Anthea Morris

Current Position

  • Finance Director, Better2Know
  • American Sexual Health Association Ambassador
  • NHS Sheffield CCG Governing Body Member

Professional Journey

Anthea qualified as a Chartered Accountant at haysmacintyre in London in 2000. She worked on a variety of commercial, charitable and membership organisations before moving to Citizens Advice in 2001, where she was the Financial Controller working in both London and Newcastle upon Tyne. She had responsibility for the production of Financial Statutory Accounts and for compliance with financial procedures, policy and protocol. She developed and implemented accounting systems and policies to meet business and technological changes and also had responsibility for the professional training of other accountants in the department.

In 2006, she was appointed into her first healthcare position as Group Director of Finance at the Centre of Excellence for Life Sciences (Cels), a company focussed on Healthcare and Biomedical translational research. During her five-year tenure working at Cels, she managed the group’s financial and administrative services, HR functions and all legal matters. She was integral in strategic business planning, financial planning, performance monitoring, risk assessment, business continuity planning and internal auditing.

Prior to founding Better2Know, she was the Strategic Management Advisor at St Walburg’s Hospital, Tanzania for six months in 2011. The hospital had a large HIV/AIDS department within its grounds, helping with Voluntary Testing and Counselling and management of people living with HIV. She is currently a member of NHS Doncaster CCG Governing Body as the member for Audit, Risk and Conflicts of Interest Guardian, and the Treasurer of the FPA, the national charity for sexual health and wellbeing.

Why Better2Know was Founded

When it comes to sexual health testing, many people know what they need; they do not particularly want to explain what they have done and why they want to get tested, they just want the problem to be solved. This is why, along with Mike Asher, she founded Better2Know.

The founders started by providing a service that people want with the emphasis on putting the patients’ wants and needs first. The company has grown since then with new services, faster testing and exceptional clinicians, but at the heart of the business is delighting every one of its patients with a superior sexual health service.

Views on the Future of Sexual Healthcare

There have already been a lot of changes since Better2Know was founded. Anthea says "There have been fantastic advances in HIV and hepatitis C management and treatment that make a real difference to patients with these conditions."

With regards to the future, Anthea says "the next issue we are facing is the rise of antibiotic resistant superbugs, particularly with strains of gonorrhoea and mycoplasma. This means that all positive cases of these STIs need to be carefully managed. Not all strains are antibiotic resistant, so it is still possible to cure the majority of cases in the countries we work in."

The UK has particular challenges in the provision of public sexual health testing, which is facing funding cuts and reduced services. As people want a fast and convenient clinical service, alternatives to GUM clinics such as Better2Know will be more commonly used.

Priorities as a Better2Know Board Member

The main areas Anthea works on at Better2Know are strategic planning, financial management, staffing and patient pathways. This can be the fun things from proposing and visiting new countries to launch our service in, to the serious business of working out how to best plan the patient journey with different legal and reporting requirements.

Main Achievements

  • Developing a slick patient pathway across all our territories that provides the care patients needs as efficiently as possible
  • The excellent feedback the Better2Know Sexual Health Advisors get from our patients
  • Winning the Small Business of the Year Award 2018

Qualifications

  • BSc (hons) Mathematics (University of Nottingham)
  • MA Management (University of Durham)
  • LLM Commercial Law (Northumbria University)
  • STIF and STIF Plus (University College Dublin)
  • British Association of Sexual Health and HIV (BASHH)  Certificate

Memberships and Appointments

  • The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW)
  • The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD)
  • NHS Governing Body

Specialities

  • Patient Engagement and Experience
  • Patient Pathways
  • Sexual Health Charities
  • Sexual Health in Developing Countries
  • Financial Accounting, Human Resources, Law

Get in Touch

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