Case Study: NHS Operating Game, Financial Awareness programme
Client requirements:
The PCT wanted an interactive and engaging Financial Awareness Course to engage managers throughout the PCT to participate in monitoring and creating budgets. Managers and Clinicians who attended the course all received financial information in the form of monthly Budget Reports and were expected to understand, comment on and control their own financial performance.
Course details:
The NHS Operating Game the client chose was a two day event. The programme comprised a half day delivered Financial Awareness session plus one and a half days of playing our unique ‘NHS Operating Game’.
Game details:
The game was played by four teams of 4 or 5 players (16-20 delegates in total). The game has been run 5 times so far for this client, training approximately 80 managers. Each team was responsible for running a surgical unit specialising in four types of surgery. The teams made decisions about the number of patients to treat each round of the game. The teams all had limited resources and funds and needed to ensure that they treated the optimum number of patients.
Once the decisions were made the teams plotted these on their game boards and moved their cash around the board to reflect the costs of the decisions made. At the end of each round the teams each prepared Income & Expenditure statements to record their financial outcomes.
Each round of the game was debriefed by the Clearly Facilitator to illustrate different aspects of the teams’ financial performance. Teams were asked to look at the relative costs and incomes of the different types of surgery for example so that they could choose the most financially successful.
Course coverage:
The following technical details were covered throughout the two days:
- Income & Expenditure Statement
- Balance Sheets
- The Accruals Principle
- Capital Charges (Depreciation & Interest)
- The NHS Tariff System & Payment by Results
- The Commissioning Rules
- Foundation Trusts
- Allocation of Scarce Resources
- Budgeting & Budgetary Control
- An Introduction to Service Line Reporting
Return on Investment:
The initial course feedback from delegates gave a 100% satisfaction rating on the programme’s aims of improving the engagement with Financial Information. Following the course managers at the PCT were able to understand and therefore use their Budget Statements more effectively and felt confident that they could make a valuable contribution to monitoring their budgets using their financial information.