Daily Insight: An unprecedented appointment?

It is rare to see a serving NHS England leader join a trust board but that is exactly what has happened at one trust.

Simon Corben, NHSE’s director of estates and facilities, has been appointed a non-executive director at East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust.

He will join on 1 October and continue in his national role while acting as the “non-executive in common” between the board and the trust’s wholly-owned subsidiary, 2gether Support Solutions.

It is a highly unusual move with not much precedent behind it, although HSJ understands Mr Corben applied for the role through an open competition process.

He comes with a vast amount of experience, having joined NHSE in April 2017 after nearly two decades in the private sector, where he was involved in advising major NHS capital infrastructure projects.

For EKHUFT, a struggling acute that oversees five hospitals across Kent, his expertise may be seen as a real coup.

The trust is significantly challenged on its estate maintenance backlog and has struggled to meet the demands of modern healthcare because of it.

However, there are £460m plans to increase capacity on three of its sites and expand the services it provides.

Accentuate the positive

It’s hard to listen to the news or read a website at the moment without finding a story about the NHS failing patients – whether that is elderly people waiting hours for an ambulance, families let down by maternity care or record waiting lists for diagnosis and treatment.  

But does all this doom and gloom give a misleading picture of a service which is doing much good work and is beginning to transform delivery of care?  

NHSE chief strategy officer Chris Hopson believes so and wants to rebalance the narrative to show what the NHS is achieving as well as where it has problems. That may be a challenge: bad news usually predominates over good and, sadly, there are plenty of bad news stories to be found. And there are many staff who believe the full extent of the NHS’s woes have yet to come out.  

As NHSE contemplates the (hopefully) post-covid future, it knows it will need to make the case that it is doing great things with the money which it has been given before it gets any more. More positive media coverage could help that – something Mr Hopson, a formidable communicator, will be keen to deliver.