Southend Hospital NHS Trust, one of the UK’s major hospital trusts with 3,900 staff and an annual income of over £160 million, has invested £28,000 in an important move to ensure that its financial accounting systems relating to capital expenditure fully comply with the requirements of the Capital Accounting Manual and provide valuable data for the new NHS Payment by Results system.
Software ensures compliance
Ian Child, a financial accountant at the Trust, explained: “Today, an NHS Trust has to account for and monitor its funding with great precision, just as would be the case in any large business organisation. The capital we receive from the Government is given to us in order that we can generate and show a return on it. The accuracy, on a day-to-day basis, of the tracking of our capital allocation is extremely important to us. Using the new system – Series4000 software from Real Asset Management (RAM) – we can now monitor precisely how much capital is allocated to individual services and activities and what cost-savings, or increases in activity, we have gained from this expenditure.
“With our new specialist software system we have a powerful resource which allows us to match capital costs to services and income from Payment by Results and to ensure that our internal efficiencies and the quality of our utilisation of taxpayers’ money are given proper attention in our detailed accounting records.”