Finance

Increasing demand, workforce shortages and productivity challenges continue to drive financial challenges across the healthcare sector. Alongside this backdrop, there is ongoing uncertainty over funding levels across the NHS, whilst there is also a need to re-balance payment mechanisms to incentivise behavioural change and integration of health and care. Integrated Care Boards will need to develop ways of both integrating financials – to drive reporting and derive insights for collective decision-making including enablers such as shared services – and reforming the way funding flows through the system to incentivise and reward joint working.

Integrated Care System (ICS) leaders and also providers are under increasing pressure to reduce costs, increase productivity and ensure financial balance is delivered. To deliver this, a focus on financial sustainability and corporate services transformation is now a critical priority. The increasing integration of healthcare is the opportunity for NHS finance to be reimagined and become integrated world-class finance functions, providing insights and efficiency to support the delivery of the highest standard of health and care.

Our Healthcare Finance Advisory team can support clients with all aspects of financial challenges within health and care, including driving financial recovery and productivity improvement, supporting mergers and acquisitions, supporting investment decisions, supporting corporate service transformation and the creation of shared services, developing new payment models and supporting the implementation of new finance systems.

We are proud to be the #1 chosen advisor for NHS mergers and acquisitions. So far, our team have quickly and safely worked on over 30 healthcare transaction programmes in the UK, including one of the first under the recently revised transaction process. The experienced team in our finance practice provides one version of the truth around baselines and drivers of system financial performance, so the solutions and support we offer to providers and ICSs, is focused on the challenges and needs of the NHS to support financial improvement. We support our clients to drive financial efficiency, effectiveness, and value for money through all aspects of their operations.

KPMG recently supported the NHS Confederation to develop a report exploring why capital investment is key to boosting productivity and transforming long-term care, as part of our sponsorship of the ICS Network’s Finance and Productivity work. The report, published in November 2023, is available from NHS Confederation here.