Our business plan for 2023-24 has been created alongside our 2023-26 Strategy. Together, they set out our approach to the coming year and beyond and outline how we will deliver our counter fraud strategy through a combination of activities, including fraud prevention, fraud detection and fraud recovery.
As an arm’s-length body of the Department of Health and Social Care, we must align to and support our healthcare system through the work that we do in relation to fraud. This high-level plan sets out how we intend to do that and combines the learning and experience we’ve developed since our inception in 2017, whilst strengthening our commitment to deliver our new vision: “Working together to understand, find and prevent fraud, bribery and corruption in the NHS.”
This business plan outlines how we do things and translates what we do daily into clear objectives and areas of focus over the coming year. This plan doesn’t describe everything we will do, but highlights our key commitments for 2023/24 using the four pillars outlined in our strategy – Understand, Prevent, Respond and Assure, which are underpinned by our People and our Resources:
- Understand – Understand how fraud, bribery and corruption affects the NHS.
- Prevent – We will ensure the NHS is equipped to take proactive action and prevent future losses from occurring.
- Respond – When we know that fraud has occurred, we are equipped to respond.
- Assure – We can assure our key partners, stakeholders, and the public that the overall response to fraud across the NHS is robust.
- People – Supporting our people in an innovative and agile way to underpin and deliver counter fraud activity within the NHS.
- Resources – Ensuring we use our resources in an innovative and agile way to support and deliver counter fraud activity within the NHS.
We have set out in more detail what we plan to achieve over this next year, including key deliverables and measurements for each area of focus within the plan.
One aspect of our business plan that is critical to us over the next year is the improvements we have made, and are continuing to make, to our suite of performance measures. Achieving this will be a huge positive for us, as it will highlight all the important work we undertake and give us tangible results for us to showcase to our stakeholders. I want to be able to showcase our work to our partners and tell them what we’re doing, and what it means for them as well as the wider public. This will ultimately lead to a stronger case for investment in the NHSCFA.
Clear and concise performance measures will also challenge us to be better, allow others to hold us to account and give people the opportunity to question us. I’m confident that this will also bring us opportunities to work more closely with our stakeholders, with the ultimate aim of recovering fraud to enable more patient care across the NHS.
Alex Rothwell
Chief Executive of the NHS Counter Fraud Authority
