London Eye: The (surprising) names linked to England’s top hospital job

New names

Some new and interesting names have been mentioned in relation to the Guy’s and St Thomas’ Foundation Trust chief executive job.

Most notably, David Probert, who has been boss of University College London Hospitals FT for three and a half years.

This is the most surprising name to come out so far (arguably even more so than NHS England CEO Amanda Pritchard).

Although not as large as GSTT, (especially since it absorbed the Royal Brompton) UCLH is one of the biggest brands in NHS hospital land, still performs well and has a closer working relationship with UCL than GSTT does with King’s College London.

Why move? For all the prestige of its services, GSTT arguably does not have a department that is the best in the country, while UCLH has two: haematology cancer care and prostate cancer.

Staying with the Shelford Group, Cambridge’s Roland Sinker has also been mentioned regarding the SE1 job. Before his 10 years in the fens, Mr Sinker was chief operating officer at King’s College Hospital and has led national work on life sciences for NHSE.

Outside the Shelford Group but from perhaps the NHS’s biggest brand, Matthew Shaw of Great Ormond has also been linked to the GSTT vacancy. An orthopaedic surgeon, he was medical director at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital Trust before taking over at GOSH in 2018.

GOSH is well regarded for its system working and Mr Shaw stepped in to be interim chief exec when the Whittington’s top job needed covering and other people in NCL didn’t fancy it.

To be clear, none of the above means applications have been submitted by the people mentioned, they are just names that have been mentioned to London Eye in connection with it.

Recruiters approach people far and wide, and were instructed to think internationally also, so there is a chance of applicants from organisations that don’t run on an Epic IT system like Addenbrookes, GOSH or UCLH. Another rumoured contender is GSTT deputy chief executive Lawrence Tallon, who has also been through a recent Epic implementation.

The app and Cerner

But Epic is not the only IT system in London’s NHS. Cerner covers virtually all of North West London and two more trusts are due to take on the other big American EPR this year.

Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals Trust will begin the £44m deployment this year, ditto Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals Trust, which straddles the London/Surrey border.

This is important for bringing the hospitals off a system that generates a lot of paper, but also because it means they can get connected to the NHS App in a way that was previously very difficult.

ESTH serves some deprived populations, BHRUH especially so, and HSJ’s Digital Transformation Summit heard last week that although it was difficult to get people from the lowest economic quintile to engage with the app, once they did they were the heaviest users.

BHRUH commissioned research that showed one of the reasons its (much improved) accident and emergency services were so swamped was poorer patients unable to access primary care.

If the app’s success could be replicated across those patches, it would not only help drive out of hospital care but start to integrate it in areas where that has traditionally been difficult.

This is all assuming the traditional problems of how IT spending is considered by the Treasury – that it’s capital, not revenue spending – can be overcome. This was a problem much lamented at the digital summit by chief information officers and finance people from trusts across the land.