How to realise financial savings to meet 2024/25 business planning goals
Liaison Financial Business Development Director, Melanie Dickson, discusses the challenges faced by Finance leaders across the NHS during 2024/25 business planning, and the solutions designed to support them…
25 March 2024
I spend a lot of time speaking with Finance teams from NHS organisations across the UK, and hear from many of them, if not all, that the biggest challenge facing trusts is the meeting of financial targets in a squeezed economy.
Just this week, the HSJ reported that the initial drafted financial returns submitted by the 42 integrated care systems (ICSs) indicate a combined deficit of around £6bn for the NHS, which will continue to create a huge amount of pressure for Finance Directors and those looking after budgets.
As business planning for 2024/25 progresses, at Liaison Financial, we’ve developed a suite of solutions which identify and achieve savings in non-pay expenditure. In 2023, these solutions – which range from VAT re-reviews to Private Patients optimisation – generated over £217million for NHS organisations; savings which help to ease the financial burden, meet targets, and enable reinvestment into frontline healthcare.
Over the past 35 years, we’ve developed these solutions because we care about realising savings for the NHS, and supporting its teams to meet their financial aims. NHS organisations are some of the most complex organisations to run in the country, with many factors and unrivalled criticism on operations and expenditure – where we can provide a helping hand, we always will.
All of our services can be direct awarded from NHS frameworks, meaning ease of access for organisations, and many operate on a contingency fee, meaning no risk or financial outlay. So, what is available to assist trusts and health boards to generate much-needed savings?
VATplus Review – Our VATplus service provides a light-touch secondary VAT re-review for NHS organisations that use an alternative VAT provider. Our experts have a 100% track record of finding additional VAT recovery, and, on average, discover an additional £270k that would otherwise have been lost, as well as identifying and correcting any compliance issues.
VATflow Review – With our regular monthly VAT recovery and compliance service, we review all financial transactions and ensure VAT adjustments are made in the correct period for maximum recovery, whilst remaining fully compliant with HMRC guidance.
Private Patients Optimisation – A complete review of Private Patient commercial infrastructure to provide strategic and operational support that leads to higher income generation, compliance, clinical and corporate governance. We help with patient data pathways, processes, invoicing, credit control, contract management, pricing, and profitability.
Telecoms Review – A review of an organisation’s total telecoms infrastructure spend to analyse cost and utilisation against current requirements. We identify areas that can be optimised to achieve substantial savings, as well as ensuring a robust infrastructure for current and future telecom needs.
Non-Pay Analysis & Savings Review – A comprehensive analysis and benchmarking review of the entire non-pay spend, including identifying, validating and delivering savings opportunities based on true current costs and reducing demand (and therefore cost) of insourced and outsourced healthcare.
CHC Invoice Validation Reviews – Our bespoke invoice validation reviews focus on interrogating Continuing Healthcare (CHC) expenditure for overpayments. Errors can occur in many areas, including deceased patients, hospital admissions, care package reductions, and duplicated funding streams. We work with providers to recover these on behalf of NHS organisations.
Accounts Payable (AP) Reviews – Our AP audit offers a risk-free, end-to-end service to identify and recover savings by interrogating AP-related transactional information. Irregularities can be present in many forms including duplicate payments, charges, and unallocated credit notes. Our recovery specialists liaise directly with suppliers to resolve each anomaly effectively and efficiently on an organisation’s behalf.
Implementing these reviews can assist in improving financial efficiency, as well as realising significant savings. To find out more or to discuss these solutions, please get in touch.
Speak to Melanie today!
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