Digital technologies have a huge potential to transform the delivery of healthcare. From the patient’s perspective technology can empower them to participate actively in their care. For NHS bodies, technology can improve efficiency and change the focus to wellbeing and prevention with its associated impact on demand.
However, accounting for innovative digital technologies is complicated and it is not always clear whether the NHS body is purchasing an asset that, in accounting terms, is capital expenditure or a service that is revenue or a mixture of the two.
Technological solutions can change the patient pathway and often cross organisational boundaries. This, coupled with the move towards integration and system working mean that it is not a single organisation that is accounting for the new solution but several. This also complicates the accounting arrangements.
As technologies change, so does the delivery mechanism. Cloud computing and software as a service mean that even existing digital solutions may need to be accounted for in a different way.
This webinar is part of HFMA’s Delivering value with digital technologies programme that is supported by HEE. It will set out the issues that need to be considered when determining the accounting treatment for digital solutions.