Richard is on secondment to the Nuffield Trust from the Audit Commission, where he works in the Commission’s Health Directorate on its national studies programme. Richard has led research work on a range of studies covering personal budgets in social care; sickness absence in the NHS; medium-term financial planning in PCTs and the Commission’s Auditors’ Local Evaluation programme. Prior to working in the Health Directorate, Richard worked as an external auditor for the Audit Commission and is a qualified chartered accountant.
At the Nuffield Trust Richard is working with the Chief Economist to develop an annual programme of work providing comprehensive analysis of NHS finances. The Trust will evaluate the impact of the NHS reforms on financial performance and link NHS finance data with activity and quality data to develop a holistic dataset to analyse performance. Specific activities to support this work will involve building a spreadsheet model of financial flows in the NHS.