gather salary overpayment information from 26 NHS provider Trusts for three financial years (2018/19 – 2020/21) to provide some benchmarking information which may help Trusts assess their arrangements to prevent and detect employee overpayments.
Each of the participating organisations received a tailored report but we have also produced this generic version which gives an overview of our findings.
Click on the image to open the report.
Following specific requests from several clients last year, we have examined the structure and operation of Board committees within a sample of mental health trusts, including how their purpose and duties are described and relate to their reporting to Board.
Whilst we looked specifically at mental health trusts, much of the content is as applicable to acute and community trusts and CCGs.
Click on the image below to access the report.
