Over the past year, CIPFA has held roundtables across the UK to discuss the benefits of integrating health and social care and the potential barriers to making progress. One consistent point arising was that collaboration is eased by mutual understanding but that the worlds of health and local government finance are different in many ways which are not widely understood across sectors.
Financial regimes, cultures and terminology differ between health and local government – therein lies the potential for confusion. Not only are there separate regimes in ongoing development, it was also noted that there is much less movement of finance staff between sectors now than was the case twenty years ago: specialism is increasing.
CIPFA is therefore looking for ways to help finance professionals develop an open, transparent and informed partnership with colleagues across organisations and sectors. The greatest success will come when everyone has a shared understanding of what is being discussed and what needs to be achieved.
One aid to that is clarity around definitions and terms used. CIPFA has joined with the Health Financial Management Association (HFMA) to produce a briefing which aims to improve mutual understanding by:
- outlining the role of relevant national and local NHS/government bodies
- providing a glossary of terms used frequently in relation to finance and governance in the NHS and local government – focusing on the key terms that it is helpful for everyone to understand when working collaboratively.
Download the glossary of terms